RKMBs Forums .::Robegories::. Comic Books Marvel bullpen, photos, creators, and behind-the-scenes stories

That Colletta letter reminds me of another resignation letter by Dave Cockrum to Marvel in 1979, that some prankster in the Marvel Bullpen turned into butler Jarvis' resignation letter in IRON MAN 127, after an alcoholic Tony Stark verbally abused Jarvis.

https://www.cbr.com/comic-book-urban-legends-revealed-46/

I find it really hard to believe that substituting Cockrum's resignation letter was a mistake.


There are a few other stories from that era, such as Frank Brunner's resignation in 1976, Craig Russell's in 1976, and a Jim Starlin interview in COMIC BOOK ARTIST where he describes, in the same 1976-1978 period, the mocking signs with paste-up art on Jack Kirby stories (i.e., "The stupidest story ever written!!" and so forth) where he lamented the very bad treatment he observed, behind Kirby's back, of an aging creator who was arguably the greatest proponent in building the industry they were all employed in.

All these things combined make me think that even in the peak years where Marvel created some of the stories I love most, there were some really mean people working there.

I still remember that time DC actually has the audacity to let Colletta ink Marshall Rogers of all people

A few issues of Englehart/Rogers MISTER MIRACLE 20-21, and at least one issue of WORLD'S FINEST (a 10-page "bottled city of Kandor" story) issue 259, as I recall. By Colletta standards, those were actually some decent inking jobs.
And at that time, Colletta was art director at DC and actually got Rogers his first DC assignments. So on the plus side, having Colletta ink his work got Rogers in the door and working professionally, at which point he rose rapidly.
Looking back at a list of Rogers' work, the overwhelming majority of it was inked by Terry Austin, the very best inker you could ask for.

The article I linked made me realize that the occasional "good" Colletta ink job (such as inking over Grell on WARLORD 26 and 27, or on Kirby's JIMMY OLSEN run over Kirby) could be because it was not actually Colletta, but one of his many assistants.

I always thought that if you were an entering 1970's / 1980's artist at Marvel or DC, it would be fun to have one issue inked by Colletta.
ONE !
Because that would be enjoying having your work inked by a well-known Silver Age quintessential inker (like Frank Springer, Frank Giacoia, Joe Geilla, Joe Sinnott, or Murphy Anderson). It would be a way of imagining yourself in the shoes of someone like Jack Kirby, Gil Kane or Gene Colan, sharing one of their inkers from their most famous period. Frankly most of these guys would not be my first choice, but it would be fun for one issue to see your work through the prism of a Silver Age inker.

I know John Byrne was furious that Colletta inked his story for SPECTACULAR SPIDERMAN 58 in 1981, and demanded that Colletta never be assigned to ink his work again. That was to be the first of a series collaborating with Roger Stern, and ended up being just the one issue, perhaps quitting precisely because Colletta was the inker on that series. But again, for one issue, I wouldn't mind it.

I can see way Bryne was furious. Colletta practically redrew it, and not for the better:
https://comics.ha.com/itm/original-comic...121635-14012.s#


It looks like a "Spidey Super Story"

Or to paraphrase the same perspective, it looks like a typical Vince Colletta ink job.

I think what would bother me most as the penciller is that Byrne's work is left unrecognizable, in inked form it's 100% recognizablle Colletta and 0% Byrne.

Dennis O'Neil in his prime in the early 1970's, in the era he was doing his best work on DETECTIVE COMICS, BATMAN, GREEN LANTERN, SUPERMAN, WONDER WOMAN, JLA, WEIRD WORLDS, THE SHADOW, JUSTICE INC., and other great work at DC.

O'Neil left DC in 1980 to work for Marvel (he was insulted that the Superman movie adaptation was never even offered to him, and left as a result as soon as his contract ended), and at Marvel he edited BIZARRE ADVENTURES, DAREDEVIL (teaching a lot about plotting and writing to Frank Miller), MASTER OF KUNG FU, MOON KNIGHT, SPIDER-WOMAN, POWER MAN/IRON FIST, and ALPHA FLIGHT, from 1980-1985.
All of which were among Marvel's best titles at the time he edited them.

O'Neil also scripted AMAZING SPIDERMAN, IRON MAN (the only O'Neil run I didn't like). And DAREDEVIL during the run from when Miller left in 1982, until Miller returned and did the DAREDEVIL: "Born Again" storyline in 226-233.

O'Neil then went back to DC and edited the Batman line of titles from 1986 until his retirement. During that time, he also wrote THE QUESTION and AZRAEL series, along with scripting a Batman story here and there.

I just found a great photo from a 1969 convention in New York.

http://www.fantucchio.com/fandom_reunion...heon_photo.html

From guys who were active in founding comics fandom and fanzines like Jerry Bails and Phil Seuling, to E.C. comics artists like Angelo Torres, Al Williamson and Gray Morrow, to Silver Age comics creators like Gil Kane and Dick Giordano, John Verpoorten, Archie Goodwin and John Buscema. And the emerging fans turning pro like Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, Rich Buckler, Don McGregor (and gorgeous wife!), Al Weiss and Mary Skrenes. Even the 12 year old kids in this photo are bucking 70 now!

What a cool snapshot of emerging comics fandom, and the crossover period between several generations of comics creators.

You can zoom in on 6 different sections of the photo to see their faces better.

John Fantucchio (whose website this is on) was and is a fan artist, who I think did his best work on the covers of RBCC (Rocket's Blast Comic Collector) fanzine that ran over 150 issues from the early 1960's up till about 1981. Fantucchio did a lot of the nicer covers from 53-64.

For a little more on John Fantucchio, and on the others in the above photo:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alley_Award

A high ratio of those in the above convention room photo were Alley Award winners throughout the 1960's decade, in both the creative professional and fandom categories.

Fantucchio is well represented in just the RBCC covers I linked above, but it's interesting to see him as a part of the whole of what was going on in comics at the time for 1968 and 1969:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_in_comics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1969_in_comics

I like how Wikipedia now has a link to the events of each year in comics. This photo gives a face to all those milestones.

http://donnewton.com/fandom.asp

A photo of Don Newton (holding his Flash Gordon painted cover for an RBCC issue) with G.B. Love and James Van Hise, the two editors for RBCC throughout the 1960's and 1970's.

Don Newton was an artist since the 1960's and early/mid 1970's on fanzines and for Charleton, coming to DC in 1976 on NEW GODS and other series before settling on BATMAN and DETECTIVE from 1978-1984. Newton unfortunately died very suddenly of a heart attack in 1984, at the very young age of 49.

Multiple photos of Steranko from a reproduced 1967 fanzine interview.

Steranko had been working in the "Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D." in STRANGE TALES 151-168 from Dec 1966 to May 1968, at a time where Steranko was still developing, and probably no one knew who he was yet, during the early half of his tenure on STRANGE TALES, where Steranko was possibly still doing finishes over Kirby layouts, or just beginning to do pencils and inks himself.

Here's a photo of Steranko from 1970, age 31, with the wraparound cover of STERANKO HISTORY OF COMICS Vol I:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/deconstructing-roy-lichtenstein/32851766994/in/photostream/

And a more recent photo of Steranko, who is now 79 (born in 1939).


Steranko in some of the photos is working as an escape artist, which he did starting in the 1950's. He was Jack Kirby's inspiration for the character MISTER MIRACLE.

I haven't met Steranko (but would love to), but others have described him to me as a tremendously energetic guy. He began working as an escape artist as a teenager, and ran away and worked for a circus for awhile. During the early 1960's he worked in the day at an ad agency, and then played in a nightclub band at night, before he did a few comics for smaller publishers and finally made his way to Marvel Comics in 1966. Several I know compared him to Harlan Ellison. Both Steranko and Ellison are short guys. Though Ellison was a lot more contentious.

A typically hero-worshippy article on Steranko from Entertainment Weekly:

https://ew.com/article/2014/07/31/infinitely-incredible-impossible-life-jim-steranko/

Still interesting to see his take on the recent Marvel movies and series. They make Steranko sound like Buckaroo Banzai.


Here's a 1973 photo of Steranko from a FOOM issue, along with photos of other Marvel staffers John Romita, Gil Kane, Frank Giacoia, and Tom Palmer.
Steranko did the FOOM fanzine for Marvel in the early 1970's getting it off to a good start, with a lot of pin-up pages, centerfolds, wraparound covers and other cool design stuff (several of which are linked at the end of the blog post.)

I already linked it, but I like both the photo and the text where Steranko nicely summarizes his life. The image behind him is the wraparound cover to STERANKO HISTORY OF COMICS Vol 2. I have both volumes, that I often pull off the shelf. I've often wondered what happened to the promised volumes 3, 4 and 5 that were to cover comics of the 50's, 60's and 70's eras.

And I had the good sense to buy the poster version of the Vol 1 wraparound cover. I can live without it, but I wish in retrospect I'd gotten the poster version of vol 2's cover as well.

In all its full color glory.



And here's a link to the super-sexy wraparound cover to Volume 1:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Silveragecomics/comments/74syfw/the_steranko_history_of_comics/

I looked up Mary Skrenes from the 1969 New York convention photo I posted above. I recognize the name from 1970's DC stories she did for HOUSE OF MYSTERY, HOUSE OF SECRETS, and PLOP for DC, and OMEGA THE UNKNOWN for Marvel in the 1970's. She wrote quite a few stories under the name "Virgil North". Many female writers write under male-sounding pseudonyms, because they feel they get a greater amount of respect than they would as a visible female writer. Although Mary Skrenes might have done it for self-conscious reasons that go beyond that.

A chronological list of her comics work:
https://www.comics.org/writer/name/mary%20skrenes/sort/chrono/

From her wikipedia listing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Skrenes



It appears she went on to write for Hollywood after she left comics, from what I read mostly animated cartoon episodes.

Neal Adams and Mike Grell, seated together at a 1977 convention.

I worshipped Grell back in the day, starting with his SUPERBOY/LEGION run in 1974-1977, then his GREEN LANTERN run from 1976-1978, and ultimately his WARLORD run beginning in 1975 with FIRST ISSUE SPECIAL 8 and continuing in WARLORD 1-50 (1976-1982).

Grell must have been in heaven to meet Neal Adams, since Adams' GREEN LANTERN run from 1970-1972 is what first inspired Grell to become an artist.
And all the more ecstatic Grell must have been, to take over doing the art on GREEN LANTERN himself, alongside Dennis O'Neil, taking over the series that inspired him to enter comics in the first place!

Here's a page of mostly DC letterhacks who turned pro as DC staffers, from AMAZING WORLD OF DC COMICS 1, July 1974. They were fans and gofers at this point at DC, maybe not even assistant editors. And with so many fanzines, they started doing this one for DC from 1974-1978, 17 issues total.
https://comiconlinefree.com/amazing-world-of-dc-comics/issue-1/25

• Carl Gafford was a colorist for DC in the 1970's and 1980's.
  
  Allan Asherman went on to do my favorite book on the Star Trek series, titled THE STAR TREK COMPENDIUM, that I first bought in 1982. It tells you a lot of background about the series, but manages never to bore you. It gives a background on the series development, each season, a synopsis of each episode, and a bit about the actors and how the story developed on each one. My edition covers up through the first 1979 movie. Probably newer editions expanded to cover later movies. In a pre-internet era, it was a great resource, at a time I was really into the series.
  
  Steve Mitchell is best known as an inker and staffer for DC in the 1970's and 1980's. He briefly had an art director job for short lived Seaboard Atlas in 1974-1975, and designed their company logo that appeared in the upper left on all their covers. He also inked an issue of Sienkiewicz's MOON KNIGHT run.
  
  Bob Rozakis needs no introduction. He wrote a ton of stories for DC in the late 1970's. One in particular I liked was a Bat-Mite story in DETECTIVE 482, illustrated by Michael Golden, included several photographed here as characters in the story.
  https://comiconlinefree.com/detective-comics-1937/issue-482/50
  
  Paul Levitz again needs no introduction. I think he's the best writer LEGION ever had, particularly the Levitz/Giffen 1982-1984 run.
  
  Guy H.Lillian, for my money, is the best, most clever, playful and funny of the DC letterhacks of that era. Across titles like GREEN LANTERN, DETECTIVE, BATMAN, JLA, the Superman titles and PLOP.
  
  Sol Harrison here was probably right at the end of his time as Vice President/Production Manager of DC. My appreciation for him is diminished by the fact that he's one of the the two that gave a Super-screwing to Schuster and Siegel, cheating them out of their life's work. As I recall, Harrison is the one who put the eye-catching "go-go chex" across the top of all DC's covers for a while in 1965-1966 to make them stand out. There was a house ad for the DC line that said "Look for the go-go chex!"
  
  E. Nelson Bridwell was a fan and letterhack in the 1960's who visited the DC offices often, and that resulted in him becoming an assistant editor of the Superman titles. He had incredible memory of Superman continuity details that DC's editors referenced for decades. He died in 1986, around the time Alan Moore's "Last Superman Story" came out.

There's also a Joe Kubert interview earlier in the issue, with photos of him at age 48, at the time he was still doing his TARZAN run, SGT ROCK, and a few other projects, editing DC's war comics line.

There are also Cathy Lee Crosby photos from her Wonder Woman TV series. She was very pretty, but Lynda Carter owns the role. For a long time I thought Cathy Lee Crosby and Denise Crosby were related, but they are not. Denise Crosby (Tasha Yar on Star Trek Next Generation) is the grandaughter of Bing Crosby.
Cathy Lee Crosby has no relation to either.



You can see every page of every issue on this site. I spent one hell of a long time purchasing the actual issues in mostly pre-internet times. Issues 4, 5 and 6 I bought back in the day by mail order from DC. I was out of comics for a few years after, and they were not as easy to buy after that. I bought most of them in the late 1980's and early 1990's, issues 2, 3 and 7-16, some on a lucky find at my local comic shop in the back issue bins, the rest by mail order or at conventions.
The last of those I purchased was issue 1 by mail order around 1995 or so, I think it was about 25 dollars. Tough to find! I didn't know for a long time there was an issue 17, and that was a surprise gift mailed to me by a friend of mine.

I'd say that series, the Adam Strange MYSTERY IN SPACE issues, and the STAR SPANGLED WAR and SHOWCASE Enemy Ace issues, were the hardest runs for me to assemble, throughout the 1980's and 1990's. But as all of you know, the adventure of finding them is, while sometimes difficult, half the fun!

Between Mycomicshop.com and Ebay, these things are generally much easier to find than they used to be.

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I previously found a great site where you could read the full issues of Marvel's FOOM fanzine, but dammit, I can't find it now!

Particularly the first 4 issues, that are designed by Steranko, and have some great covers and pin-up pages by him.

Here's a sampling. Steranko did the first 4 issues (of 22 total).
https://comicattack.net/is-43-foom-1-3/

Even without Steranko, they were a nice collection of pin-up pages of artists just starting out at Marvel, like Rich Buckler, George Perez and John Byrne. As well as photos every issue of Marvel's artists, writers, editors and production staff working there, just hanging out in the Marvel bullpen.

I updated the link in the above post, that allows you to read AMAZING WORLD OF DC COMICS 1 (and through it all 17 issues)

Here's another link to a second site that makes available the same material:
https://readcomiconline.li/Comic/Amazing-World-of-DC-Comics/Issue-1?id=100329#25

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• https://kleinletters.com/AboutMeTop.html

Here's Todd Klein, who was a DC staffer from 1977-1987, and as he describes it, after that became a freelance letterer, most notably on Neil Gaiman's SANDMAN series, and Alan Moore's America's Best Comics line.

I met Todd Klein by purchasing some stuff from him on Ebay years ago.

On another page of his site he shows a huge photo from a 1945 National Comics (DC) company Christmas dinner, where he made a valiant effort to identify everyone in the photo.

• https://kleinletters.com/Blog/dc-comics-1945-christmas-party/

There's even an exterior photo of the building in New York City where National Comics' (DC's) offices were at the time.

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A photo of writer Sam Hamm I ran across, who wrote the screenplay for director Tim Burton's Batman film (1989), and Batman Returns (1992).

He also dabbled in comics and did the 3-part anniversary story in DETECTIVE COMICS 598, 599 and 600, in 1989. Story by Sam Hamm, with art by Denys Cowan/Dick Giordano. I honestly wasn't overly impressed with this story. With pin-ups by Neal Adams, Berni Wrightson, and anniversary celebration pages by other writers and artists. Hamm may have done other comics work I'm not aware of. This photo looks to be from that period, he's 66 years old now.
Always interesting to see the face that goes with the work.