*
THE ROY THOMAS
MISCELLANEOUS
CHARACTERS, CONCEPTS, CREATIONS
AND FAN LETTERS
*
B
Badman and Robber (Team)
(a variety of a creature from the film)
C
First comicbooks I created
Flea
Parody of Archie's hero The Fly. Also mention of Archie-group parodies The Cougar, Black Hoodlum, Flea Girl, and The Windshield. Yeah, I know "Windshield" isn't that great a name to parody The Shield... but with the hero onstage being The Fly, I found it impossible to resist.
Amaiza Foxtrain
G
(adapted and developed for comics with Gil Kane and Bill Everett)
H
Jaxxon
Keepers of the Dark Crystal
Don-Wan Kihotay
(adapted and developed for comics with Barry Windsor-Smith)
Lady Serra
Les Ghouls (Movie)
Alter Ego #1 (1986)
*rechristened character named "Sky Man," first appeared in BIG SHOT COMICS #1 (1940) created by Gardner Fox and Ogden Whitney
***rechristened character named "Daredevil," first appeared in SILVER STREAK COMICS #4 (1940) created by Jack Binder and Jack Cole
****rechristened character named "Black Terror," first appeared in EXCITING COMICS #9 (1941) created by Richard E. Hughes and Don Gabrielson
*******rechristened character named "Fighting Yank," first appeared in STARTLING COMICS #10 (1941) created by Richard E. Hughes and Jon L. Blummer
M
N
O
Old One
P
Pakim
Circa 1972-73 I decided I wanted a red-haired swordwoman in the comic who would be a sometime foil for Conan... red-haired because Belit had black hair and Valeria was a blonde. When I saw a reference in an article by one Alan Howard to a "Russian she-cat" or some such thing in the Crusader-type story "Shadow of the Vulture" by Robert E. Howard, I was intrigued and asked Glenn Lord if he had a copy of that story from the 1930s, which he did. We worked out a deal so that I could have it adapted in CONAN THE BARBARIAN, and of course the estate would own the character. I simply changed the name from Red Sonya to Red Sonja to make her a slightly difference character... and retain the integrity of the original. Barry designed the look of the character, though we may have talked over the chain-mail shirt... but since I never liked the "hot pants" shorts look, I was ripe to change to the "iron bikini" when Esteban Maroto sent in his drawing of same some months later... or did it first appear in Steranko's magazine? So Howard created Red Sonya of Rogatino... and he and I, in what L. Sprague de Camp used to call a "posthumous collaboration," co-created Red Sonja, She-Devil with a Sword. That's not to take anything away from Barry, who first drew the character, but he knew nothing about Red Sonya till I gave him a copy of the story and I explained that we were gonna turn it into a CONAN THE BARBARIAN issue/story.
Around 1967, when Gary Friedrich was getting married for the second time and planned a short honeymoon at a major hotel in the Times Square area, he asked me if I'd help him out by ghosting a romance story for him for Charlton--my choice. I couldn't say no, though I had never written a love story and had no desire to do so. I started a story I titled "If You Love Me, Fight for Me!" about a girl who ditches her boyfriend because he won't stand up to arrogant males. But I got a writer's block around the end of page 4 or so, anyway halfway through the story. I just couldn't bring myself to finish it, my distaste was so strong. So when the honeymoon was over, Gary picked up the story at the point where I left off... by having the guy get martial arts lessons. But then he doesn't fight for the girl anyway, 'cause she's not worth it. I should've thought of that.
Pat Masulli, the main editor of Charlton at the time, sent a notice out to me and a couple of other fanzine editors, soliciting sample comics stories for BLUE BEETLE, SON OF VULCAN, and maybe CAPTAIN ATOM. The idea was that we should plug this search in our fanzines, but (a) I only came out with ALTER EGO once or twice a year at most, so wouldn't have an issue out for a while, and (b) I was selfishly far more interested in selling a story myself than in passing the word. So I just sat around that very weekend, after a week of teaching high school, and I banged out a 20-page story for SON OF VULCAN, partly because he was a Thor imitation and partly because I figured if others sent sample strips they were more likely to send them for the other strips, so I'd have less competition. I guess I was a bit wily--maybe even "rascally"--even then. Masulli bought the story immediately, though I was disappointed to learn I'd be paid only $4 a page. But hey, the $80 for that story compared well with the $100 or so a week I made teaching, and it was done in only a couple of days--and had been fun besides. He asked me to try a BLUE BEETLE, which I did immediately, and he bought that, too. But then I had to go off to NYC for my Superman/DC job, and Mort Weisinger immediately let me know that I could not continue to work for bargain-basement Charlton if I had a job at DC... later, Stan Lee wouldn't have wanted it, either. So I pushed the guy I was staying with at the time, Dave Kaler, who did wind up writing CAPTAIN ATOM with Steve Ditko for a time. By the time the SON OF VULCAN comic came out, one or two MILLIE comics had already come out, so it wasn't my first published work. When Stan read the copy of SON OF VULCAN I had, he said, "It's a good thing I hired you before I read this!" I don't know how much he might've been joking.
Star Wars
Star Wars #1 (1977)
As previously mentioned, Marvel was a mess throughout the mid-1970’s and
during my two years as “associate editor,” from the beginning of 1976
through the end of 1977. Almost every book was late. There were
unscheduled reprints and fill-ins, and we still just plain missed issues
here and there. Many books, despite my best efforts to shore up the
bottom were unreadable. Not merely bad. Unreadable. Almost all were
less than they ought to be.
There were a few exceptions. Roy’s color Conan and B&W Savage Sword. Master of Kung Fu by Moench and Gulacy. Wolfman’s Tomb of Dracula, with Gene Colan and Tom Palmer art. Those were good books. Len’s Fantastic Four, I think, was enjoyable, too. A couple of others, maybe.
A few books had parts that were great and things not so great about them that crippled them.
We can debate the above at length….
However, what can’t be debated is that sales were bad and falling. It was almost all newsstand sales then, by the way. This was before the Direct Market was a significant factor. The comics overall were breakeven at best. Upstairs, the cheesy non-comics magazine department was losing millions. It seemed like the company as a whole was in a death spiral.
Then Roy proposed that we license some upcoming science fiction movie called Star Wars and publish an adaptation.
Jeers and derision ensued—um, not within Roy’s earshot of course. But he was in California.
The Prevailing Wisdom at the time said “science fiction doesn’t sell.” Adapting movie with the hokey title “Star Wars” seemed like folly to most.
By the way, Prevailing Wisdom also decreed:
“Westerns don’t sell”
“Romance doesn’t sell”
“Fantasy doesn’t sell”
“Female characters don’t sell”
And more. You get the drift.
What sold, said the Prevailing Wisdom, were male super heroes and male dominated groups, especially the marquee stars like Spider-Man or the Fantastic Four. Not so much the “third-string” characters like Daredevil. And there had to be lots of action against marquee super villains interlaced with some soap opera. That was about it. That’s what the “kids in Fudge, Nebraska” wanted. Period.
The Great Proponents of Prevailing Wisdom were Marv and Len.
As I said in an earlier post, a bunch of us hung out a lot after work, including them, a few other staffers, freelancers and me, and we talked shop a lot. Hung out doing what? Well, there were after work dinners, poker games, visits to bookstores…. Marv and Len were physically unable to pass any bookstore that wandered into their path. Various geeky activities—for instance, Marv had the entire Prisoner TV series on film and hosted an all-night Prisoner marathon at his place one Friday night. That sort of thing.
Anyway, when the Prevailing Wisdom reared its head, as in Len or Marv saying “Westerns don’t sell” or whatever, I usually said, “Show me a good one.”
That generally sparked jeers, derision and some debate.
One of the counters to my challenge was—and I am not making this up. I cannot write fiction well enough to make this up—“Good doesn’t sell.”
Generally, proof was cited. “Warlock is good, but it doesn’t sell, nothing by McGregor or Gerber sells….” Etc.
My counter was that, while each of those examples had good, even excellent things about them, they also had negatives. Even Warlock, which was sometimes a daunting read. Sorry Jim. It was colored murkily, too dense—too many words, too many panels—convoluted at times AND usually well off the Marvel mainstream. I would have loved to have seen Warlock in a premium format with room to rock and a little more accessible. No, I don’t mean “simplified,” “dumbed down,” homogenized or compromised in any way. I mean accessible. Easier to get into, easier to hop aboard the ride. And, no, I’m not suggesting “more Marvel mainstream.” Not necessary.
Anyway….
There was a lot of opposition to Star Wars. Even Stan wasn’t keen on the idea.
Even I wasn’t. I had no prejudice against science fiction, but wasting time on an adaptation of a movie with a dumb title described as an “outer space western?”
I was told—don’t know for sure—that George Lucas himself came to Marvel’s offices to meet with Stan and help convince him that we should license Star Wars. I was told that Stan kept him waiting for 45 minutes in the reception room. Apocryphal? Maybe. Roy would know. But if so, it still reflects the mood at the time.
(ASIDE: Lucas, by the way, again, as I am told, but I’m pretty sure this is true, was a partner in Supersnipe Comic Book Emporium, a comics shop on the Upper East Side. A clue to his persistent interest in comics and a comics adaptation.)
I don’t know how Roy got it done. I was just the associate editor, and not privy to much of the wrangling that went on. But, Roy got the deal done and we published Star Wars.
The first two issues of our six (?) issue adaptation came out in advance of the movie. Driven by the advance marketing for the movie, sales were very good. Then about the time the third issue shipped, the movie was released. Sales made the jump to hyperspace.
Star Wars the movie stayed in theaters forever, it seemed. Not since the Beatles had I seen a cultural phenomenon of such power. The comics sold and sold and sold. We reprinted the adaptation in every possible format. They all sold and sold and sold.
In the most conservative terms, it is inarguable that the success of the Star Wars comics was a significant factor in Marvel’s survival through a couple of very difficult years, 1977 and 1978. In my mind, the truth is stated in the title of this piece.
--Jim Shooter (7/5/2011)
Swordquest
Tarzan: Lord of the Jungle #1 (1977)
Zula (comic)
Zula the female warrior in the "Conan the Destroyer" (1984) movie was co-created by Gerry Conway and me. And despite all the problems we had with that movie, Gerry and I both had in mind Grace Jones to play the part. We were ecstatic when she got the role.
FAN LETTERS
(IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER)
*
Letter Defending Comics Against Juvenile Delinquency (June 1954)
This was only the third letters page in the series, so I'm proud that I sneaked in there. Later comics artist Alan Weiss had a letter in the very first one, in FF #3. Naturally, as was the case in both the letters I wrote to DC and Marvel, only a part of it was printed. By this time, Stan had long since seen (and commented on to Jerry Bails, mentioning my name) the review I had written of FF #1 that had been printed in Jerry's COMICOLLECTOR #1, out within two or three weeks of when FF #1 had gone on sale at the beginning of August '61. I never wrote nearly as many letters to Marvel as I did to DC, because I was far more likely to get a personal response from Julie than from Stan. But I did write more letters than were printed, of course. Note that no fewer than two future editors of ALTER EGO had letters on that page; Ronn Foss, who would edit and publish issues #5 & 6 in Vol. 1 after Jerry quit doing it, has a letter at the end of the LP. We bookend it, by sheer coincidence.
FF #11 hadn't exactly been one of the most popular of issues, if Stan could judge by the fan and pan mail Marvel got on it... though I don't know if it's sales were necessary down. The readers loved the "Day with the FF," but except for me and perhaps a few others, readers seemed to hate the Impossible Man in the second story. It really had reminded me of a book I'd read a couple of years before, Fredric Brown's MARTIAN GO HOME, in which a whole bunch of little green aliens come to Earth to annoy the populace and they can't find any way to get rid of them. I've no idea, though, if either Stan or Jack read that book... nor I can remember, just this minute, how the Earthmen finally get rid of the Martians. I do know that, because of fan reaction, it was a dozen years--and a lot of persuading on more than one occasion by yours truly--before Stan could be talked into letting the Impossible Man appear a second time. Ironically, because of the offbeat story that George Perez and I did on that occasion, with Impy invading the Marvel offices and interfacing with Stan, Jack, George, myself, John Verpoorten, and Archie Goodwin, that second Impossible Man appearance has been reprinted a number of times, more often than the usual FF issue from that period.
Mego Stretch Hulk editorial interruption: The comic story that Roy is talking about that he did with George Perez is FANTASTIC FOUR #176 (1976). I should also point out that Roy performs one of the greatest heroic acts of his life in that story--saving Stan Lee from getting bonked on the head by Impy! Maybe this was a small form of revenge on Stan, who kept him dormant for so long, but I digress.
Justice League of America #24 (December 1963)
Talk about coincidences! Here's another LP with a letter from me on it--and again it's headed by one from still-fan Dave Cockrum! A couple of other future pros were on hand, as well... the "Jack Harris" is probably the future DC editor, for whom I wrote a story or two when I first signed with DC in 1980... and Wayne Howard, who became an assistant to Wally Wood and later a pro artist on his own.
Blackhawk #211 (August 1965)
*
MISCELLANEOUS
CHARACTERS, CONCEPTS, CREATIONS
AND FAN LETTERS
*
A
Alter Ego (character)
(Ron Lindsay)
Alter Ego (character)
(Ron Lindsay)
Alter Ego #1 (1986)
co-created with Dann Thomas and Ron Harris designed the costume and drew the stories
Alter Ego (magazine)
Alter-Ego (Vol. 1) #1 (1961)
(flip cover of ALTER EGO (Vol. 3) #1)
I was with ALTER-EGO (the name was hyphenated for its first four issues)
from its beginnings, in March of 1961, officially "co-editor" (but
really just a contributor of art and text) to Dr. Jerry G. Bails, who
founded and named
the fanzine. I took it over with issue #7 in 1964, after another
editor/publisher (Ronn Foss) had handled #5-6 after Jerry moved on to
other things. I put together #7-9 before I went pro... #10 in 1969-70
with help from Marvel production manager Sol Brodsky...
and #11, the final issue of vol. 1, came out in 1978, with Mike
Friedrich as editor/publisher and me as a contributor. I revived AE
(Vol. 2) in 1998 as part of the TwoMorrows magazines COMIC BOOK ARTIST,
but after five issues it was decided (by others more
than me) that ALTER EGO should in 1999 become a separate publication
again, as Vol. 3. That one is still going on to this very day.
Alter Ego is a super-hero I created in 1986 when, fresh from my DC
contract, First Comics editor Mike Gold asked me for a (creator-owned)
comic. Working with Dann, I came up with the idea of a boy (Rob
Lindsay, named after a
pen name of Jerry G. Bails, founder of the original ALTER EGO) who puts
on a mask he finds in an old comicbook and is instantly transformed
into a super-hero called Alter Ego--who exists in the world of old
comicbooks. In the original series of four issues,
it was the world of 1940s/World War II comics. Some years later,
working with original artist Ron Harris, we did a special issue in which
Rob and Alter Ego encounter the world of late-40s crime comics. The
hero is also used as one of the two so-called "maskots"
of the current ALTER EGO magazine.
Alter Ego (magazine)
Alter Ego (Vol. 2) #1 (1998)
Alter Ego (Vol. 3) #1 (1999)
American Commando
The Invincibles #1 (1997)
co-created with Rich Buckler
This character was part of a black-&-white "flip book" comic Rich Buckler, and I did together years ago, utilizing characters Rich had basically created and I wrote the dialogue for. I would have contributed more had there been any future issues.
Azoora
Star Wars #7 (1978)
co-created with Howard Chaykin
B
Badman and Robber (Team)
Charlton's GO-GO #3 (1966)
co-created with Gary Friedrich and Bill Dubay
"Badman and Robber" were the names of comicbook super-heroes I thought
my mother was reading to me about at age 4, and I assumed they were
crooks because of those names (and the fact that they wore masks). Soon
I discovered they
were actually Batman and Robin. With my blessing in Charlton's GO-GO
#3 & 4 (Oct. & Dec. 1966), my friend and fellow writer Gary
Friedrich put them as costumed crooks into the "Blooperman" feature he
had taken over at Charlton.
Barx Brothers
(Animated Series)
BeeGees Conquer the Universe
Barx Borthers (1979)
co-created with Dann Thomas and Scott Shaw"The Barx Brothers" was an idea for a comicbook or strip that Roy, Dann, and artist Scott Shaw! came up with in 1979, around the time they were working together on CAPTAIN CARROT AND HIS AMAZING ZOO CREW! It was basically the Marx Brothers as pooches... but they never went any further with it than the concept and this beautiful drawing by Scott. I don't think Dann wanted a credit or she'd have had one on the drawing. Roy had become a Marx Brothers fan when he saw the then-new "Love Happy" on the screen in the late '40s... but he was probably already a Groucho fan from the radio.
(Movie)
Behemoth
(creature species)
Bêlit, Queen of the Black Coast
(first full appearance, adapted and developed for comics in CONAN THE BARBARIAN #58 (1976) with John Buscema)
Bestest League of America (Team)
Adam Stranger**
Aquarium-Man
Aukman*
Cash
Green Trashcan
IPOM (Infinitesimal Particle Of Matter)**
Lean Arrow
S'amm S'mith
Superham**
Wombatman**
Wondrous Woman
Alter-Ego #1 (1961)
I'll take the blame with creating and drawing these parody characters
(Team first appearance)
*Alter-Ego #2 (1961)
Yup, this one too
**Alter-Ego #3 (1961)
And these guys
(creature species)
BeeGees Conquer the Universe (1977)
The "BeeGees Conquer the Universe" is from a movie project Alan Waite and I (and I think Universal asstant director of the "Hulk" movie Tom Blank) were working on, in conjunction with some guy who had ties, supposedly, to the BeeGees just a year or so before "Saturday Night Fever" put them back on the map. My title. The idea was to have the BeeGees in a movie utilizing a bunch of their hits to date, plus maybe some new songs, in a story about an invasion of aliens, with the BeeGees carrying the fight back to the home planet, a la Kree-Skrull War. The poster was done by Rick Hoberg.
(creature species)
Star Wars #9 (1978)
co-created with Howard ChaykinBêlit, Queen of the Black Coast
Giant-Size Conan #1 (1974) (dream and mention)
Robert E. Howard character (first full appearance, adapted and developed for comics in CONAN THE BARBARIAN #58 (1976) with John Buscema)
In Robert E. Howard's Conan tale "Queen of the Black Coast," Bêlit was a
Shemite woman who had become leader of a band of black corsairs,
raiding the coast of the Hyborian Age equivalent of Africa. Conan
became her first mate
and lover, and they sailed together for perhaps three years, before she
was killed by a monstrous flying ape. Her spirit returned just long
enough to help Conan slay the ape. Then he burned her body in a funeral
pyre that floated off the coast, and returned
north. She appeared in most issues of CONAN THE BARBARIAN from #58
through #100, and in occasional retro stories since. It should be noted that Bêlit made her first unofficial comicbook appearance in 1952 in Mexico,
starring in her own series called REINA DE LA COSTA NEGRA (QUEEN OF THE BLACK COAST), written by Loa and Víctor Rodríguez and drawn
by Salvador Lavalle.
Bestest League of America (Team)
 |
Aquarium-Man
Aukman*
Cash
Green Trashcan
IPOM (Infinitesimal Particle Of Matter)**
Lean Arrow
S'amm S'mith
Superham**
Wombatman**
Wondrous Woman
Alter-Ego #1 (1961)
(Team first appearance)
*Alter-Ego #2 (1961)
Yup, this one too
**Alter-Ego #3 (1961)
And these guys
"The Bestest League of America" or BLA was a parody of DC's Justice League of
America that I first made up on my own (both writing and drawing) in
late 1960, and which became a part of the first three issues of
ALTER-EGO in early 1961,
with another story and some solo cartoons over the next year or three.
Again with my blessing, Gary Friedrich brought them into GO-GO #5 &
6 (Feb. & April 1967), having new artist Richard "Grass" Green (a
pop fan-artist and friend of mine) draw them, too,
into the "Blooperman" feature. It was a 3-part parody that first introduced
six members: Green Trashcan, The Cash, Wondrous Woman, Aquariuman, &
S'amm S'mith, and the Martian Manhandler. Aukman,
Wombatman, Superham, Adamn Stranger and IPOM were introduced in the following
issues.
Bestest Society of America (Team)
Black Cannery (or Blank Canary)
Dr. Fat
Dr. Mid-Noon
Hourman? (not sure he got a name)
Johnny Blunder
Mr. Horrific
Sandhog
Spectacle
Starfish
Wilycat
Alter-Ego #1 (1961)
I did all work on these guys
Black Lotus
(adapted and developed for comics with Barry Windsor-Smith)
Bobtail Bantha 
Dr. Fat
Dr. Mid-Noon
Hourman? (not sure he got a name)
Johnny Blunder
Mr. Horrific
Sandhog
Spectacle
Starfish
Wilycat
Alter-Ego #1 (1961)
This was actually my SECOND parody of the JSA, though the first
published. Back in the early 50s, when I fell in love with MAD #4-5 and
the rest, I drew one using just the later-1940s members (no Dr. Fate,
Spectre, Hourman, Starman,
Sandman), but all I remember was that the boss was Mean Lantern, who
functioned much like Boss Hawk in MAD #5's "Black and Blue Hawks,"
lording it over the others. I remember that there was a Wildcat takeoff
instead of a Johnny Thunder or Black Canary (don't
recall the name)... and Hawkman may have been Hogman that time around.
No memory of the rest, and that early-50s artwork hasn't survived as so
many of my other fan-art things have. Somewhere in a closet I still
have my ALL-GIANT COMICS from circa 1948 when
I was 7... two issues of BUCK ZZIT, my copy of Buck Rogers... KING KAT
(half O. Soglow's "Little King" and half the MARMADUKE art style from
Quality's funny-animal comic)... and WIZARDO, ACE SORCERER, inspired by
several things, including Fawcett's PINHEAD
AND FOODINI comic... oh, and pieces of a giant VARIETY COMICS with
Phantom Lady (visually based partly on Black Terror) and Cat-Man aka
Zooman, who was a combination of Batman and Tarzan... coincidentally,
almost identical to the first incarnation of Catman
that Irwin Hasen had drawn in the early 40s and which I never saw till
decades later.
Black Lotus
Conan the Barbarian #4 (1971)
Robert E. Howard flower(adapted and developed for comics with Barry Windsor-Smith)
The Black Lotus was created by Robert E. Howard in "The Slithering Shadow," and is part of the Cthulhu Mythos. The legendary flower has long influenced fiction and fantasy.
(creature species)
Star Wars #7 (1978)
co-created with Howard Chaykin(a variety of a creature from the film)
C
Captain Thunder and Blue Bolt
Captain Thunder and Blue Bolt #1 (1987)
co-created with Dann Thomas and Dell Barras
Captain Thunder and Blue Bolt are a father-and-son super-hero team,
creator-owned by Roy & Dann Thomas, and published in 1987 and since
by Dennis Mallonee's Heroic Publishing. It was perhaps the first
super-hero series to deal
with a generational gap and quarrel between father and son. It was
optioned for a movie in the 1990s by Joe Wizan, producer of "Jeremiah
Johnson" and other films, although no screenplay was ever done. The
option for the film was shared with the publisher
and all artists who had worked to date on the series, including
especially E.R. Cruz and originating artist Dell Barras. From time to
time, Heroic has continued to issue new CT&BB stories written by the
Thomases.
Carmilla
Cloud-Riders (Gang)
Carmilla: Nuestra Senora de los Vampiros #1 (1999)
J. Sheridan Le Fanu character
(adapted and developed for comics with Isaac M. Rivero and Rafael Fonteriz)In 1999, when I was working with the small startup company Dude Comics in Spain on the ANTHEM series, I also adapted J. Sheridan Le Fanu's pre-DRACULA novel CARMILLA, featuring a female vampire... probably the first in literature. The artists were Isaac M. Rivero and Rafael Fonteriz. The adaptation of the novel proper, set in the mid-19th century, was framed by a modern-day sequence in which the undying Carmilla is attacked by several rapacious men. It turns out she's the only one in the group who is undying. The intention was to continue the series with a modern-day-set comicbook, but Dude collapsed soon afterward.
Serji-X Arrogantus (The Arrogant One)
Warto
Unnamed members
Star Wars #8 (1978)
co-created with Howard Chaykin
AJ Colosso
Son of Vulcan #50 (1966)
co-created with Bill Fraccio
Conan
Conan the Barbarian #1 (1970)
Robert E. Howard character
(adapted and developed for comics with Barry Windsor-Smith)
In the late 1960s readers were writing in telling Marvel it should license Conan or some other sword-and-sorcery character from the paperbacks that were then out. I'm not sure Conan was mentioned by name all that often. Finally Stan decided we should do that, and he asked me to write a memo to publisher Martin Goodman spelling out why Marvel should license such a hero. I did that, and Goodman approved the idea, with $150 per issue as the limit. We were first going after Lin Carter's Thongor (Stan liked that name the best, and we figured the most popular hero, Conan, wouldn't be available the small sum we had to offer). But Carter's agent stalled for months, trying to get us to up the offer--and that led me, finally, to drop a line to Glenn Lord, the literary agent for the Robert E. Howard estate, down in Pasadena, Texas, to see about Conan himself. Lord accepted the offer--which I had impulsively upped to $200 an issue--though we had no rights under that contract to adapt any actual stories; we worked that out informally later. I wrote the first issue largely because, if the publisher wanted that extra $50 back--and that's why I wound up writing (as well as basically editing) the first decade of CONAN THE BARBARIAN. As for the look of the character--it was based mostly on that of Starr the Slayer, the character Barry Smith and I had made up for a 7-page story in CHAMBER OF DARKNESS #4 (listed in the Marvel Comics Characters and Creations List Part 2), and Barry in turn based his work on that of Frazetta, far as I know... although the charging-bull helmet was, I believe, his own idea, which we just transferred on to Conan later.
Back in the 1990s, producer Christy Marx arranged for me to write maybe half a dozen episodes of the "Conan the Adventurer" animated TV series. With her permission, I brought in Carla Conway and we worked together on them. We couldn't have our names on the series at that time, for the most part, because for technical reasons the writers had to be French (or Quebec-French, or whatever). Somehow Carla and I got a credit on the episode "The Heart of Rakkir." I don't recall anything about that story and the other stories we did, though, because I mostly had Carla take the lead on them. I was very grateful to Christy... one of the few people I ever helped out in the comics business who later returned the favor. That meant a lot to me.
Around 1997, in conjunction with my then-writing partner Janis Hendler (who had written and produced on TV shows like "Fall Guy" and "Knight Rider," and for whom I had written two teleplays for her and her then-husband's short-lived series "Super Force"), my agent Dan Ostroff got us a writing-and-producing gig with Max and Micheline Keller's series "Conan the Adventurer"--this was the live-action series, not the animated one. It stared Ralf Moller, a German who was an old buddy of Arnold Schwarzenegger's, except that he was taller. As the Wikipedia entry on the series says, it was "loosely based on the fantasy hero Conan the Barbarian." Unfortunately, between budget and other considerations, including I think a fundamental mis-conception of what Conan is and should be, the series wasn't very good (although Moller, I felt, was fine) and lasted just one season. They basically insisted on surrounding Conan with several buddies--maybe one of them was the female warrior called Karella, I forget now--instead of his being the basic loner he should be. Of course, to a great extent that mistake was also made in the second Schwarzenegger Conan film, but maybe that was an inevitability. At least in the first "Conan" film, with all its faults as an REH adaptation, there was only him and Valeria.
On the heels of the success of the SPIDER-MAN daily strip, Marvel soon launched several others with the Register & Tribune Syndicate, including CONAN THE BARBARIAN which I wrote and John Buscema originally drew, beginning in 1978. The strip ran about two years, and I wrote all but part of the last adventure, when Marvel editor-in-chief Jim Shooter refused to let me stay on the strip (despite my making arrangements with DC and Marvel VP Sol Brodsky on behalf of Stan Lee to do so) and put Doug Moench in on the second half. I freely admit, given the circumstances, I breathed a quiet hissed "Yes!" when the syndicate killed the strip at the end of that tale, perhaps using as an excuse the fact that Marvel had pulled my name off the strip and replaced it with the byline "by Marvel Comics." Since Buscema drew only the first story, I worked with other artists over the strip's two-years-plus history, especially Ernie Chan (who had the longest run), but also with Alfredo Alcala and one or two others.
Very soon after the film "Conan the Barbarian" (on which I had been "story consultant") was released to good box office, producer Ed Pressman approached me to write a sequel. Because Gerry Conway and I had by then sold a couple of screenplays, I suggested we be hired as a team, which we were. We worked with a young Australian Ed had hired named Roger Donaldson, who had earlier moved to New Zealand and directed a small movie titled "Smash Palace" that had received good critical notices in the U.S. We first came up with an original synopsis with Thoth-Amon as the villain, but Ed decided he didn't want to do that particular story, so Gerry and I worked with Donaldson and an actor/write colleague of his, mostly in quarters rented by Ed at the famed Chateau Marmont in L.A., on a new storyline, which became the basis of our first-draft screenplay on what was then titled "Conan II" or "Conan, King of Thieves." We had been forbidden to utilize any characters from the first film except Conan himself, although later two of them were carried over by renaming a couple of the characters Gerry and I came up with. For that draft we also created the "black Amazon" we tentatively called Zula, using the name of the male hero I had come up with for the Marvel color comics. It was meant to be just a holding name, but everyone seemed to like it, so Zula it remained.
Merri Shen Doshun
E
Elric of Melniboné
Conan the Barbarian #14 (1972)
Michael Moorcock character
(adapted and developed for comics with Michael Moorcock, James Cawthorn and Barry Windsor-Smith)
F
FE-9Q
(Effie)
Fire and Ice
(Animated Movie)
Warto
Unnamed members
Star Wars #8 (1978)
co-created with Howard Chaykin
Howard Chaykin and I based Serji-X Arrogantus on fellow artist Sergio Aragonés.
AJ Colosso
Son of Vulcan #50 (1966)
co-created with Bill Fraccio
Conan
Robert E. Howard character
(adapted and developed for comics with Barry Windsor-Smith)
In the late 1960s readers were writing in telling Marvel it should license Conan or some other sword-and-sorcery character from the paperbacks that were then out. I'm not sure Conan was mentioned by name all that often. Finally Stan decided we should do that, and he asked me to write a memo to publisher Martin Goodman spelling out why Marvel should license such a hero. I did that, and Goodman approved the idea, with $150 per issue as the limit. We were first going after Lin Carter's Thongor (Stan liked that name the best, and we figured the most popular hero, Conan, wouldn't be available the small sum we had to offer). But Carter's agent stalled for months, trying to get us to up the offer--and that led me, finally, to drop a line to Glenn Lord, the literary agent for the Robert E. Howard estate, down in Pasadena, Texas, to see about Conan himself. Lord accepted the offer--which I had impulsively upped to $200 an issue--though we had no rights under that contract to adapt any actual stories; we worked that out informally later. I wrote the first issue largely because, if the publisher wanted that extra $50 back--and that's why I wound up writing (as well as basically editing) the first decade of CONAN THE BARBARIAN. As for the look of the character--it was based mostly on that of Starr the Slayer, the character Barry Smith and I had made up for a 7-page story in CHAMBER OF DARKNESS #4 (listed in the Marvel Comics Characters and Creations List Part 2), and Barry in turn based his work on that of Frazetta, far as I know... although the charging-bull helmet was, I believe, his own idea, which we just transferred on to Conan later.
Conan the Adventurer
(Animated Series)
Two Seasons with 65 episodes (1992-1993)
Back in the 1990s, producer Christy Marx arranged for me to write maybe half a dozen episodes of the "Conan the Adventurer" animated TV series. With her permission, I brought in Carla Conway and we worked together on them. We couldn't have our names on the series at that time, for the most part, because for technical reasons the writers had to be French (or Quebec-French, or whatever). Somehow Carla and I got a credit on the episode "The Heart of Rakkir." I don't recall anything about that story and the other stories we did, though, because I mostly had Carla take the lead on them. I was very grateful to Christy... one of the few people I ever helped out in the comics business who later returned the favor. That meant a lot to me.
Conan the Adventurer
(Live-Action Series)
One Season with 22 episodes (1997-1998)
Around 1997, in conjunction with my then-writing partner Janis Hendler (who had written and produced on TV shows like "Fall Guy" and "Knight Rider," and for whom I had written two teleplays for her and her then-husband's short-lived series "Super Force"), my agent Dan Ostroff got us a writing-and-producing gig with Max and Micheline Keller's series "Conan the Adventurer"--this was the live-action series, not the animated one. It stared Ralf Moller, a German who was an old buddy of Arnold Schwarzenegger's, except that he was taller. As the Wikipedia entry on the series says, it was "loosely based on the fantasy hero Conan the Barbarian." Unfortunately, between budget and other considerations, including I think a fundamental mis-conception of what Conan is and should be, the series wasn't very good (although Moller, I felt, was fine) and lasted just one season. They basically insisted on surrounding Conan with several buddies--maybe one of them was the female warrior called Karella, I forget now--instead of his being the basic loner he should be. Of course, to a great extent that mistake was also made in the second Schwarzenegger Conan film, but maybe that was an inevitability. At least in the first "Conan" film, with all its faults as an REH adaptation, there was only him and Valeria.
For some reason, although Janis and I worked on two or three episodes before we were cut loose, for reasons never explained. I know that we contributed a bit to the first episode or so, which I believe adapted (in part) "Tower of the Elephant," but I don't recall that much of the experience beyond the fact that, when faced with coming up with something new for an early episode, Janis and I worked on a teleplay adapting "Lair of the Beast-Men," which had been an original story I'd written for CONAN THE BARBARIAN #2. But, although I had written several screenplays, including two that had been filmed in one fashion or another, and Janis had extensive credits in TV (we had previously co-written the first draft of the "Beware the Greeks Bearing Gifts" episode of "Xena, Warrior Princess"), others were credited with the final screenplay. But of course, movies and TV have set up a very competitive system re screenwriting, in which, for a second writer or pair of writers to receive credit, they have to really do a lot of rewriting, which means that they have a strong vested interest in declaring all of the first writers' dialogue (as well as as much of the plotting as they can get away with) to be unusable, and to throw away "good" lines as well as "bad," to make it difficult for the original writers, in Writers Guild compulsory arbitration, to claim that any of what is up there on the screen is actually theirs. (That's why agent Ostroff, as the lights came up from our viewing a screening of "Conan the Destroyer" circa 1983, remarked, "You know, if you watch this movie with the sounds turned off... it's your picture." Which was only a partial exaggeration.)
While I had nothing to do with that episode, one later introduced Red Sonja. This was because of Conan Properties lawyer/co-founder Arthur Lieberman, who had previously pushed Universal to turn its long-running live-action show at its theme park into "The Conan and Red Sonja Show," at a time when she hadn't yet appeared in anything but comics. Arthur always wanted to build up Red Sonja... which made sense, since at one point he walked away from the REH properties, giving up all interest in the straight REH characters in terms of future use, but retaining Red Sonja as a separate entity.
Besides contributions to those first two or three episodes, I believe Janis and I also submitted very short suggestions for several more, but I doubt if any of them were used. I have pleasant memories of a big party at the Kellers' mansion up in the Hollywood Hills or something, and sitting at the sofa with Janis and looking up, and up, and seeing Ralf Moller towering over us, a genial smile on his face. His German accent reminded me of Arnold's, of course... but I think that was the idea, in the Kellers' mind. Unfortunately, Hollywood mansion or no, schlock is schlock, and the cheesy production values (along with the mis-conception) probably doomed the series from the start. Still, even if Janis and I were reasonably ill-treated by the Kellers (not, it seems, a unique phenomenon), I maintain an affection for "Conan the Adventurer," if only for what Ralf Moller and some better producers could have made of it.
Conan the Barbarian
(Newspaper Strip)
Register & Tribune Syndicate strip (1978-1981)
On the heels of the success of the SPIDER-MAN daily strip, Marvel soon launched several others with the Register & Tribune Syndicate, including CONAN THE BARBARIAN which I wrote and John Buscema originally drew, beginning in 1978. The strip ran about two years, and I wrote all but part of the last adventure, when Marvel editor-in-chief Jim Shooter refused to let me stay on the strip (despite my making arrangements with DC and Marvel VP Sol Brodsky on behalf of Stan Lee to do so) and put Doug Moench in on the second half. I freely admit, given the circumstances, I breathed a quiet hissed "Yes!" when the syndicate killed the strip at the end of that tale, perhaps using as an excuse the fact that Marvel had pulled my name off the strip and replaced it with the byline "by Marvel Comics." Since Buscema drew only the first story, I worked with other artists over the strip's two-years-plus history, especially Ernie Chan (who had the longest run), but also with Alfredo Alcala and one or two others.
Conan the Destroyer
(Movie)
Conan the Destroyer (1984)
Very soon after the film "Conan the Barbarian" (on which I had been "story consultant") was released to good box office, producer Ed Pressman approached me to write a sequel. Because Gerry Conway and I had by then sold a couple of screenplays, I suggested we be hired as a team, which we were. We worked with a young Australian Ed had hired named Roger Donaldson, who had earlier moved to New Zealand and directed a small movie titled "Smash Palace" that had received good critical notices in the U.S. We first came up with an original synopsis with Thoth-Amon as the villain, but Ed decided he didn't want to do that particular story, so Gerry and I worked with Donaldson and an actor/write colleague of his, mostly in quarters rented by Ed at the famed Chateau Marmont in L.A., on a new storyline, which became the basis of our first-draft screenplay on what was then titled "Conan II" or "Conan, King of Thieves." We had been forbidden to utilize any characters from the first film except Conan himself, although later two of them were carried over by renaming a couple of the characters Gerry and I came up with. For that draft we also created the "black Amazon" we tentatively called Zula, using the name of the male hero I had come up with for the Marvel color comics. It was meant to be just a holding name, but everyone seemed to like it, so Zula it remained.
Somewhere in there, early on, Barry Windsor-Smith was hired to do a number of conceptual illustrations for the film. Later, against Gerry's and my advice, Barry's services were dispensed with, though we did utilize one element he had suggested in his illos... a fighting between good and evil gods to start off the movie. That became Dagoth and whoever. (Crom? Mitra? I forget.)
Unfortunately, just after we submitted our first draft, Italian producer Dino DeLaurentiis, who had had a role on the first film and had basically taken over the second one, met with Donaldson concerning our script--and decided that he would rather put Roger to work right away on his "Bounty" remake of the old "Mutiny on the Bounty" films. Another director was "in place" for a little while... William Dear, who had directed ex-Monkeey Michael Nesmith in "Elephant Parts." We did a "revised first draft," which really ought to be called the second draft if labeling was more honest. We went on, either under Dear or with no director firmly "in place," to do three more drafts, each time, we felt, at Dino's direction, getting further and further from what we felt Conan and the movie ought to be. Just before the fifth and final draft (or was it the sixth... I'd have to check), Richard Fleischer was hired as director, mostly on the strength, it seems, of the 1958 movie "The Viking" (which, oddly for one of my youthful inclinations, I don't believe I've ever seen). I had admired Fleischer work on the Disney movie "20,000 Leagues under the Sea" and, to some extent, his direction of the American half of "Tora, Tora, Tora." However, Fleischer made it clear to us in our first (and just about only) meeting with him that he was just doing it for the money this late in his career... and he went on, I think, to basically prove his words. While we didn't have permission to do so in that upcoming draft, Gerry and I wanted to add in a sequence from my original story for CONAN THE BARBARIAN #115, my last color CONAN the first time around, in which Conan makes a deal with a sorcerer to acquire a talisman for him in exchange for his bringing Belit (in the movie, of course, it would be Valeria) back to life. Fleischer was interested, so I loaned him my spare copy of CTB. Naturally, I never got it back. I virtually never got anything back that I ever "loaned" to a producer or director in Hollywood.
After that final draft, Gerry and I were relieved of duties on the picture--but well enough paid for our services--not just a Fleischer decision, I hasten to add. Fleischer did incorporate our "resurrection of Valeria" idea in the next draft, which was by (English?) movie veteran screenwriter Stanley Mann, who had written such beloved films as "The Mouse That Roared." Gerry and I had to fight, through the Writers Guild West, to receive any credit whatever on the film; Dino tried to remove our names entirely and give the full credit to Mann, even though virtually all the characters and situations were ours... including, indirectly, the "resurrection of Valeria," even though we had never had the chance to put that in the screenplay. Just about the only important scene in the film that was totally Mann's and Fleischer's--and I'll admit that I think was the best thing about the film--was the way Zula was introduced, tethered by an angry village and fighting for her life. A truly inspired scene.
But of course, Gerry and I had not only created Zula but had basically cast her. As I've related in more detail elsewhere, Gerry Conway had come up with the idea of suggesting singer Grace Jones for the part (unfamiliar with her, my own choice was Pam Grier, who would also have been good, I'm sure)... and we made that suggestion directly to Jane Feinberg, of the then-big casting company of Fenton & Feinberg, at a meeting of the three of us and producer Dino at Dino's private cabana on the grounds of the Beverly Hills Hotel, in between having to sit through unendurable sessions of Dino watching soccer on TV. We--actually, Gerry started the ball rolling, and I merely chimed in--did so directly to Feinberg in despair. Gerry and I had been asked, at this late stage of our still being "on the movie," while working on what would become our final draft, because Dino wanted to start casting the parts well before he had a final script. (As it would turn out, he was still our draft and three or more Mann-drafts away from that point.) Gerry and I mostly just sat across the table from each other, while Dino and Feinberg talked across the table from our left and right. But when it came to Zula, and Dino suddenly announced casually that with her "I was thinking I might go Asian" (in terms of casting) with her, it was too much for Gerry. He turned to Feinberg and said, "Actually, Roy and I were thinking of someone like Grace Jones for the part." Dino was, I'm sure, taken aback... we were there simply advise and consent, not offer an alternative to a way he wanted to go... but Feinberg sparked to the idea at once, said that sounded great to her, and she'd have to talk to Jones' people to see if she could act. (She'd never had an acting role before, far as we knew.) Dino seems to have accepted this, and very soon... not long after Gerry and I were bounced from the picture... we heard that Jones had been hired. She and Arnold were the best things about the movie that was soon retitled "Conan the Destroyer." Good title...I had never cared much for "Conan, King of Thieves" anyway.
When we found out that Dino as producer planned to give full writing credit to Stanley Mann, we resorted to Writers Guild West, which makes the final determination on credits in all dispute cases. Gerry and I spent days going over our five or so drafts, and the several by Mann, and making our cast for why we should get--not shared credit with Mann, but sole credit, since we had created the characters and situations, and that counts for a fair amount with the Guild. Otherwise, a new writer would just come in, keep the same basic characters (probably with new names) and rewrite all the dialogue, tossing away good lines and bad, just to shore up his/her own position. We figured, if we're gonna dispute, let's go for broke. The Guild, probably correctly, awarded Mann the "written by" credit... but gave us "story" credit...and that carried with it what they call a "full screen credit"... in other words, our two names and credit were alone on the screen for a couple of seconds, not simply shared with Mann's. The Guild's decision was final. It meant that we would receive thousands of dollars from videotape and other reissuing of the film on tape (later on DVD, etc.). There was lots more at stake than just the ego of seeing our names up on the screen a second time (after Bakshi's/20th's "Fire and Ice").
Postscript: By time the Guild made its decision, apparently the film had already been finalized in a way that it would cost Dino and Universal (probably mostly Dino) a lot of money to change, to add in a new "title card" with credit "Story by Roy Thomas & Gerry Conway." So Dino's rep called us and offered us decent money-- I forget if it was $10,000 apiece or $10,000 divided between the two of us, but something in that range) if we would forego having the title card in the film. We would, of course, still receive the videotape and future moneys just as the Guild had decreed, but we would save Dino a larger sum of money. Gerry and I thought about it for all of two seconds before laughing out loud over the phone and telling Dino's man to go ahead and add the title card. I never turned down that much money with a smile at any other time.
We felt good later when, at a party at Dino's Beverly Hills fast-food restaurant (which would later be closed when rats were found in the kitchen--ironic, since Dino had taken out a scene with a rat in our screenplay, declaring "No rats!"), Arnold Schwarzengger, whom I had met briefly not long before the first "Conan" movie started filming and whom Gerry had never met, came up to us-- he recognized me, I guess--and after a few words said, "I always liked your script the best!" Funny thing is, while I didn't think at that moment that he probably meant it, I realized later that he was probably telling the truth, since he apparently had been a little reluctant to sign on to the sequel, since the budget was less than the first one, etc., etc... and it was after reading our first draft that he finally signed on for sure. Bless his heart! Hope we see a "King Conan" movie with Arnold one of these days!
Lisa Conners
Son of Vulcan #50 (1966)
co-created with Bill Fraccio
Crimson Claw
Alter Ego #1 (1986)
co-created with Dann Thomas and Ron Harris
(an homage to the Golden Age character "The Claw," first appeared in SILVER STREAK COMICS #1 (1939) created by Jack Cole)
(an homage to the Golden Age character "The Claw," first appeared in SILVER STREAK COMICS #1 (1939) created by Jack Cole)
Crimson Jack's Pirate Gang
Crimson Jack
Jolli
Unnamed members
Star Wars #7 (1978)
co-created with Howard Chaykin
(adapted and developed for comics in KING CONAN #8 (1981) with John Buscema)
Jolli
Unnamed members
Star Wars #7 (1978)
co-created with Howard Chaykin
Crom
Conan the Barbarian #7 (1971) (first mentioned)
Robert E. Howard character/god(adapted and developed for comics in KING CONAN #8 (1981) with John Buscema)
Crom first appeared as an onstage character in the novel CONAN THE AVENGER (1968) by L. Sprague de Camp and Bjorn Nyberg.
Cyborg (unnamed)
D
Hugo Danner
Marvel Preview #9 (1976)
Philip G. Wylie character
(adapted and developed for Marvel Comics with Rich Buckler)
(mentioned in SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN #10 (2019))
Jimm Doshun
(The Starkiller Kid)
Star Wars #7 (1978)
co-created with Howard ChaykinD
Hugo Danner
Philip G. Wylie character
(adapted and developed for Marvel Comics with Rich Buckler)
Hugo Danner is the protagonist of Philip Wylie's circa-1930 novel
Gladiator, and was in many ways probably an influence of Siegel
and Shuster's Superman. So I arranged to adapt the novel in Marvel's
black-&-white magazines. The first half was adapted by Rich Buckler
and myself in MARVEL PREVIEW #9, but the second
half was never prepared. It appeared under the title "Man-God" because
Marvel had a villain named Gladiator.
Young All-Stars #10 (1988)
(adapted and developed for DC Comics with Dann Thomas and Brian Murray)
A few years later, at DC Comics, I made
Arn "Iron" Munro of THE YOUNG ALL-STARS the son of Hugo Danner and a
young woman from the novel. Near the end of that series, I brought an
older Hugo Danner into YAS for its final few issues.
There I developed what might have happened to Danner if he had not been
struck and killed by lightning in South America at the end of the
novel.
Dark Crystal
Savage Sword of Conan #11 (2019)
co-created with Alan Davis(mentioned in SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN #10 (2019))
Jimm Doshun
(The Starkiller Kid)
Star Wars #8 (1978)
co-created with Howard ChaykinI called this character "the Star-Killer Kid" because one of the two original names I heard from George Lucas (back in '76) for Luke Skywalker was "Luke Starkiller."
Merri Shen Doshun
Star Wars #9 (1978)
co-created with Howard ChaykinE
Elric of Melniboné
Michael Moorcock character
(adapted and developed for comics with Michael Moorcock, James Cawthorn and Barry Windsor-Smith)
For CONAN THE BARBARIAN #14-15, I invited Michael Moorcock, creator and
author of Elric, to come up with a synopsis in which Elric traveled to
the Hyborian Age, Conan's sphere. He concocted a 2- or 3-page synopsis,
at least,
with his friend and sometime collaborator, James Cawthorn. I simplified
it a little (taking out a character or two and another subplot) and was
quite happy with the resulting story.
F
(Effie)
Star Wars #8 (1978)
co-created with Howard ChaykinFire and Ice
(Animated Movie)
Fire and Ice (1983)
all characters co-created with Ralph Bakshi, Frank Frazetta and Gerry Conway
"Fire and Ice" was an animated film for which Gerry Conway and I wrote
the screenplay in the early 1980s, for producer/director Ralph Bakshi
(and, less directly, for co-producer Frank Frazetta). It was an
original sword-and-sorcery
story, which started with a few verbal scenes described to us by
Bakshi, with Gerry and I instructed to tie it all together and come up
with a story. The heroes are Larn and Darkwolf (who, however,
accidentally never got named in the film till the credits
at the end), the heroine Teegra, the villain Nekron (I believe that's
how we spelled it--I'd used that name in DR. STRANGE years earlier). It
was written as a live-action screenplay, because it was shot in
rotoscope, with animators basically tracing over the
filmed figures of live actors. The stated attempt, at the beginning,
was to make the movie as close as possible to an animated version of
what Frazetta was doing in his oil paintings and drawings for Conan and
related paperbacks. It was eventually distributed
by 20th Century-Fox, but was a flop; it has since, they tell me, become
a cult film. I find it difficult to watch, because Gerry and I, as we
had told Ralph we would have to do, wrote about a 120-minute
screenplay, which he cut down to 78 minutes in filming,
meaning that most of the relationships between characters was lost.
Gee, I don't know why it was a failure. Interesting working for/with
Bakshi, though... he was a fascinating character, sort of like Archie
Bunker with talent.
First comicbooks I created
I started making my own comicbooks circa 1947
The first comicbook I drew, at age 7 or
perhaps 8, was the 50- or 52-page ALL-GIANT COMICS, drawn on some sort
of strange, rough paper with binder holes, tied with string at two
places. It was an anthology comics made up up characters who were all
giants in one way or another: Elephant Giant (a size-changing hero who
appeared in the first and last stories in the issue), Goliath (a
good-guy based on a Toth-drawn time villain in ALL-STAR COMICS #38,
which is how I can date the comic more exactly), Giant Caveman (wore a
leopard skin with a strap over one shoulder, and a Mercury/Flash winged
helmet... had a girl assistant with similar outfit, I think), a King
O'Mighty (a sort of knight), maybe one or two more. Filed away
somewhere, still tied with string, is all but the final page (2 sides,
front and back), which is lost. Very, very crude, of course.
Over
the next few years I drew more comics: a Superman based on the look of
Kirk Allyn in the first Superman serial... two big issues of BUCK ZZIT,
my Buck Rogers-style spaceman... KING KAT AND PRINCE PURR (a
funny-animal comics drawn in two different styles, one a straight
imitation of O. Soglow's "Little King," the other a more
animation-style, based on comics style like Quality's MARMADUKE
MOUSE.... WIZARDO, ACE SORCERER... a humor comic about a sorcerer and
his stupid apprentice, inspired by the Fawcett TV-comic PINHEAD AND
FOODINI... PHANTOM-MAN, a Black Terror type in a supernatural
dimension... a giant comic (forget the name) that had stories of
Phantom-Man, Cat-Man (aka Zooman), who was a combination of Tarzan and
Batman, and several others... and, around the age or 12 or so,
ALL-AMERICAN COMICS, another 40- or 50-pager, one JSA-type story with
various heroes of the Liberty Legion, including Phantom-Man, Cat-Man,
Sir Ollie (humorous relief--half Alley Oop, half Sir Oakey Doakes),
Tornado (a deadringer for the original Atom), Green Lantern (G.A.
version, just swiped), Acrobat (a Batman type minus cape), Black Beetle,
and several others. Maybe the last real comic I drew, circa 1955 when I
was 14 or so, was MARVEL COMICS, with a second Liberty Legion group,
consisting of still-extant heroes from various companies: Superman,
Batman, and Wonder Woman from DC... Sub-Mariner from Timely (HT and Cap
had already been canceled again)... Plastic Man and Blackhawk...
C.B./Chuck Chandler and Slugger of the Little Wise Guys from
Gleason/Biro. I didn't finish the middle part of this, but what's
finished I colored. The splashes of the latter two comics were printed
in one of the ALL-STAR COMPANION volumes.
Flea
Alter Ego #6 (1963)
I did all the work on this guy
Parody of Archie's hero The Fly. Also mention of Archie-group parodies The Cougar, Black Hoodlum, Flea Girl, and The Windshield. Yeah, I know "Windshield" isn't that great a name to parody The Shield... but with the hero onstage being The Fly, I found it impossible to resist.
Amaiza Foxtrain
Star Wars #8 (1978)
co-created with Howard Chaykin
I particularly liked creating Amaiza with Howard, mainly because she was named after a character in an early-1950s comic strip I had liked and collected, "Chris Welkin, Planeteer."
G
G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero
(Animated Series)
Two Seasons with 95 episodes (1983-1986)
Dann and I did only one episode in the first season of G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero ("Cobra Claws are Coming to Town" episode 49 which premiered in November of 1985). We did the story, but I decided I just didn't want to work on the script, having no use for "G.I. Joe" as a concept. So we got it turned over to Gerry and Carla Conway. Not sure who was in charge of the show, either.
Gullivar Jones
(Warrior of Mars)
Creatures on the Loose #16 (1972)
Edwin L. Arnold character(adapted and developed for comics with Gil Kane and Bill Everett)
Gulliver Jones was the hero of the early-20th-century novel LT. GULLIVER
JONES: HIS VACATION by Edwin Lester Arnold, several years before Edgar
Rice Burroughs wrote A PRINCESS OF MARS. Richard Lupoff, in an
introduction to a
1960s paperback reprint of the book (as GULLIVER OF MARS), postulated
that the novel may well have been an influence on ERB, so when DC got
the rights to John Carter in the early 1970s, I assigned Gil Kane to the
penciling and did a more action-packed adaptation
of the GULLIVER book, I believe changing the spelling to "Gullivar." I
named a magic carpet maker in the first segment "Lupov" in honor of
Lupoff. I wrote the first couple of stories to get it going, but was
too busy to continue it after that and it was
turned over to others.
H
Hedji
Star Wars #8 (1978)
co-created with Howard Chaykin
High-Hound
(creature species)
Star Wars #9 (1978)
co-created with Howard Chaykin
Robert E. Howard
(based on the creator of Conan)
I
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High-Hound
(creature species)
Robert E. Howard
Savage Sword of Conan #200 (1992)
co-created with John Buscema(based on the creator of Conan)
I
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J
Jabba the Hut
Star Wars #2 (1978)
George Lucas character
(adapted and co-created for comics with Howard Chaykin)As everyone familiar with Marvel's 1977 STAR WARS comic knows, it contains four-color versions of several scenes that were either never filmed or else were cut from the finish movie before it was released. A couple of those occurred in the first issue and involved Luke Skywalker's home life (and friends) on Tattoine. But there was also a scene in the original screenplay that featured Jabba the Hutt, who at that point had not been designed or described... so when Howard Chaykin illustrated that, he just made up a more or less generic alien to fill the space. No one (including probably George Lucas) really knew at that stage what Jabba was supposed to look like. George had no idea if there'd be a second "Star Wars" film, let alone a third one!
Star Wars #8 (1978)
co-created with Howard ChaykinJaxxon the green rabbit was a character I decided to introduce in the STAR WARS comic, beginning in issue #8. The main storyline, approved in broad outline in a conference I had with George Lucas, was a sort of "Seven Samurai"/"Magnificent Seven" arc, though I didn't make up the individual characters who would team up with Han Solo and Chewbacca still later. I seem to recall seeing, in the rough cut of "Star Wars" that I'd seen at George's place in San Anselmo in February ('77), a few months before the film opened, an alien in the "cantina sequence" that looked a bit like Porky Pig to me... though, when seen closer in later stills, there was far less resemblance. That was my basic inspiration for putting a character who combined Bugs Bunny and C.L. Moore's pulp-mag hero Northwest Smith into the STAR WARS comic. Howard Chaykin did a magnificent job of realizing the character, and thus is in every way Jaxxon's co-creator. I named the character after a combination of "jack rabbit" and my hometown of Jackson, Missouri. I was told later by George's then-right-hand-man Charley Lippincott, by phone, that George felt the storyline was TOO close to "Seven Samurai," and that he particularly hated the green rabbit. Those were the final straws, on top of the growing list of restrictions on what I could and couldn't do in the comics series and my sense that I wasn't going to have any more fun writing it, that led me to immediately quit the series, effective with issue #10. Others--both fans and pros--liked Jaxxon, however, and my writing successor Archie Goodwin, who clearly didn't get the memo, used him in a story a few issues later... only to be told by the great Star Wars organization that Jaxxon was never again to appear in a comic. That edict last for years, of course.
K
Savage Sword of Conan #11 (2019)
co-created with Alan DavisDon-Wan Kihotay
Star Wars #8 (1978)
co-created with Howard Chaykin
Adam Klink
Son of Vulcan #50 (1966)
co-created with Bill Fraccio
King Kull
Conan the Barbarian #1 (1970)
Robert E. Howard character(adapted and developed for comics with Barry Windsor-Smith)
KING KULL was, of course, an earlier sword-and-sorcery hero of Robert E.
Howard's than Conan. Kull appeared in print circa 1929, Conan three
years later. I worked Kull (in a "flashback" into CONAN THE BARBARIAN
#1, because it
was from the start my intention to develop a KULL book if CONAN took
off. The first Kull story in Marvel was "Skull of Silence," adapted by
Bernie Wrightson and myself in an issue of TOWER OF SHADOWS. Then came
the book KULL THE CONQUEROR (originally drawn
by Ross Andru and Wally Wood, but then for some time by Marie and John
Severin), later re-dubbed by Stan Lee KULL THE DESTROYER, though I didn't
write that much of it. I did the first few issues, and then returned
later to jump-start the series again with the
adaptation of "By This Axe I Rule" by Mike Ploog and myself, after
which I turned the book over to other hands for good. I did adapt a few
Kull stories in the b&w SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN, though, and I talked
Stan into starting a b&w magazine KULL AND THE BARBARIANS
to co-star the likes of King Kull, Red Sonja, and Solomon Kane... but
that one got off to a bad start (with #1 being a reprint, due to bad
scheduling) and it lasted only a couple of issues, though there was a
special a couple of years later.
King's Gambit (Team)
Bishop (Bishop Nevsky)
King (Ilyan)
Knight (Sly Maki)
Queen (Sonya)
Rook (Timbluk)
Captain Thunder and Blue Bolt #8 (1988)
King (Ilyan)
Knight (Sly Maki)
Queen (Sonya)
Rook (Timbluk)
Captain Thunder and Blue Bolt #8 (1988)
co-created with Dann Thomas and E.R. Cruz
King's Gambit - a group of several hero/villains, representing the King,
Queen, Bishop, Knight, and Rook in a chess game, introduced into the
late-1980s comics series CAPTAIN THUNDER & BLUE BOLT. The "pawns"
were to be criminals
or others utilized to be fall guys or minions of the group. The
originating artist was E.R.Cruz. I had come up with such a group as a
possible TV project in the early/mid-1980s, when working with co-writer
Gerry Conway, but the comics group was, except for
name and general concept, an entirely new one.
L
Lady Serra
Savage Sword of Conan #10 (2019)
co-created with Alan Davis
(character named after my grand-niece Serra)
(character named after my grand-niece Serra)
Les Ghouls (Movie)
Fan Film (1958)
Les Ghouls is a 12½-minute, mostly black-&-white film made circa 1958 by a group of six teenagers in Jackson, Missouri, including Roy Thomas and Gary Friedrich, who went on in the 1960s to become writers and editors at Marvel Comics. It was intended as an homage to/ripoff of the 1948 movie classic Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, just filmed for a lark. It was filmed largely in black-&-white despite the relative difficulty of obtaining that kind of film even then. John Short, who owned the (new) movie camera, served as primary director; Roy Thomas scripted the movie (in synopsis form) and supplied all art and lettering appearing in the film. There were vague plans to eventually either record a soundtrack or to at least have the cast members accompany showings by narration and dialogue, but those plans never materialized.
CAST:
Slim--------------------------------------------------- Gary Friedrich
Slat ---------------------------------------------------- Ron Lowes
Dr. Sturdley ------------------------------------------ Andy Leonard
Melvin ------------------------------------------------ Lyle Hutteger
The Monster ------------------------------------------ John Short
Werewolf ---------------------------------------------- Roy Thomas
Limbo Legion (Team)
Air Boy*
Captain Combat**
Double Dare***
Holy Terror****
Scarlet Streak*****
Vic Volt******
Yankee Doodle*******
Alter Ego #1 (1986)
public domain characters
co-created with Dann Thomas and Ron
Harris
*rechristened character named "Sky Man," first appeared in BIG SHOT COMICS #1 (1940) created by Gardner Fox and Ogden Whitney
**rechristened character named
"Captain Battle," first appeared in SILVER STREAK COMICS #11 (1941) created by
Jack Binder and Carl Formes
***rechristened character named "Daredevil," first appeared in SILVER STREAK COMICS #4 (1940) created by Jack Binder and Jack Cole
****rechristened character named "Black Terror," first appeared in EXCITING COMICS #9 (1941) created by Richard E. Hughes and Don Gabrielson
*****rechristened character
named "Silver Streak," first appeared in SILVER STREAK COMICS #3 (1940) created
by Joe Simon and Jack Binder
******rechristened character
named "Blue Bolt," first appeared in BLUE BOLT COMICS #2 (1940) created by Joe
Simon
*******rechristened character named "Fighting Yank," first appeared in STARTLING COMICS #10 (1941) created by Richard E. Hughes and Jon L. Blummer
The Limbo Legion is the super-hero group I put together in the
WWII/1940s world of comics into which Alter Ego existed. It was
composed of heroes who, except in name, were identical to public domain
comics super-heroes.
Locru's Bartender
Star Wars #7 (1978)
co-created with Howard Chaykin
Lord Ruthven
(adapted and developed for comics with Ron Goulart and Win Mortimer)
Lord Ruthven
Vampire Tales #1 (1973)
John William Polidori character(adapted and developed for comics with Ron Goulart and Win Mortimer)
Lord Ruthven was one of the first vampires in English literature, from the story "The Vampyre" by John Polidori (published 1819), personal physician to the poet Lord Byron. "The Vampyre" came out of the same four-person conversation as Mary Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN, a year earlier. I had the story adapted (with help from Ron Goulart, I believe) and drawn by Winslow Mortimer, and it appeared in the first issue of VAMPIRE TALES. I never got around to bringing Lord Ruthven into other Marvel stories, since I wrote very few monster-hero tales... but I believe other people did.
Men of the Shadows
Robert E. Howard's Myth Maker (1999)
Robert E. Howard characters
(adapted and developed for comics with Richard Ashford, John Bolton, Rich Corben, Tim Sale, Kelley Jones, Rafael Kayanan, Jeff Jones, Mark Shultz and Michael Kaluta)
That's the name editor/publisher Richard Ashford and I came up for a very loosely amalgamated group of Robert E. Howard-created characters in 1999 for the Cross Plains Comics title Robert E. Howard's Myth Maker. The concept was for these relatively minor REH creations to encounter each other in some mysterious world or dimension to which they are all drawn, by whom or for what purpose they know not, and where they relate stories to each other while waiting to figure out what else may be in store for them. This gave us an excuse to adapt REH stories with artwork by Rich Corben, Tim Sale, and Kelley Jones, as well as a few others as inkers, colorists, and letterers. It became the only time I worked with the three aforenamed artists, so I'm glad it happened.
The REH characters in this quasi-grouping were John Kirowan (hero of one of REH's stories), James Allison (a stand-in for REH himself in several of his "racial-memories" stories such as "Marchers of Valhalla"), the Mad Minstrel (title character and narrator of an REH poem), and the Moon Woman (ditto). The presence of the latter did not dissuade us from calling the group informally "Men of the Shadows"--sort of like the X-Men with its contingent of female mutants.
N
Niord
Supernatural Thrillers #3 (1973)
Robert E. Howard character
(adapted and developed for comics with Gerry Conway and Gil Kane)
"The Valley of the Worm" is considered one of Robert E. Howard's best
stories, though it doesn't star a continuing character. It is about a
warrior named Nior in a far-distant era of the past, and his battle with a gigantic
wormlike monstrosity,
and was written by REH as if it were the prototype of all the dragon
stories (St. George, Beowulf, Siegfried, et al.). Gil Kane loved the
story, so I got him to pencil it, and Ernie Chan to ink. After it was
penciled, however, I was going through a bit too
much turmoil in my personal life at that stage to take the time to
write the dialogue for the second half, so I asked Gerry Conway to do
that. It appeared in an issue of SUPERNATURAL THRILLERS, and has been
reprinted a time or three, including in a 2019 TRUE
BELIEVERS $1 comic.
Old One
Star Wars #9 (1978)
co-created with Howard ChaykinP
Pakim
Savage Sword of Conan #10 (2019)
co-created with Alan Davis
Pera
(second appearance with a different look)
Star Wars #7 (1978)
co-created with Howard Chaykin
Pig-face and Boyfriend
Q
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R
Ramiz and othersPig-face and Boyfriend
Star Wars #8 (1978)
co-created with Howard ChaykinQ
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R
Star Wars #7 (1978)
co-created with Howard Chaykin
Star Wars #8 (1978)
co-created with Howard Chaykin(second appearance with a different look)
These characters looked completely different from the last panel in STAR WARS #7 to the opening splash panel in STAR WARS #8 because Howard and I simply forgot what they looked like. Readers have tried to speculate what happened between issues and looked deep into it to find reasons. But to be honest, it was just a simple mistake.
Red Sonja
Conan the Barbarian #23 (1973)
co-created with Robert E. Howard and Barry Windsor-Smith
Circa 1972-73 I decided I wanted a red-haired swordwoman in the comic who would be a sometime foil for Conan... red-haired because Belit had black hair and Valeria was a blonde. When I saw a reference in an article by one Alan Howard to a "Russian she-cat" or some such thing in the Crusader-type story "Shadow of the Vulture" by Robert E. Howard, I was intrigued and asked Glenn Lord if he had a copy of that story from the 1930s, which he did. We worked out a deal so that I could have it adapted in CONAN THE BARBARIAN, and of course the estate would own the character. I simply changed the name from Red Sonya to Red Sonja to make her a slightly difference character... and retain the integrity of the original. Barry designed the look of the character, though we may have talked over the chain-mail shirt... but since I never liked the "hot pants" shorts look, I was ripe to change to the "iron bikini" when Esteban Maroto sent in his drawing of same some months later... or did it first appear in Steranko's magazine? So Howard created Red Sonya of Rogatino... and he and I, in what L. Sprague de Camp used to call a "posthumous collaboration," co-created Red Sonja, She-Devil with a Sword. That's not to take anything away from Barry, who first drew the character, but he knew nothing about Red Sonya till I gave him a copy of the story and I explained that we were gonna turn it into a CONAN THE BARBARIAN issue/story.
Red Sonja
(Movie)
Red Sonja (1985)
Far as I know, the Red Sonja rights got split off from the rest of the Robert E. Howard legacy and properties when Arthur Lieberman, one of the co-founders of Conan Properties, Inc., took RS as his share in a split (maybe when the company was purchased by the current Swedish owners or thereabouts). He told me he decided he'd rather have all of one property than a small piece of all of them. Arthur passed away maybe a decade ago now, and his son Luke Lieberman, an attorney like his father, owns Red Sonja Properties and keeps me in the loop to some extent about the current state of the projected "Red Sonja" film, for whom a writer, director, and maybe even star have been decided.
Around 1983, coming off the five drafts we had written (mostly for producer Dino DeLaurentiis) of the film that became "Conan the Destroyer," Dino offered my partner Gerry Conway and me a deal to write a screenplay for the "Red Sonja" movie. This was after at least one draft by George McDonald Frazier, author of the famous "Flashman" novels. However, there was no "back end"--allowance for moneys if the movie were actually made, money from the profits, etc., as we had had in "Conan II" and every other film we (and most screenwriters) were offered... Dino was notoriously cheap... and our agent wouldn't let us take the deal. (Ironically, the next period of two or three months became the only length of time over a several-year period during that period that we didn't make any money from any screenplay work.) Ralph Bakhi (for whom we had written "Fire and Ice" and an unproduced screenplay titled "Cage," about a hero unrelated to the Marvel one) and comics writer Doug Moench were offered the screenwriting assignment next, and did at least one draft, which I've never seen, unlike the Frazier one. Then writer Stanley Mann, who had been the final screenwriter on "Conan the Destroyer" (as well as on "The Mouse Than Roared" and other, better pictures before it), inherited the "Red Sonja" assignment and became the screenwriter of record. Gerry and I made no contribution to the picture as it came out.
Romantic Story #87 (1967)
First romance story with Gary Friedrich
Around 1967, when Gary Friedrich was getting married for the second time and planned a short honeymoon at a major hotel in the Times Square area, he asked me if I'd help him out by ghosting a romance story for him for Charlton--my choice. I couldn't say no, though I had never written a love story and had no desire to do so. I started a story I titled "If You Love Me, Fight for Me!" about a girl who ditches her boyfriend because he won't stand up to arrogant males. But I got a writer's block around the end of page 4 or so, anyway halfway through the story. I just couldn't bring myself to finish it, my distaste was so strong. So when the honeymoon was over, Gary picked up the story at the point where I left off... by having the guy get martial arts lessons. But then he doesn't fight for the girl anyway, 'cause she's not worth it. I should've thought of that.
S
Set
Conan the Barbarian #7 (1971) (first mentioned)
Robert E. Howard character/god
Shape
Oncho Shen
Simino
Shape
Charlton Premier #1 (1967)
co-created with Richard "Grass" Green
I had created the Shape (even drawing the design of his look, costume and all) and had totally plotted the story, but then let Grass do the rest, since I couldn't "legally" work for Charlton anymore anyway, since I was on staff at Marvel. He was basically a sort of alien Plastic Man type.
Star Wars #9 (1978)
co-created with Howard ChaykinSimino
Savage Sword of Conan #10 (2019)
co-created with Alan Davis
(character based on my friend and manager John Cimino)
Click the picture of Simino to go to the "Bleeding Cool" news article about this character.
(character based on my friend and manager John Cimino)
Click the picture of Simino to go to the "Bleeding Cool" news article about this character.
Skunk Bear
Alter Ego #6 (2023)
co-created with Ron Harris
Son of Vulcan #50 (1966)
My first published work
Pat Masulli, the main editor of Charlton at the time, sent a notice out to me and a couple of other fanzine editors, soliciting sample comics stories for BLUE BEETLE, SON OF VULCAN, and maybe CAPTAIN ATOM. The idea was that we should plug this search in our fanzines, but (a) I only came out with ALTER EGO once or twice a year at most, so wouldn't have an issue out for a while, and (b) I was selfishly far more interested in selling a story myself than in passing the word. So I just sat around that very weekend, after a week of teaching high school, and I banged out a 20-page story for SON OF VULCAN, partly because he was a Thor imitation and partly because I figured if others sent sample strips they were more likely to send them for the other strips, so I'd have less competition. I guess I was a bit wily--maybe even "rascally"--even then. Masulli bought the story immediately, though I was disappointed to learn I'd be paid only $4 a page. But hey, the $80 for that story compared well with the $100 or so a week I made teaching, and it was done in only a couple of days--and had been fun besides. He asked me to try a BLUE BEETLE, which I did immediately, and he bought that, too. But then I had to go off to NYC for my Superman/DC job, and Mort Weisinger immediately let me know that I could not continue to work for bargain-basement Charlton if I had a job at DC... later, Stan Lee wouldn't have wanted it, either. So I pushed the guy I was staying with at the time, Dave Kaler, who did wind up writing CAPTAIN ATOM with Steve Ditko for a time. By the time the SON OF VULCAN comic came out, one or two MILLIE comics had already come out, so it wasn't my first published work. When Stan read the copy of SON OF VULCAN I had, he said, "It's a good thing I hired you before I read this!" I don't know how much he might've been joking.
Specter and Count Dis
Alter-Ego #1 (1961)
I didn't create the Spectre, of course... but did make up an entirely new
background, backstory, etc., to go with the character, rather like what Julie
had done with Hawkman at DC. He was still Jim Corrigan, though a
different Jim Corrigan... with the ego of Corrigan's mind becoming the Spectre,
and the id becoming the evil Count Dis. This was a two-part prose version
of his origin, with just the couple of illustrations. Count Dis almost
made it into pro comics; in the 1980s Steve Gerber asked me if he could
introduce Dis into a DC SPECTRE series he was going to do and I said fine by
me, but then Steve got into a disagreement with DC, I believe, and didn't do
the series. The first Spectre/Dis illo was in ALTER-EGO #1... and they
then appeared on the cover of #2. All art of Spectre and Count Dis, and
of the BLA in #1-3, was traced from my typewriter-paper sheets onto spirit
duplicator masters by editor Jerry Bails, making him the de facto
"inker" of all my material in those three issues.
Star Wars
STAR WARS: In February 1976, after he couldn't get through to Stan Lee
himself, Charles Lippincott, George Lucas' media projects director,
approached me through our mutual friend Ed Summer, and, at a
show-and-tell at my NYC apartment,
convinced me to try to get Marvel to do an adaptation of the upcoming
film STAR WARS. Charlie and I made an informal presentation to Stan and
others, and it was agreed that Marvel would put out a several-issue
adaptation in an attempt to publicize the film.
Marvel paid no fee up front, but had to agree to get at least two
issues of any adaptation on sale before the premiere of the movie, which
turned out to be in late May of 1977, so that actually three of the six
issues of the adaptation were on sale before
the film's premiere. George and Charlie wanted Howard Chaykin to be
the artist, which happened... although Chaykin needed others to ink him
after the first issue on the grueling monthly schedule. The first three
issues sold quite well before the movie premiered,
but of course after that the sales were astronomical, and the early
issues were reprinted, etc., etc., etc. I left the series after the
first ten issues, and my main contributions to Marvel's STAR WARS
series--besides the fact that it was done at all--were
Jaxxon the green rabbit and a few other characters in issues #7-10 that are listed here.
Mego Stretch Hulk editorial interruption: While getting Star Wars was a big deal, it was much bigger than most people think because it actually saved Marvel Comics. But don't let me tell you this, read below and let former Marvel editor-in-chief Jim Shooter tell you, this is from his blog.
Mego Stretch Hulk editorial interruption: While getting Star Wars was a big deal, it was much bigger than most people think because it actually saved Marvel Comics. But don't let me tell you this, read below and let former Marvel editor-in-chief Jim Shooter tell you, this is from his blog.
Roy Thomas Saved Marvel
There were a few exceptions. Roy’s color Conan and B&W Savage Sword. Master of Kung Fu by Moench and Gulacy. Wolfman’s Tomb of Dracula, with Gene Colan and Tom Palmer art. Those were good books. Len’s Fantastic Four, I think, was enjoyable, too. A couple of others, maybe.
A few books had parts that were great and things not so great about them that crippled them.
We can debate the above at length….
However, what can’t be debated is that sales were bad and falling. It was almost all newsstand sales then, by the way. This was before the Direct Market was a significant factor. The comics overall were breakeven at best. Upstairs, the cheesy non-comics magazine department was losing millions. It seemed like the company as a whole was in a death spiral.
Then Roy proposed that we license some upcoming science fiction movie called Star Wars and publish an adaptation.
Jeers and derision ensued—um, not within Roy’s earshot of course. But he was in California.
The Prevailing Wisdom at the time said “science fiction doesn’t sell.” Adapting movie with the hokey title “Star Wars” seemed like folly to most.
By the way, Prevailing Wisdom also decreed:
“Westerns don’t sell”
“Romance doesn’t sell”
“Fantasy doesn’t sell”
“Female characters don’t sell”
And more. You get the drift.
What sold, said the Prevailing Wisdom, were male super heroes and male dominated groups, especially the marquee stars like Spider-Man or the Fantastic Four. Not so much the “third-string” characters like Daredevil. And there had to be lots of action against marquee super villains interlaced with some soap opera. That was about it. That’s what the “kids in Fudge, Nebraska” wanted. Period.
The Great Proponents of Prevailing Wisdom were Marv and Len.
As I said in an earlier post, a bunch of us hung out a lot after work, including them, a few other staffers, freelancers and me, and we talked shop a lot. Hung out doing what? Well, there were after work dinners, poker games, visits to bookstores…. Marv and Len were physically unable to pass any bookstore that wandered into their path. Various geeky activities—for instance, Marv had the entire Prisoner TV series on film and hosted an all-night Prisoner marathon at his place one Friday night. That sort of thing.
Anyway, when the Prevailing Wisdom reared its head, as in Len or Marv saying “Westerns don’t sell” or whatever, I usually said, “Show me a good one.”
That generally sparked jeers, derision and some debate.
One of the counters to my challenge was—and I am not making this up. I cannot write fiction well enough to make this up—“Good doesn’t sell.”
Generally, proof was cited. “Warlock is good, but it doesn’t sell, nothing by McGregor or Gerber sells….” Etc.
My counter was that, while each of those examples had good, even excellent things about them, they also had negatives. Even Warlock, which was sometimes a daunting read. Sorry Jim. It was colored murkily, too dense—too many words, too many panels—convoluted at times AND usually well off the Marvel mainstream. I would have loved to have seen Warlock in a premium format with room to rock and a little more accessible. No, I don’t mean “simplified,” “dumbed down,” homogenized or compromised in any way. I mean accessible. Easier to get into, easier to hop aboard the ride. And, no, I’m not suggesting “more Marvel mainstream.” Not necessary.
Anyway….
There was a lot of opposition to Star Wars. Even Stan wasn’t keen on the idea.
Even I wasn’t. I had no prejudice against science fiction, but wasting time on an adaptation of a movie with a dumb title described as an “outer space western?”
I was told—don’t know for sure—that George Lucas himself came to Marvel’s offices to meet with Stan and help convince him that we should license Star Wars. I was told that Stan kept him waiting for 45 minutes in the reception room. Apocryphal? Maybe. Roy would know. But if so, it still reflects the mood at the time.
(ASIDE: Lucas, by the way, again, as I am told, but I’m pretty sure this is true, was a partner in Supersnipe Comic Book Emporium, a comics shop on the Upper East Side. A clue to his persistent interest in comics and a comics adaptation.)
I don’t know how Roy got it done. I was just the associate editor, and not privy to much of the wrangling that went on. But, Roy got the deal done and we published Star Wars.
The first two issues of our six (?) issue adaptation came out in advance of the movie. Driven by the advance marketing for the movie, sales were very good. Then about the time the third issue shipped, the movie was released. Sales made the jump to hyperspace.
Star Wars the movie stayed in theaters forever, it seemed. Not since the Beatles had I seen a cultural phenomenon of such power. The comics sold and sold and sold. We reprinted the adaptation in every possible format. They all sold and sold and sold.
In the most conservative terms, it is inarguable that the success of the Star Wars comics was a significant factor in Marvel’s survival through a couple of very difficult years, 1977 and 1978. In my mind, the truth is stated in the title of this piece.
--Jim Shooter (7/5/2011)
Super Force
(Live-Action Series)
Two Seasons with 48 episodes (1990-1992)
SUPER FORCE was a 1990-1992 syndicate TV series about a returned astronaut in the early 21st century who becomes a crimefighter with advance weaponry and like. Two of the show's creators were my friends Larry Brody and Janis Hendler, whom Dann and I had introduced a few years earlier at one of our parties and who had subsequently gotten married (though they are now long divorced)... so as a thank-you they invited me to write a couple of episodes of the series. One of those, though heavily rewritten, was used in the first of the two seasons, but I can't for the life of me remember which one it was on the online list. I wrote a second script, "Cerise," which was a woman's name, that wasn't used because the series didn't last long enough. It was the use of my first SUPER FORCE script which put me over the top for eligibility to a Writers Guild of America West pension, which I've been getting for the past nearly two decades--so I owe Janis and Larry for that. (Around 1980-81, Janis had also, when a script editor, helped Gerry and me sell our second screenplay, the never-produced "Snow Fury," adapted from a 1950s SF/horror novel about snow that eats people.)
Swordquest: Earthworld #1 (1982)
co-created with Gerry Conway, George Perez and Dick Giordano
Swordquest was a concept of Atari video games, but the particular
characters and basic concepts for plots (including the
Earthworld/Airworld/Fireworld/Waterworld) were made up by Gerry Conway and me
in conjunction with Dan Hitchens and Tod Frye of Atari.
T
Tarzan
(John Clayton II)
(John Clayton II)
Edgar Rice Burroughs character
(adapted and developed for comics with John Buscema)
I've been a Tarzan fan since I first saw Johnny Weissmuller in the 1943
movie "Tarzan's Desert Mystery," when I was about three... and a fan of
the Tarzan novels since I was maybe 8 or 10 and began to read the
hardcover collection
(of virtually everything but TARZAN OF THE APES, the first book) in the
Jackson, MO, public library. In 1977, when Marvel finally got the
rights to Edgar Rice Burroughs' characters (we had tried a few years earlier, but DC beat
us to them when Gold Key gave them up), I wrote
the TARZAN comic, though I'd have preferred to do the WARLORD OF MARS
comic. With John Buscema, I adapted TARZAN AND THE JEWELS OF OPAR and
several of the JUNGLE TALES OF TARZAN, but did no "new" stories. I quit
a year later in a dispute with Marion Burroughs,
ERB's daughter-in-law, who was then in charge of the company. But,
with Jim Sullos of today's ERB, Inc., I'm writing three ERB scripts at
present: TARZAN (new adventures, originally with Tom Grindberg and now
with Benito Gallego)... TARZAN OF THE APES (adapting
that novel and, in its proper chronological place in the middle of that
story, JUNGLE TALES OF TARZAN; art by Pablo Marcos), and the
Martian/Barsoom books, beginning with A PRINCESS OF MARS, with art by
the Mexican artist Pegaso. Grindberg and I are about
to begin a second Barsoom strip, THUVIA, MAID OF MARS, adapting the
fourth Martian novel--just because I wanted to work with Tom again.
Pegaso and I will carry on adapting the earlier Martian novels, as we
move into THE GODS OF MARS.
Thoth-Amon is a Stygian wizard who was first a character in the premier Conan story by Robert E. Howard, "The Phoenix on the Sword"--although he and Conan never meet or even know about each other in that story. In another story written around that time but not published until the 1960s ("The God in the Bowl"), Thoth-Amon was an offstage character, behind the evil plot in which Conan gets involved... but again, there is no real connection between the two. It was L. Sprague de Camp who turned Thoth-Amon into the "arch-enemy" of Conan, primarily when he did an extensive rewrite of an unpublished Conan story titled "The Black Stranger," turning it into "The Treasure of Tranicos." Since that had been done, I decided to carry Thoth-Amon over more prominently into the CONAN THE BARBARIAN comicbook. It was Barry Smith who gave him to distinctive rams-head headgear in CTB #7, which comics artists have generally followed, I think wisely so. Sad what he got reduced to in the film "Conan the Destroyer"--but at least that's one thing nobody can blame on the original screenwriting team of Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway! I was sorry to hear that Thoth-Amon was brought back to life after he was killed off in an early issue of KING CONAN, in an adaptation of a de Camp/Carter story. Some writers should know to leave well enough alone.
Thulsa Doom is a skull-headed villain created by Robert E. Howard in a King Kull prose story that wasn't published until the 1960s. Later, Lin Carter used him in a Kull story of REH's that he finished for the paperbacks, so I decided to follow that lead and bring Thulsa Doom prominently into the KULL THE CONQUEROR comicbook. By the late 1970s I was using him as a villain in the "Conan" newspaper comic strip as well. Naturally, I have no idea if it was from the original Kull stories or the KULL comicbooks that John Milius got the idea to make a quite different incarnation of Thulsa Doom the arch-villain of his film "Conan the Barbarian," as played by James Earl Jones.
Back in 1975 or so, in the last year I lived in NYC, I got some new, youngish English neighbors across the hall, a nice couple. Turns out they knew some TV people, and that led to my being asked to be what I think of as a "ringer" on the show "To Tell the Truth," in which three people claim (to a panel of celebrities) to each be a certain person... though of course only one of them really is. The guests aren't usually celebrities, although I seem to recall Stan may have been on that show earlier... which would only show you that he wasn't a true celebrity then, because otherwise he'd have been recognized, no contests. The person that another ringer and I had to pretend to be was a Mormon businessman who made a certain kind of dehydrated food that Mormons could store in large quantities with little space, because of Mormon strictures that their families were supposed to always keeps a certain amount of food on hand at all time for emergencies. The other ringer and I, before the show was filmed, were given a sheet or two on which we could learn hopefully enough about the main guest's business that we could fool the panel. At the end, after the three celebrities voted on which of the three of us was the real whatshisname, the famous line uttered by the main host was: "Will the REAL ------ please stand up!" It was a famous catch-phrase, and you still occasionally hear it today.
I don't recall much about the episode (they had three groups of guests-plus-ringers in each episode), except that at one point I sort of annoyed celebrity Kitty Carlisle (actress, and widow of famous producer/playwright Moss Hart--she'd been in one of the Marx Brothers movies as a young actress, I think) by something I said. Anyway, I couldn't have been too great, because none of the three celebrities voted for me being the "real" guy.
Other thing I recall is that five half-hour episodes were filmed the same day, so we all sat around backstage for several hours. Worth it, though, because I met and had a nice conversation with Leonard Woolf (I think that's the spelling), whose recent book THE ANNOTATED DRACULA I had bought and read, so we could discuss DRACULA... always good to talk about blood-suckers when you're doing a TV show.
Weirdly, a few weeks later, I was contacted (I forget if it was by the show directly or by the neighbor-across-the-hall) and asked if I would be a "ringer" again, on another show. I was amazed, because I said the celebrities, who mostly tended to be the same ones for several years at a time, would likely remember me... "I even insulted Kitty Carlisle!"... but they said they wouldn't. (Or maybe, I thought, if they did, they'd pretend they didn't.) Anyway, I was very close at that time to moving to L.A. in July of '76, so I politely declined.
To the best of my knowledge, since I didn't know when it would air, I've never seen that episode of "To Tell the Truth." Maybe it's just as well.
Kitty Carlisle, wherever you are now, please forgive me!
Valeria of the Red Brotherhood
Thoth-Amon
Conan the Barbarian #7 (1971)
Robert E. Howard character
(adapted and developed for comics with Barry Windsor-Smith)
Thoth-Amon is a Stygian wizard who was first a character in the premier Conan story by Robert E. Howard, "The Phoenix on the Sword"--although he and Conan never meet or even know about each other in that story. In another story written around that time but not published until the 1960s ("The God in the Bowl"), Thoth-Amon was an offstage character, behind the evil plot in which Conan gets involved... but again, there is no real connection between the two. It was L. Sprague de Camp who turned Thoth-Amon into the "arch-enemy" of Conan, primarily when he did an extensive rewrite of an unpublished Conan story titled "The Black Stranger," turning it into "The Treasure of Tranicos." Since that had been done, I decided to carry Thoth-Amon over more prominently into the CONAN THE BARBARIAN comicbook. It was Barry Smith who gave him to distinctive rams-head headgear in CTB #7, which comics artists have generally followed, I think wisely so. Sad what he got reduced to in the film "Conan the Destroyer"--but at least that's one thing nobody can blame on the original screenwriting team of Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway! I was sorry to hear that Thoth-Amon was brought back to life after he was killed off in an early issue of KING CONAN, in an adaptation of a de Camp/Carter story. Some writers should know to leave well enough alone.
Thulsa Doom
Monsters on the Prowl #16 (1972)
Robert E. Howard character
(adapted and developed for comics with Marie Severin)
Thulsa Doom is a skull-headed villain created by Robert E. Howard in a King Kull prose story that wasn't published until the 1960s. Later, Lin Carter used him in a Kull story of REH's that he finished for the paperbacks, so I decided to follow that lead and bring Thulsa Doom prominently into the KULL THE CONQUEROR comicbook. By the late 1970s I was using him as a villain in the "Conan" newspaper comic strip as well. Naturally, I have no idea if it was from the original Kull stories or the KULL comicbooks that John Milius got the idea to make a quite different incarnation of Thulsa Doom the arch-villain of his film "Conan the Barbarian," as played by James Earl Jones.
Thundarr the Barbarian
(Animated Series)
Two Seasons with 21 episodes (1980-1981)
I wrote (maybe with Dann's help) ONE episode--and I actually think I only wrote about half of that and Steve Gerber wound up completing it, because I found I had no patience for working in animation... I just hated working on that kind of script... I had no great bent for it, and I didn't like writing for the youngest viewer that TV cartoons were aimed at then... so I finished very few cartoons. Only one I can think of offhand was one "Plastic Man" for Ruby-Spears, and I was quite unhappy with the way that turned out. I had approached Steve to see if I could try a "Thundarr," and he said yes because of course I had been so instrumental in getting him into Marvel in the early '70s... but it just didn't work out for me. It wasn't that Steve rejected what I wrote... I just didn't finish and turned over to him what I had. I have no idea what the subject matter was. I kind of liked the idea of "Thundarr," though, inspired as it was by Conan, with a post-apocalypse theme. I'd have loved to write it as a comicbook, if it hadn't been aimed at kiddies.
To Tell the Truth Appearance
Game Show (1969-1978) from the 1975 or 1976 Season
I don't recall much about the episode (they had three groups of guests-plus-ringers in each episode), except that at one point I sort of annoyed celebrity Kitty Carlisle (actress, and widow of famous producer/playwright Moss Hart--she'd been in one of the Marx Brothers movies as a young actress, I think) by something I said. Anyway, I couldn't have been too great, because none of the three celebrities voted for me being the "real" guy.
Other thing I recall is that five half-hour episodes were filmed the same day, so we all sat around backstage for several hours. Worth it, though, because I met and had a nice conversation with Leonard Woolf (I think that's the spelling), whose recent book THE ANNOTATED DRACULA I had bought and read, so we could discuss DRACULA... always good to talk about blood-suckers when you're doing a TV show.
Weirdly, a few weeks later, I was contacted (I forget if it was by the show directly or by the neighbor-across-the-hall) and asked if I would be a "ringer" again, on another show. I was amazed, because I said the celebrities, who mostly tended to be the same ones for several years at a time, would likely remember me... "I even insulted Kitty Carlisle!"... but they said they wouldn't. (Or maybe, I thought, if they did, they'd pretend they didn't.) Anyway, I was very close at that time to moving to L.A. in July of '76, so I politely declined.
To the best of my knowledge, since I didn't know when it would air, I've never seen that episode of "To Tell the Truth." Maybe it's just as well.
Kitty Carlisle, wherever you are now, please forgive me!
U
----
V
Valeria of the Red Brotherhood
Savage Sword of Conan #2 (1973)
Robert E. Howard character
(adapted and developed for comics with Barry Windsor-Smith)
(adapted and developed for comics with Barry Windsor-Smith)
Valeria of the Red Brotherhood was a beautiful female mercenary who was
created for the long story "Red Nails" by Robert E. Howard. After Barry
Smith and I adapted that story, I--and later others--used her in
additional stories,
including some solo adventures. I gave her an origin in an issue of
SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN... based, if I recall a-right, on Dark Agnes story
by REH.
W
Wolfshead
Wolfshead#1 (1999)
Robert E. Howard character
(adapted and developed for comics with Steve Lightle and Tony DeZuniga)
(adapted and developed for comics with Steve Lightle and Tony DeZuniga)
"Wolfshead" was one of the earliest prose stories sold to Weird Tales by Robert E. Howard. Just as I'd done with Conan, Kull, Red Sonya, etc., I wanted to bring that character to comics. Set in western Africa during the Age of Exploration, "Wolfshead" tells the story of not of a man who becomes a wolf--but a wolf that becomes a man! The character, De Montour, was introduced in a vignette by REH, then continued in "Wolfshead." With artist Tony DeZuniga, I adapted it... originally to be in a magazine by Heroic Publishing. It was finally published by Cross Plains Comics (of which I was sort of a junior partner as well as resident writer) in 1999, and I added a modern-day frame with Steve Lightle as the artist, since de Montour was supposed to be unable to perish. My concept was to tell stories of de Montour/Wolfshead across the ages... in every one of the past several centuries. He'd have met Carmilla the she-vampire... Lord Ruthven... Dracula... the Phantom of the Opera... even Guy Endore's "Werewolf of Paris." Unfortunately the under-capitalized Cross Plains Comics lasted only long enough for one beautiful issue of Wolfshead to be printed. I've always wanted to return to it.
X
Xena: Warrior Princess
(Comics and Live-Action Series)
Six Seasons with 134 episodes (1995-2001)
I wrote the earliest XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS comics for Topps... following up from a few HERCULES comics based on the series that had spawned XENA. Wrote a number of issues.
My then writing-partner Janis Hendler and I wrote the first draft of a "Trojan War" teleplay, "Beware the Greeks Bearing Gifts," I think it was called, for the XENA TV series' first season. We were fairly happy with that script, which recast Helen as a brainless but beautiful twit whose first question when she met Xena was what the clothing styles were back in Greece these days. However, though what we had written had been basically approved in advance, plotwise, by the show runner we met with, they then went in a different direction, turning Helen into an early spokeswoman for women's liberation, who spurns her husband Menelaus at the end and goes off to "find herself." I could barely stand to watch the show once, let alone twice. However, although probably not a single word and very few situations from our script remained, we were given co-credit on the screen, and occasionally I still receive a small residual check for it. God bless the Writers Guild West--the kind of union I like, because it doesn't limit the number of members in any way, shape, or form.
Another minor plus of the XENA experience was getting to converse for a little while with Sam Raimi, one of the show's main producers/developers, who had previously directed the film "Darkman" and would soon go on to excellently helm the first three "Spider-Man" films. We discussed how lucky he was that Conan wasn't available to him when he was starting his various series, so that he and his partner wound up with HERCULES instead. Of course, that meant that XENA became a household word ahead of, probably, RED SONJA... but Big Red will have her chance yet.
Y
----
Z
Zubair
Savage Sword of Conan #10 (2019)
co-created with Alan Davis
(character named after a friend from Planet Awesome Collectibles, Zubair Kabani)
(character named after a friend from Planet Awesome Collectibles, Zubair Kabani)
Zula (comic)
Conan the Barbarian #84 (1978)
co-created with John Buscema
(I verbally designed the character to John:
Mohawk haircut, tiger-skin, different shade of dark skin, etc.)
Zula (movie)
Actress and model Grace Jones
Zula the female warrior in the "Conan the Destroyer" (1984) movie was co-created by Gerry Conway and me. And despite all the problems we had with that movie, Gerry and I both had in mind Grace Jones to play the part. We were ecstatic when she got the role.
*
FAN LETTERS
(IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER)
Here is a section of what we used to call LOCs (SF fandom talk for
"letters of comment," which comics fandom picked up in the early days)
of mine that were published in comics between 1960 and my turning pro in
1965 and thus ceasing to write to comics
editors (or at least, I was now writing memos instead of letters). John
and I thought it might be fun if I went over these 19 letters (21 if you count my letter sent to the Senate when I was 13 years old and my humorous letter in 1976 to ALL STAR COMICS when I was already in the industry), in the order in which
I wrote them, and scribbled a few notes about
anything I might remember about why and how I wrote them. Maybe it'll
inspire some others to do the same.
First off, the fact that there are only 19 letters, divided between
DC and Marvel, over a five-year period shows that I was not the
"letter-hack" that many other fans of that day were, in particular the
likes of Guy H. Lillian III, who must've had dozens
of letters published in Julius Schwartz's DC comics alone. And Marvel
had some regular letter-writers, as well. A few of them, like myself,
wound up working in the comics field like Don McGregor and Dave Cockrum; most of the others did not, and
many of them probably never wanted to. They
just wanted to sound off about what they liked and didn't like in the
latest issue of this or that comicbook.
*
Letter Defending Comics Against Juvenile Delinquency (June 1954)
I had written occasional letters to comics since I was a kid, once
getting an answer from the editor of Ajax/Farrell (c. 1954, at age 13)
when I suggested they add a character with a particular name (Wonder
Boy) to their lineup
of new super-heroes; turns out there'd already been one back in the
early '40s and he was already coming back, as indeed he did a few weeks
later. I wrote letters to DC in particular from time to time... and in
the mid-50s wrote to several companies (DC,
Timely/Atlas, Lev Gleason, and Quality) to try to get them to "team up"
their characters. Rarely did I get an answer... though one letter from
DC said they couldn't put me in touch with other comics collectors
because trading comics might spread disease!
I even wrote to the Senate subcommittee on juvenile delinquency in 1954.
Mego Stretch Hulk editorial interruption: I typed out Roy's letter pictured above word for word (even misspellings) and line for line, so you can read it clearly below. Enjoy.
307 Greensferry Road
Jackson, Mo.
June 28, 1954
Dear Sirs,
Recently the EC Fan Club Bulletin published an appeal for action.
It stated that comics in general, and horror and crime comics in par-
ticular, are under attack. Several sullen individuals and weird groups
are attacking them. So these EC people, who publish a fine line of
comics (I am EC FAN-ADDICT No. 19214), asked that all people interested
in the preservation of comics of all kinds should give you their
views. So here are mine.
There are several groups of comics. There are:
CRIME COMICS. This includes regular crime comics.
HERO COMICS. This includes guys like Superman.
HORROR COMICS. This includes the monster tales.
HUMOR COMICS. Such as MAD, PANIC, etc.
ANIMAL COMICS. This includes not only animals, but Little Lulu, etc.
COWBOY COMICS. This includes Roy Rogers, etc.
SCIENCE FICTION. The best of them all, like WIERD, SCIENCE FANTASY.
ROMANCE COMICS. This includes the love tales.
TEEN"AGER COMICS. Such as Archie, Cookie, The Kilroys.
You kill one of these, and- poof.
Take for instance, horror comics.
Somebody kills horror comics. Horror and crime are related somewhat,
so crime dies next. With crime dies the hero comics. Next come the
people and kill Cowboys. By this time science fiction is out, and
romance is next. Teen-agers follow. Then humor mags, if they didn't
already go out with horror. Finally Little Lulu and her animal friends
go.
So please, don't start something that can end in even King Aroo
and Li'l Abner disappearing from the comic page.
Yours truly,
Roy Thomas, Jr., 13.
P.S. I think my parents share this point of view.
I gave Julie a couple of good ideas in my letter to this issue.
Well, one good idea... and one which, at least if my fellow readers'
wishes are considered, one that wasn't so good.
The not-so-good notion was the revival of Winky, Blinky, and Noddy, the Three-Stooges-based comedy relief who had been introduced in the Golden Age Flash feature back in the early 1940s, also sometimes called the Three Dimwits. Julie wrote in his answer that he felt they were too "outrageously cartoony" to fit in the modern FLASH, but that h might just try it sometime. I didn't figure he would, but then came THE FLASH #117 (Dec. 1960)--the very next issue!--and there they were, exquisitely drawn by Carmine Infantino, and again written by their originator, Gardner Fox (although I don't think Fox had written a Silver Age Flash story before that, and wouldn't again until the much more popular "Flash of Two Worlds" in #123, the next year. Julie rewarded me by sending me the original art to that entire story... and I'm sad to say that I was stupid enough, over the next few years, to trade the pages off for old comics and the like. (Hmm... I notice that, for some reason, I wrote out my name as "Roy Thomas, Jr." at the end of this letter. Wonder why... I didn't generally use the "Jr." in my correspondence with comics.
I also suggested that Kid Flash's costume be differentiated from the older Flash's in some way... up till now, they were identical. I thought that, since Kid Flash was just supposed to be wearing a hand-me-down from Barry Allen, he'd just cut off the top to show Kid Flash's hair or some such thing... but ere long, Kid Flash got his own costume, differently colored from his mentor's.
The last two paragraphs of my
missive are an unabashed plug for ALTER-EGO... which Julie had, by letter,
invited me to write. Julie, as many know, had been one of the seminal
science-fiction fans back in the 1930s, along with Mort Weisinger, Forry
Ackerman (co-founder of the influential FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND magazine),
and others... he was co-founder/editor of one of the very first SF fanzines...
and he wanted to give a similar boost to comics fans. Julie was always
prouder of having been a SF fan and later writer's agent than he was of being a
major force in the Silver Age of Comics. Just look at the title of his
co-written autobiography: MAN OF TWO WORLDS. I directed readers
toward Jerry Bails in his Detroit suburb (Inkster, Michigan). I don't
recall how many responses Jerry got, but it was a lot.
Green Lantern #1 (July/August 1960)
 |
Maybe I should state up front--this
wasn't my first letter to a comicbook. Back in the mid-1950s, when
Ajax/Farrell had briefly revived an old super-hero or two including THE BLACK
COBRA and PHANTOM LADY, I wrote a letter suggesting that they add a kid
character to the lineup, to be called WONDER BOY. Little did I know that
there had actually been a Wonder Boy in comics before I was reading them.
An editor--probably Robert Farrell himself--wrote back and didn't mention the
old hero but did tell me they already had a WONDER BOY comic in the works...
and sure enough, within a month or two, there he was, making a fifth Ajax
super-hero title along with the above pair, THE FLAME, and SAMSON. I'll
admit it crossed my mind that they had taken my idea, but I didn't worry about
it; I was just glad to see the comic. Naturally, I wrote a follow-up
letter suggesting that they combine those five heroes in a super-hero group a
la my beloved Justice Society of America, but they didn't do that... nor
did any of the comics last more than three or four issues.
I also wrote a letter or two to DC,
I believe, inquiring if they had any old copies of the defunct ALL-STAR COMICS
lying around. I suggested perhaps someone they knew had copies and they
could send me his address so I could trade with him/her... and that led to a
postcard that said that DC couldn't encourage trading old comicbooks as they
was a way to spread disease!
I don't recall if, by very early
1960 when I wrote the above letter, I had previously written any to THE FLASH,
the first of the Silver Age revivals. It seems like I must have--because
there's no letters of mine appearing in THE FLASH, and yet the first original
art I was sent by editor Julius Schwartz was the entire "Three
Dimwits" story from whatever issue that tale appeared in. But then,
although Julie was sending that art to me because it was a letter or two from
me about bringing back the Three Dimwits, supporting characters in the Golden
Age "Flash" series, that had caused him to have Gardner Fox and
Carmine Infantino do that story. Seems strange if I had no letters, ever,
in FLASH, but maybe I didn't.
I could have, though... because when
I wrote the letter reprinted in GREEN LANTERN #1, spurred by one of GL's
SHOWCASE issues (clearly, at least the second had been on sale by the time I
wrote), I actually scribed no fewer than THREE near-identical letters, and
mailed them separately to the unnamed "editor" of THE FLASH,
SHOWCASE/GL, and I think to the new Justice League of America which had
appeared in THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD. Naturally, all three of these
missives went to Julie, and he printed one of them in GL #1.
Some of my suggestions, doubtless in
line with those of others, bore fruit. GL did indeed soon gain a sidekick...
his Eskimo mechanic Pieface (soon Pie)... though not a revival of Doiby
Dickles, a character I'd loved in the old comics. (Doiby made appearances
later, though, when the Earth-Two GL was revived.) And while GL never met
a new Harlequin, what was Carol Ferris' somnambulant secret identity of Star
Sapphire (a name taken from a 1940s Flash villain) but her equivalent? I
suggested a foe named "Shockman," based on a sort of electrical
version of the Human Torch I had made up as a super-hero for my own stories as
a kid... maybe the Weaponers of Qward and their quivers full of lightning-bolts
filled that bill.
At that time I was still going to
college in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, commuting from my parents' home in
Jackson, MO, about ten miles away. It was another letter of mine to Julie
about ALL-STAR COMICS, that November, that would lead him to give me Gardner
Fox's home address... and Gardner in turn would put me in touch with Jerry
Bails, which would help bring about my part in the early days of ALTER
EGO. You just never know how these things are going to turn out...
Mego Stretch Hulk editorial interruption: GREEN LANTERN #2 (1960) introduces Thomas "Pieface" Kalmaku, which could well be Roy Thomas' very first co-creation.
Mego Stretch Hulk editorial interruption: GREEN LANTERN #2 (1960) introduces Thomas "Pieface" Kalmaku, which could well be Roy Thomas' very first co-creation.
Flash #116 (November 1960)
The not-so-good notion was the revival of Winky, Blinky, and Noddy, the Three-Stooges-based comedy relief who had been introduced in the Golden Age Flash feature back in the early 1940s, also sometimes called the Three Dimwits. Julie wrote in his answer that he felt they were too "outrageously cartoony" to fit in the modern FLASH, but that h might just try it sometime. I didn't figure he would, but then came THE FLASH #117 (Dec. 1960)--the very next issue!--and there they were, exquisitely drawn by Carmine Infantino, and again written by their originator, Gardner Fox (although I don't think Fox had written a Silver Age Flash story before that, and wouldn't again until the much more popular "Flash of Two Worlds" in #123, the next year. Julie rewarded me by sending me the original art to that entire story... and I'm sad to say that I was stupid enough, over the next few years, to trade the pages off for old comics and the like. (Hmm... I notice that, for some reason, I wrote out my name as "Roy Thomas, Jr." at the end of this letter. Wonder why... I didn't generally use the "Jr." in my correspondence with comics.
I also suggested that Kid Flash's costume be differentiated from the older Flash's in some way... up till now, they were identical. I thought that, since Kid Flash was just supposed to be wearing a hand-me-down from Barry Allen, he'd just cut off the top to show Kid Flash's hair or some such thing... but ere long, Kid Flash got his own costume, differently colored from his mentor's.
Justice League of America #1 (October/November 1960)
My youthful enthusiasm (I was 20,
and should've expressed myself much better--but then, that's true now, as well)
was brimming over in this letter, too. Did I really think Amazo was the
greatest super-villain ever? Hard to believe. I did like him, though,
partly because he partook of the powers of all the JLAers (I liked the Mimic in
the Lee/Kirby X-MEN later for the same reason), partly because, with those
pointy ears, he reminded me of the Sub-Mariner, I suspect. Notice that
I'm already pushing for an "InJustice League," to match the two
InJustice Socities of the 1940s ALL-STAR. I was pushing for Green Arrow
and Adam Strange, too. It particularly seemed weird to meet that Aquaman
would make it in and GA wouldn't, since they were, I knew, roughly the same age
as comics characters, and I knew from seeing MORE FUN covers in old comics ads
that GA had even once been a cover feature, something Aquaman never had been.
Funny that Julie said they intended
to keep the JLA at seven members for a while... but within a couple of years,
not only were Superman and Batman appearing more but Green Arrow and the Atom
had joined, with Hawkman waiting "in the wings," so to speak.
But I was as thrilled as anyone to hear Julie's response that they might revive
some of the old JSA heeoes. (Sorry that the last line of Julie's reply is
cut off on the copy from the site.)
Brave and the Bold #34 (February/March 1961)
Julie still wasn't putting full
addresses on his letters pages (company policy at the time, apparently), but we
were just thrilled that he printed our name and hometowns. This letter
seems like a response to Julie's response to my letter in JLA #1, doesn't
it? Naturally, I was pushing Hawkman, especially as drawn by Joe Kubert,
which had been my favorite solo feature back in the 1940s. Dr. Fate was
just a good-looking character to me then... I had acquired a coverless copy of
ALL-STAR #21 from 1944 back in around 1949 or '50 as a Cub Scout, from the son
of our den mother, and I fell in love with the look of the character.
This was when he wore the half-helmet, of course... and indeed ALL-STAR #21 was
Dr. Fate's final appearance in the original JSA. By the time this letter
appeared in print, however, the Hawkman situation had gone much further, since
B&B #34 saw the beginning of a three-issue trial run of a new Hawkman, also
drawn by Kubert. See the next note, re the very next issue of BRAVE & THE BOLD #35.
Mego Stretch Hulk editorial interruption: As Roy just stated above, he absolutely loved Joe Kubert's Hawkman when he was a kid. I find it a strange coincidence that some fifteen years later he got a fan letter published in the same issue that the Silver Age Hawkman would first appear and that it was drawn by Joe Kubert himself. If the comic gods were ever looking out for someone, it was Roy Thomas.
Mego Stretch Hulk editorial interruption: As Roy just stated above, he absolutely loved Joe Kubert's Hawkman when he was a kid. I find it a strange coincidence that some fifteen years later he got a fan letter published in the same issue that the Silver Age Hawkman would first appear and that it was drawn by Joe Kubert himself. If the comic gods were ever looking out for someone, it was Roy Thomas.
Brave and the Bold #35 (April/May 1961)
Julie had gotten the idea of having
four "prominent" fans write reviews of the first revival issue of
"Hawkman," so they could appear in B&B #35, the second
Kubert/Fox/Hawkman issue. Jerry Bails got pride of place, of course,
probably because he was a college professor. I don't recall meeting
Ronnie Graham, but Ron Haydock was a fan whose work appeared in Jerry's
ALTER-EGO #4... and indeed, he and I and Don Glut jammed a little rock session
at Don's home in the Hollywood area in 1967 or '77. Sadly, Ron H. was
killed not too long afterward... somehow struck by a car while hitchhiking
between L.A. and Las Vegas.
Julie sent us each "silver
proofs" of the story pages of B&B #34, 3 or 4 months before the issue
came out... just enough time for us to comment. I don't recall if we had
to send the silver proofs between us, or if Julie had four copies made. I
do know we didn't get to keep them! I liked the idea so much that, in
1970, I sent proofs of CONAN THE BARBARIAN #1 to a number of prominent PROS so
I could have letters from them in CTB #2... guys like Harlan Ellison, REH
literary agent Glenn Lord, et al. Julie mentions the silver proofs, which
of course were in black-&-white, so I couldn't tell that Hawkgirl's hair
would indeed be colored red.
I was always and already pushing for
the wings to be added to Hawkman's helmet. Jerry was against that idea
since, as he logically pointed out, hawks didn't have wings growing out of the
sides of their heads. But I'd loved those wings on the comics of 1945-48,
and eventually, by the second three-issue "Hawkman" tryout in BRAVE
AND BOLD, Julie added them. We fans, because we wrote reasonably well and
often, probably influenced Julie more than we should have. Still, out of
that, we helped ourselves get things like Earth-Two and the return of the JSA,
the Atom, wings on Hawkman's helmet, etc., etc.--and the Three Dimwits, of
course.
One important note: This is
one of the early letters pages in which Julie decided to print the full
addresses of correspondents, despite the fact that DC brass wasn't wild about
the idea. (The latter always worried, understandably, that some pervert
would use the full addresses to contact some young person. But Julie took
a chance, and there don't seem to have been any major repercussions... except
comics fandom, which was tremendously aided by the practice. When Jerry
Bails launched ALTER-EGO, hyphen and all, he could send out copies to people
whose addresses he found in Julie's letters pages, among other places.)
Justice League of America #4 (April/May 1961)
This comic came out at roughly the
same time as BRAVE AND BOLD #35. I was, and remain, enthusiastic about
JLA #2, which was a new echo of 1948's ALL-STAR COMICS #39, "Invasion from
Fairyland." Jerry and I were still pushing the idea of a
double-size, 25c comic along the lines of the 1940s ALL-STAR, with the JLA
together at the beginning and end, and seen in chapters in between with art by
the likes of Infantino, Kane, Andru, Fradon, etc. Can't really anything
like that until the '80s when (I think it was in JLA #200) I suggested a
similar notion to then-writer Gerry Conway, who ran with it and produced a
memorable issue.
I was thrilled to learn I'd get all the original art for the Flash/Dimwits story... and the more fool me for trading them all away over the years, mostly for old comics that I probably don't even own any more. The inherent value of a piece of original Infantino art, beyond just being something pretty to look at, never really occurred to most of us fans. Jerry, too, traded comics original art pages like they were cards in a game of Old Maid.
Flash #120 (May 1961)
Obviously, I was smitten with Carmine
Infantino's artistic rendition of the Three Dimwits (Winky, Blinky, and
Noddy) as I had never been with the original version drawn by E.E.
Hibbard, never a favorite artist of mine. Still,
I can see why other fans felt they just didn't fit with the more
serious (almost plodding) nature of the early-1960s Flash stories. It's
clear from my longish letter that I was also in favor of deeping the
connections between characters (and series) at DC,
by co-starring the Flash with not just Kid Flash and the Elongated Man,
who after all were merely supporting characters in his title, but also
with Green Lantern--and, going beyond that, with other heroes of the JLA
who weren't edited by Julie. Julie, however,
knowing the realities of office politics, just teamed Flash and GL...
just as he would later team Hawkman and the Atom, without trying to
Indian-wrestle Superman or Batman, or even Aquaman or J'onn J'onzz, away
from their solo editors. When Stan came along,
of course, he could play fast and loose with team-ups and battles,
because he was THE editor, and almost THE writer. He had an accidental
advantage that Julie never possessed.
I was thrilled to learn I'd get all the original art for the Flash/Dimwits story... and the more fool me for trading them all away over the years, mostly for old comics that I probably don't even own any more. The inherent value of a piece of original Infantino art, beyond just being something pretty to look at, never really occurred to most of us fans. Jerry, too, traded comics original art pages like they were cards in a game of Old Maid.
Green Lantern #9 (November/December 1961)
I was pleased to see that I gave a
shout-out to the unnamed colorist of this issue, which is probably the reason
Julie printed this particular letter. Years later, I wanted, as did
others, to add coloring credits to the Marvel comics, but I kept thinking of
our haphazard and harried production schedule, which would probably result in
several comics going out to the printers every month with the space left blank
in front of the word "colorist," since that credit would have to be
added at the office, after the rest of the issue was lettered. I've been
given credit for bringing coloring credits to Marvel, but I think it may have
been Len Wein, who edited the color comics after I stepped down as
editor-in-chief in late 1974.
By sheer coincidence, my letter
follows that of another future pro, Don McGregor, whom I would hire at Marvel
while editor-in-chief. Don and I have parted company long since, over
disagreements which make little sense to me, but I'm still glad to have had
some small part in furthering his career, just Julie, Mort, Stan, and others
did for me.
Justice League of America #8 (December 1961/January 1962)
This would have been the first of my
DC letters that could have been, and probably was, written after I had made the
connection with Jerry Bails in November, with him conceiving the idea and soon
the name of ALTER-EGO just two months later, with copies being in the mail two
months after that, at the very end of March. Note that I
congratulated Julie on printing full addresses in his letters pages. It
was a big deal... and Julie deserves the credit for being first out of the
gate. Just another reason that he is one of the two most important
comicbook editors of the 1960s (you figure out the other one).
Justice League of America #10 (March 1962)
This is the first published letter
to use my address in Sullivan, Missouri, where I spent my first year teaching
English, from Sept. '61 to May '62. I had the entire top floor of a big
three-story house owned by a nice old lady I virtually never saw, with my
fellow English teacher Bob Hopkins in a smaller space in the second floor (he
wound up picking up more than 100 Big Little Books before the year was over,
after our discussions about the comics and BLBs he'd loved as a kid--he's the
guy who first told me what the letters were in the last name of Bill Everett's
art signature--and he wound up writing a DOC SAVAGE article for one of my AE
[Vol. 1] issues). It was during this period that I got more involved with
fandom, spending every minute I could spare or steal from my teaching
activities, I blush to admit.
Note that I applauded the idea of
the JLAers fighting each other, something the JSAers had never really
done. At this time, of course, Stan and Jack's FANTASTIC FOUR was just
getting going, and upped the ante in competition for Julie's books in my
eyes. Julie, however, was mostly content with wondering who was faster,
Superman or the Flash. Believe it or not, that was indeed an oft-asked
query in early fandom... right up there with, "Who's stronger, Thor or the
Hulk?"
Fantastic Four #5 (July 1962)
This was only the third letters page in the series, so I'm proud that I sneaked in there. Later comics artist Alan Weiss had a letter in the very first one, in FF #3. Naturally, as was the case in both the letters I wrote to DC and Marvel, only a part of it was printed. By this time, Stan had long since seen (and commented on to Jerry Bails, mentioning my name) the review I had written of FF #1 that had been printed in Jerry's COMICOLLECTOR #1, out within two or three weeks of when FF #1 had gone on sale at the beginning of August '61. I never wrote nearly as many letters to Marvel as I did to DC, because I was far more likely to get a personal response from Julie than from Stan. But I did write more letters than were printed, of course. Note that no fewer than two future editors of ALTER EGO had letters on that page; Ronn Foss, who would edit and publish issues #5 & 6 in Vol. 1 after Jerry quit doing it, has a letter at the end of the LP. We bookend it, by sheer coincidence.
Justice League of America #18 (March 1963)
Back to using my Jackson, MO,
address, probably because my single year of teaching at Sullivan, MO, on the
old Route 66, had ended in May of '62. Apparently I had changed my mind
and wanted to see more, not less, of Superman and Batman in the JLA. As
people know nowadays, but we didn't then (though we half-guessed), it was
office politics that kept DC's two best-known heroes either out of issues
entirely or at least downplayed, because Superman editor Mort Weisinger and
Batman editor Jack Schiff were possessive about their heroes and didn't want to
see them "watered down" by appearing in yet one more comic.
Julie used me to offset the previous letter in that issue, from Paul
Gambaccini, whom I wouldn't meet in person until one night in London in the
1980s... by which time the young American had turned into a major personality
on BBC radio.
Fantastic Four #15 (June 1963)
FF #11 hadn't exactly been one of the most popular of issues, if Stan could judge by the fan and pan mail Marvel got on it... though I don't know if it's sales were necessary down. The readers loved the "Day with the FF," but except for me and perhaps a few others, readers seemed to hate the Impossible Man in the second story. It really had reminded me of a book I'd read a couple of years before, Fredric Brown's MARTIAN GO HOME, in which a whole bunch of little green aliens come to Earth to annoy the populace and they can't find any way to get rid of them. I've no idea, though, if either Stan or Jack read that book... nor I can remember, just this minute, how the Earthmen finally get rid of the Martians. I do know that, because of fan reaction, it was a dozen years--and a lot of persuading on more than one occasion by yours truly--before Stan could be talked into letting the Impossible Man appear a second time. Ironically, because of the offbeat story that George Perez and I did on that occasion, with Impy invading the Marvel offices and interfacing with Stan, Jack, George, myself, John Verpoorten, and Archie Goodwin, that second Impossible Man appearance has been reprinted a number of times, more often than the usual FF issue from that period.
Mego Stretch Hulk editorial interruption: The comic story that Roy is talking about that he did with George Perez is FANTASTIC FOUR #176 (1976). I should also point out that Roy performs one of the greatest heroic acts of his life in that story--saving Stan Lee from getting bonked on the head by Impy! Maybe this was a small form of revenge on Stan, who kept him dormant for so long, but I digress.
Justice League of America #24 (December 1963)
This particular LP starts off with
one from another future comics star, artist Dave Cockrum, some time before his
work on either LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES or THE X-MEN. And it ends with one
from Jim Harmon, prominent comics and old-time radio fan, who had written
perhaps the first SF fanzine article ever about comicbooks--way back in
1957! Jim had also written the "All in Color for a Dime" piece
for XERO #3 on the Justice Society of America... before there even was an ALTER
EGO. So this LP contained letters from (counting myself) two of the greatest
vintage fans ever of the JSA. All that would've been needed to complete
the Trifecta would've been a letter from Jerry Bails as well.
These missives, of course, deal with
the first-ever JLA/JSA team-up, back in JLA #21... one of the biggest events of
the Silver Age that didn't involve the creation of a new character.
I remained a fan of Dr. Fate, the more so now than I had been earlier, when his
chief charm had been his costume and helmet. By now, although not
generally a fan of magic heroes in comics (I never felt comfortable with them
because I didn't feel I could understand their powers and limitations even as
well as I could understand those of, say, Green Lantern--except, of course,
that the original GL was also magic-based, really), I had read enough of the
early-40s exploits of Fate that I felt this decidedly Lovecraftian super-hero
was one of the great. Little did I realize that, a couple of years later,
I would be dialoguing Steve Ditko-plotted-and-drawn stories of Dr. Strange,who
would become the best-known magical hero ever to come out of comicbooks... and that
I would, afterward, thoroughly enjoy stints on DR. STRANGE first with Gene
Colan as artist, then with Jackson Guice. Ironically, though, I rarely
got a chance to write Dr. Fate as he had originally been conceived by Gardner
Fox, because the half-helmet version who belonged to the timeline of ALL-STAR
SQUADRON was a much lesser character, considerably watered down.
He still LOOKED great, though!
And, as I once had Magneto say, "perhaps... clothes do make the man."
Needless to say, I was thrilled to
have my comments on the first of the important "Crisis on
Earth-Whatever" stories "immortalized" by Julie in a letters
section.
Fantastic Four #22 (March 1964)
Talk about coincidences! Here's another LP with a letter from me on it--and again it's headed by one from still-fan Dave Cockrum! A couple of other future pros were on hand, as well... the "Jack Harris" is probably the future DC editor, for whom I wrote a story or two when I first signed with DC in 1980... and Wayne Howard, who became an assistant to Wally Wood and later a pro artist on his own.
In my letter, I mention an
experience I had that began to crystalize for me the idea that Marvel comics
were reaching a quite different audience from DC's. I mention that I
bought a copy of FF ANNUAL #1 (the Sub-Mariner one) for "my girlfriend's
Washington University roommate." That was Miriam "Mimi"
Gold, roomie of Linda Rahm, the girl I'd gone with from 1957 till summer of
'63. Mimi and several of her friends in that "honors dorm" on
the St. Louis campus had read a few Marvel comics I'd loaned them, because
they'd said they needed something fun and non-heavy to read in between Yeats
and Wordsworth, so I was helping out. A bit later, having no more Marvels
to loan out at one point, I gave them a handful of DC comics, mostly Julie's
JLA, etc. The word quickly came back, could get them more of the other
ones, because these were too childish for them. Talk about a control
group! Stan, as much as Julie, loved references to college students
reading their comics... and there were some who did like JLA, though you had to
get yourself into a different, less sophisticated mindset to do so, I
think. That's what I'd always done, from SHOWCASE #4 on... and never had
to do as much with the better Marvel comics. Which doesn't mean Stan's
comics were more legitimate than Marvel's... they were aimed at somewhat
different audiences... still, it did contribute to Marvel bypassing DC in sales
by around 1972.
I said I wasn't yet ready to concede
it was "The Marvel Age of Comics"--but I didn't need to. The
rest of the comics-reading world was doing it for me. Stan, Jack, and
Steve did it all on their own.
The FFs are it, then when it comes to Marvel. I did write to Stan once as a fan when I missed a SPIDER-MAN issue, the one that introduced Sandman, and he sent me a copy from the office files... but that letter didn't get published.
The FFs are it, then when it comes to Marvel. I did write to Stan once as a fan when I missed a SPIDER-MAN issue, the one that introduced Sandman, and he sent me a copy from the office files... but that letter didn't get published.
Metal Men #6 (February/March 1964)
I don't recall being quite so wild
about Kanigher and Andru's METAL MAN as I seem to be in this letter, but I did
feel that they got to be more than just copies of the Fantastic Four (which may
be what I said in the letter, and RK changed it to JLA--or maybe I did say
"JLA"--what I said fits in any case). Note that I was
interested in comics-reading being "more respectable than
before." After all, I was pushing 23 when I wrote that letter, and
maybe I felt I needed a bit of an excuse for what others doubtless saw as a
weakness on my part, especially given the fact that I was an English teacher of
impressionable young minds. So what did I do to try to make METAL MEN
more respectable? I suggested Kanigher create a metal PET for them.
I was surely thinking of Robbie, Robotman's talking robodog in the latter, more
humorous days of that DC strip. It could have worked, though... Robbie
was a good character. And I had that kind of thing at least partly in
mind years later when Dann and I created Kritter, the "canine" member
of the mutant-style group Helix in INFINITY, INC. Of course, Kritter
wasn't really a dog... he was a young person who just looked like a dog.
But then, Robbie wasn't a real dog, either. But, that way lies madness.
Apparently young readers, said RK,
liked the giant monsters I deplored as too ubiquitous. Maybe in the long
run that's why METAL MEN didn't stick around. I mean, the FF had started
out fighting giant monsters, too, in #1 and #3... but they were soon replaced
by the Skrulls, the Sub-Mariner, and Dr. Doom. METAL MEN never made that
kind of quantum leap... but it was still a fun book, and I'm glad DC put out a
couple of hardcover Archives of it before they discontinued that much-missed
series. (DID the Metal Men ever get a pet? I don't think so--but I
don't think I kept on reading the comic for that much longer.)
Kanigher was a character, though...
one of the first and most outrageous I met when I worked briefly at DC the next
year. Easier to laugh about if you didn't know the almost depraved depths
to which his cruelty could go.
Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane #54 (January 1965)
This may well be the only letter I
ever wrote to any of Mort Weisinger's Superman line of comics... certainly I
didn't write many of them... but though I overstated my love for that story of
Herko, "The Alien Who Loved Lois Lane," I had been enraptured by it,
particularly because of Kurt Schaffenberger's art. I suppose I probably
knew by then that Schaffenberger had drawn Captain Marvel and Marvel Family
stories in the later years of my Fawcett favorite...and that, though I couldn't
say, was most of its charm for me. I used Herko in an issue of ALTER EGO
around that time as well, redrawn by Biljo White.
The letter-response was probably
written not by Mort, but by E. Nelson Bridwell, the Oklahoma fan (about 10
years older than my 24-year-old self) who was then Mort's assistant--and whom,
though I didn't know it yet, I would be hired to replace in June of '65, a few
months after this comic came out. I don't know if this letter had
anything to do with Mort offering me a job around the late winter of '65, or if
it was just the issue or two of "my" ALTER EGO I'd sent him, tied to
my exchanges with Julie Schwartz, a fellow editor and boyhood friend. If
it did, then it's one of the most important letters I ever wrote.
Justice League of America #33 (February 1965)
I don't know when DC changed the
heading of the JLA Mail Room section from that shot from one of the BRAVE AND
BOLD issue to the far better drawing that is seen here. But seeing it
reminds me... one of the last things I think I influenced Julie Schwartz to do
during my fan days was to change from the one drawing to the other. I
suggested it in a letter, and he quickly made the change... I didn't and don't
care if he ever acknowledged it or not. all he had to do was add Hawkman
and one or two other characters to the drawing...and voila! A much better of a
header drawing!
My letter is about the third JLA/JSA
team-up... which, as it happened, was one of the first things I saw, at some
truckstop or road restaurant in Arizona after my then-girlfriend Marlene and I
returned from a one-month drive around Mexico in the summer of '64. It
had made a great welcome back to the States... even if the cover of the second
part of the third "Crisis," the issue I was commenting on, wasn't up
to the previous month's cover, one of the great iconic JLA/JSA covers
ever. I used the letter--again, it would have been after a suggestion
from Julie, as I was never pushy about that kind of thing--to plug ALTER EGO,
which I had only recently taken over from Ronn Foss, after he'd taken it over
from Jerry. By the time JLA #33 came out in late '64, ALTER EGO #7 was
out, with its Marvel Family cover feature, and I was launched in the world of
fanzine-publishing... even though, as it turned out, I'd do only three issues,
over the course of about a year, before the siren call of pro comics would make
me too busy to continue A/E. Once again, Julie used the occasion to
mention how he'd gotten his own start in a fanzine--a science-fiction one--back
in the 1930s.
Blackhawk #211 (August 1965)
This is weird. I have no remembrance
that I ever sent in a letter trying to sell old BLACKHAWK comics I had (being a
teacher, I always needed money), but clearly the editor (George Kashdan?)
encouraged that... just look at the rest of the letters on that page! By
then I was living in the south part of St. Louis County, 10 or so miles north
of Fox HS in Arnold, MO, where I'd been teaching since fall of '62.
(There's another "Big Name Fan" in that letters page, too... Don Foote...
though I never met him, only heard about him.)
This issue would've gone on sale
around May or June of '65, by which time I was at most a few weeks away from
moving to NYC to go to work for Mort... and only two weeks further away from
jumping ship the day I met Stan Lee. But, though I didn't care much for
the BLACKHAWK book as it was at that time, and indeed felt it had suffered ever
since Quality had sold it to DC, BLACKHAWK had been a beloved comic since I was
six or seven, at least... just about the time they were switching from the
marvelous-looking Grumman Skyrocket planes to generic-looking jet
fighters.
I've no idea if I sold any BLACKHAWK
comic due to my "ad." If so, they were left over from my
experience of the previous summer, when I left for six weeks to drive with
Marlene first to New Orleans, then to Mexico City and around that country,
coming up again through Arizona. I had put out an ad to sell a lot of
comics--needed money to reimburse for the trip, etc.--did I say I was a high
school teacher?--and had kept the prices deliberately low, as some of us
idealistically tried to do, so as not to "gouge" people. My
ever-suffering mother in Jackson handled the money-handling and mailing for me,
bless her. When I got back, I found out that, because my prices were
fairly low, instead of their going to a lot of people (including my future NYC
apartment-mate Len Brown of Topps), then mega-dealer Howard Rogofsky swept and
bought the great majority of them, just like that. It was a great lesson
in economics, as my wife Dann has reminded me anytime I mention it.
Nothing against Howard, though... he was well within the law (of supply and
demand).
When Gerry Conway went back to DC Comics for the first time, in 1975 (he'd started out there several years before, writing mystery stories), he and I kicked around some ideas for comics he might do there. One I suggested was to revive ALL-STAR COMICS as the vehicle it had been, back from 1940-1951, for the Justice Society of America. After all, the JSA was fairly popular guest-starring in one or two JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA issues a year, and contained both great characters on its own and dopplegangers of Flash, Green Lantern, et al. Gerry ran with the idea, and I had no more to do with it after the mere suggestion. In fact, I kind of disapproved of both the "Super-Squad" approach and bringing in a grown-up Robin, Star-Spangled Kid, and newie Power Girl, but that was Gerry's business, and he did it quite well. As a gag as much as anything else, he invited both Jerry Bails and me, as two of the most pre-eminent JSSA fans there were, to write letters that could be printed in the very first revival issue--#58, which picked up the numbering from 1951, just as THE FLASH in 1959 had begun with #105, picking up the numbering from FLASH COMICS #104 a decade earlier.
Jerry and I both complied, and I wrote my letter--Gerry may have suggested this--from the (true) angle of a kid who had subscribed to ALL-STAR COMICS back around the turn of 1950-51, had received one copy of ALL-STAR with the JSA, and then eleven issues of ALL-STAR WESTERN, with the Trigger Twins and the like, so I figured DC owed me eleven comics. I realized that I really shouldn't be doing that, since I was under contract as a writer and editor for Marvel... but I couldn't resist. I figured (hoped) Stan Lee wouldn't mind, or at least wouldn't make too big a deal about it. I was a big enough ALL-STAR fan that I took a chance.
That became, in a sense, my last LOC (letter of comment) to a comicbook, I suppose.
All Star Comics #58 (January/February 1976)
When Gerry Conway went back to DC Comics for the first time, in 1975 (he'd started out there several years before, writing mystery stories), he and I kicked around some ideas for comics he might do there. One I suggested was to revive ALL-STAR COMICS as the vehicle it had been, back from 1940-1951, for the Justice Society of America. After all, the JSA was fairly popular guest-starring in one or two JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA issues a year, and contained both great characters on its own and dopplegangers of Flash, Green Lantern, et al. Gerry ran with the idea, and I had no more to do with it after the mere suggestion. In fact, I kind of disapproved of both the "Super-Squad" approach and bringing in a grown-up Robin, Star-Spangled Kid, and newie Power Girl, but that was Gerry's business, and he did it quite well. As a gag as much as anything else, he invited both Jerry Bails and me, as two of the most pre-eminent JSSA fans there were, to write letters that could be printed in the very first revival issue--#58, which picked up the numbering from 1951, just as THE FLASH in 1959 had begun with #105, picking up the numbering from FLASH COMICS #104 a decade earlier.
Jerry and I both complied, and I wrote my letter--Gerry may have suggested this--from the (true) angle of a kid who had subscribed to ALL-STAR COMICS back around the turn of 1950-51, had received one copy of ALL-STAR with the JSA, and then eleven issues of ALL-STAR WESTERN, with the Trigger Twins and the like, so I figured DC owed me eleven comics. I realized that I really shouldn't be doing that, since I was under contract as a writer and editor for Marvel... but I couldn't resist. I figured (hoped) Stan Lee wouldn't mind, or at least wouldn't make too big a deal about it. I was a big enough ALL-STAR fan that I took a chance.
That became, in a sense, my last LOC (letter of comment) to a comicbook, I suppose.
