DC Comics

Way Off-Model Archie, or ‘Escaping the Big Two’

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« Our Betty Cooper is still the girl next door – she literally lives next to Archie. And she’s the blonde all-American girl; she’s so sweet and forgiving, gives people the benefit of the doubt and second chances, wears her heart on her sleeve. But she’s also incredibly broken on the inside, for many different reasons. » — Lili Reinhart

As a whole, comic book artists are not a happy lot, and for good reason. During the Golden Age, at least, there were countless publishers, so one could move around if unsatisfied with the working conditions.. even if meant finding out that things were rotten all over. After the mid-1950s, when the field violently contracted — you know the story — leaving scant players standing, you pretty much had to take the work, and the abuse, as they came. And certain publishers frowned upon ‘their’ creators playing what little remained of the field.

Kurt Schaffenberger had steady work at DC, but presumably — and understandably — sought to keep his options open, so he moonlighted for ACG, often under a pseudonym, probably unaware that the ‘competitor’ was covertly owned (at least in part) by DC co-founder and co-owner Harry Donenfeld. One can imagine Kurt’s distress when ACG folded in 1967. From what I can surmise, he did, in 1970, a lone, inexplicable cover for Stanley Morse… wildly outside his range but still kind of awesome. And then… he quietly boarded a bus to Riverdale.

A page from Voice of Doom; script by Frank Doyle, pencils by Schaffenberger, inks by Jon D’Agostino. Published in Archie’s TV Laugh-Out no. 16 (Dec. 1972, Archie).
The, er… punchline from Peace of Mind. Script by Frank Doyle, pencils by Schaffenberger, inks (likely) by Chic Stone; published in Archie’s TV Laugh-Out no. 18 (Mar. 1972, Archie).
Drawing for Archie wasn’t too much of a stretch for Kurt; whether it was Reggie or The Big Red Cheese getting knocked on his ass, he had his stock posture. This is Shazam no. 22 (Jan-Feb. 1976, DC). Pencils and inks by Mr. Schaffenberger.

A couple more samples from Mr. Schaffenberger’s all-too-brief Archie period — solid, well-paced, ably-designed and economical storytelling:

A slightly surreal one-pager from Archie’s Joke Book Magazine no. 150 (July 1970, Archie).
A page from Luck Struck, published in Archie’s Pals ‘n’ Gals no. 73 (Oct. 1972, Archie); note the Captain Marvel tank top young Mr. Andrews is sporting!

And then, there’s the case of Sal Amendola, a Neal Adams protégé whose reputation in comic books largely rests on a single Batman story, 1974’s ‘Night of the Stalker’, a highly praised tale whose chief conceits is that Batman never utters a word and weeps bitterly at the end. I’d apologise for the spoilers, but honestly, it’s been half a century, what mystery is there to dispel?

An excerpt from Detective Comics no. 439 (Feb.-Mar. 1974, DC); I’ll rarely say this, but Dick Giordano’s inks are an asset in this case, not a liability. The story’s scripting credits are at once hilarious and a bit sad: Steve Englehart, script; Vin and Sal Amendola, plot; and… “from an incident as described by Neal Adams.” Yeah, Neal; that’ll surely earn you a Pulitzer.

Anyway, after his turn in the Bat-spotlight and 1975’s Phoenix, one of the short-lived Atlas-Seaboard‘s more daring titles, Amendola turned up at… Archie. And it was not a good fit.

This, in fact, was the springboard for this post: a couple of years ago, I encountered an Archie story that so grotesquely missed the mark — stylistically speaking — that it bordered on the fascinating. You guessed it, Sal Amendola, utterly out of his element, not to mention, surprisingly… his depth.

Here are a pair of pages from Coach Reproach, published in Everything’s Archie no. 71 (Dec. 1978, Archie), script by George Gladir, pencils by Amendola, inks by Jon D’Agostino.

Where to begin? In the first panel, you give Archie a stiff, unnatural pose and you follow it up by repeating it on a background character in the very next panel. And Arch is due for a nasty case of whiplash if he keeps trying to make like Linda Blair.
At this point, I’m thinking Sal had learned plenty from his mentor on how to utterly fail at comedy.
If what I’ve observed about pitching stances is worth anything, Archie’s about to get brained by a baseball. Ginger boy is also looking right past Coach Kleats. Despite the low bar — issues of quality control were rampant at Archie in the 1970s — this is impressively incompetent storytelling,
What happens when you never learn basic inking principles: one creates depth by using thinner lines — and less detail — on background characters, otherwise… visual chaos ensues, as demonstrated here. And Sal’s Betty and Veronica sorely need a brand of shampoo that won’t leave their hair so oily and limp… but the anatomy is beyond help. This is the opening page of The Specialty, from Pep no. 342 (Oct. 1978, Archie).

Schaffenberger’s fellow Golden Age veteran, Gene Colan, also found himself moonlighting in the 1960s. In his case, it was for Marvel, under the alias of ‘Adam Austin’, but also for Dell (just a couple of covers mid-decade) and more significantly for Warren Magazines. In the 1970s, he concentrated on Marvel and was, in the chaos that was the so-called ‘House of Ideas’ at the time, the single most reliable artist in the maelström: surely none can match his seventy consecutive — and meticulously detailed — issues of Tomb of Dracula, in addition to lengthy runs on Howard the Duck, Daredevil, Captain America, Doctor Strange and so forth.

Enter Jim Shooter, a man only Vinnie Colletta could love.

« When writer Jim Shooter became Marvel’s editor-in-chief in the late ‘70s, the tension between Colan and the younger authors came to a head. By 1980, Shooter and Colan were totally at odds with one another over Colan’s approach to storytelling. »

« [Shooter] was harassing the life out of me. I couldn’t make a living,” Colan said. “He frightened me, he really did. He upset me so bad I couldn’t function.” Just as she had urged Colan to quit one job [in] the 1960s, wife Adrienne begged him to leave Marvel in 1980. After delivering his resignation, Colan was asked to sit down and seek resolution with Shooter and publisher Mike Hobson. Colan agreed to the meeting, but declined any overtures to stay at Marvel. “Shooter was in the same room,” Colan recalled, “and I said, ‘That man’s not gonna change. He is what he is. Whether it’s six days, six months or six years, it’s not going to be any different, so I’m not going to put up with it for another minute.‘ » [ source ]

He then scampered over to DC for a few years. His production there was hit-and-miss, but his Batman run (1981-86) was outstanding, pairing him with some of the rare inkers who could do his nuanced pencils justice: Klaus Janson, Tony De Zuñiga (to my amazed delight!) and especially Alfredo Alcala.

But once his contract ran out, he was out knocking on doors again. Against all odds, Archie beckoned.

This is the cover — dreadful, I’m afraid — of Jughead no. 17 (Apr. 1990, Archie), reviving the opportunistic, Batman TV show-derived ‘Riverdale Gang as superheroes’ de trop move of the mid-1960s, with even less aplomb. But then the Archie folks were plumbing an especially low point with such ‘experimental’ titles as Jughead’s Diner, Archie 3000, Dilton’s Strange Science, Jughead’s Time Police, Archie’s R/C Racers, Explorers of the Unknown, and of course The Adventures of Bayou Billy.
An action-packed — and Colan-shambolic — excerpt from that issue’s Hatman saga, written by Robert Loren Fleming, pencilled by Colan and inked by Rudy Lapick. Notwithstanding his sticking out like the proverbial sore thumb, Colan clearly had a ball working on his Archie stories. He brought some urgently needed chutzpah to a perilously stale formula.
A page from Will the Real Archie Please Stand Up!, published in Life with Archie no. 273 (July 1989, Archie), wherein Archie is mistaken for his doppelgänger, a foreign prince named Kafoufi… but of course. Pencilled *and* scripted by Colan, which is most unusual. Oh, and inked by Mr. Lapick, who doesn’t quite know what to do with those ol’ Colan worm-fingers, seen wriggling in panel five.

-RG

Treasured Stories: “Saga of the Secret Sportsmen!” (1963)

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« I was a peaceful sedentary man, a lover of a quiet life, with no appetite for perils and commotions. But I was beginning to realise that I was very obstinate. » — John Buchan

Over the course of several posts, I’ve extolled at length Carmine Infantino‘s skill as a cover designer. Yet the ability to envision and execute a single static image does not automatically translate into the skill of clearly and tidily breaking down a story into a suite of sequential panels, in much that same way that a superbly dexterous surgeon may be incapable of writing legibly. It pleases me to declare that Mr. Infantino’s no one-way specialist.

Infantino describes the evolution of his visual thinking: « The use of negative and positive shapes inside the panel had to mean something. So, to me, if the shapes didn’t draw the eye in, then they weren’t worthwhile. I had to move and change the shape to make it work for me. And that’s what I did. For me beforehand, the figure was the most important thing, and nothing else in the panel mattered. But later on, I found out that it was the total figure I had to worry about. » (all Infantino quotes excerpted from The Amazing World of Carmine Infantino: an Autobiography (2000, Vanguard Productions; edited by J. David Spurlock)

I’ve long wanted to feature this particular tale… for both script and artwork reasons. However, my copy was in Mysteries in Space: The Best of DC Science Fiction Comics (Apr. 1980, Simon and Schuster/Fireside; Michael Uslan, editor)… and I’d be all-but-guaranteed to destroy this beloved book in any attempt to scan from it. But — aha! — I’ve recently acquired a copy of DC Special no. 13 (Jul.-Aug. 1971), which granted the tale its first encore. Game on!

Someone slightly goofed here : The Brave and the Bold no. 47 was published in April-May 1963, not 1953.

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« The silhouettes I used in ‘Strange Sports Stories‘ [featured in The Brave and the Bold nos. 45-49] were innovations. Julie [editor Julius Schwartz] gave me the script and said, ‘We want this book to look different.” That’s all he said, and I went home and what I devised to make it look different was by using silhouettes as a dramatic device. The action starts in the silhouette, and then you go to the conventional panel, and the action follows through. One might almost call it an animated treatment. »

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As smooth and effective as the Infantino-Anderson pairing looks, there was some friction behind the scenes. Infantino explains: « I was beginning to experiment at the time and I threw anatomy out in favor of a higher level of design. Murphy was an excellent draftsman and I’d try to explain what I was trying to achieve to him but this was quite contrary to his own sensibilities. The more stylized I became, the more he thought the work had to be ‘fixed up‘. At one point, he asked for a raise because he had to change my work so much. What he thought he had to ‘fix‘ was the new style I was most excited about. »

Our featured story shares a central perspective with Russ Manning‘s rightly celebrated Magnus, Robot Fighter, whose inaugural issue had come out a mere two months earlier — though with that close a gap, it’s most likely a simple case of coincidence.

A relevant page from Magnus, Robot Fighter 4000 A.D. no. 1 (Feb. 1963, Gold Key); story and art by Manning, with input from editor Craig Chase, who initially pitched the idea of a SF hero to the publisher.

Are we getting less physically able with every succeeding generation, as our elders have been claiming for eons? Is it just a mistaken, shallow assessment arising from tone-deaf obduracy and bad faith — or have our forerunners all been correct about a general and ongoing decline?

-RG

Fungus Friday: Meet… The Mushroom Man

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Every once in a while, we celebrate the end of the working week with a leisurely walk through fungal pastures. This week’s installment is a bit on the spooky side, so if you are troubled by a little case of mycophobia, an affliction many suffer from, stick around for a spine-tingling experience. Me, I was definitely rooting for the mushrooms 🍄

The cover of this issue promised some mushroom goodies, so of course my interest was piqued, even though it makes no sense whatsoever to have skeletal arms protruding out of a fungus. Tales of Ghost Castle no. 1 (May-June 1975, DC). Cover by Ernie Chan; Tex Blaisdell, editor.

The cover story – 5-pager The Mushroom Man, plotted by David Michelinie, scripted by Martin Pasko, and illustrated by Buddy Gernale – is a tad more mycologically convincing.

Knowing that the fungus fancier is dead right from the beginning depressed me a little bit. However, starting at the scene of the crime to pursue in mushroomy flashbacks makes for good storytelling.
It’s possible for a mushroom to degrade super quickly (see, for example, shaggy manes aka Coprinus comatus that can deliquesce into a puddle of black goo in less than 24 hours after popping up), though 3 hours is pushing it a bit. ‘Nightdreamer’ sounds distinctly psychedelic, so we can take a guess about what kinds of ‘gourmets’ the uncle is referring to.
Did no-one wonder what happened to the uncle?
It’s not a ratty cellar, it’s an appropriately dark and humid cellar, you philistine. A ‘simple matter to tie up loose ends‘? Maybe the police had mycophobia, too, to let the matter drop so easily. One might add that cooking random mushrooms growing in the cellar is not recommended.
Hello, scene from Last of Us.

We are the champignons, my friends! Quite literally, in the case of this money-grabbing, murderous nephew.

~ ds

Holiday Havoc With Angel and the Ape!

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« A merry Christmas to all my friends except two. » — W. C. Fields

I was in the middle of writing a post on another topic, getting bogged down in its complexities, and then it dawned on me that Christmas was fast approaching, and I’d better switch gears pronto.

Thankfully, I had something in mind: an Angel and the Ape tale initially produced in the late 1960s but orphaned with the book’s cancellation. It was half-heartedly released from limbo –shall we say buried? — in one of those awkward tabloid format volumes, Limited Collectors’ Edition C-34: Christmas With the Super-Heroes (Feb.-Mar. 1975, DC) and not even advertised on the front or back cover… which is why it took me decades to learn of its existence.

On average, Angel and the Ape was only marginally funnier than the rest of DC’s humour books (save of course for Shelly Mayer’s consistently hilarious Sugar and Spike), but still leagues ahead of Marvel’s painful Not Brand Ecch et al. A&A was, imho, at its peak when E. Nelson Bridwell wrote it, lobbing some choice barbs at the esteemed competition.

To briefly illustrate my point, here’s a relevant panel from Angel and the Ape no. 3 (Mar. 1969, DC).

Script by Bridwell, pencils by Oksner, inks by Wood. The redhead in the green cape and star-spangled tights is Stan Bragg, editor-in-chef at Brainpix Comics, a clever amalgam of the Smilin’ One and his Rascally subordinate. “When you write good stories and do good artwork, don’t I sign it?“

-RG

Hallowe’en Countdown VII, Day 26

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« It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners. » — Albert Camus

Another day, another executioner… funny how these patterns emerge unbidden.

Jerry Grandenetti, with his tenebrous depths and oppressive angles, is another artist I’ve always strongly associated with Autumn and Hallowe’en. While the greater part of his work at DC Comics was war fare for Bob Kanigher, my heart pounds for his spooky work for editor Murray Boltinoff‘s 70’s stable of titles (The Witching Hour, Ghosts, and The Unexpected).

This particular tale marks a rare foray outside of the well-trod paths of formula and so-called ‘O. Henry’, or twist endings. Writer Bill Dehenny (an alias of editor Boltinoff’s, actually) ushers in midlife doldrums and attendant shades of moral grey, an unusually open, downright existential ending, elements scarcely encountered in DC ‘mystery’ comics of the era. Hell, there’s even a bird named Engelbert!

End of an Executioner was published in The Witching Hour no. 26 (Dec. 1972, DC), just after Brian Garfield’s Death Wish and well before Michael Winner’s film adaptation/distortion.

What’ll he do? Will he go the Bronson /Neeson vigilante route — or turn his back on the old family tradition?

-RG

Hallowe’en Countdown VII, Day 20

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« Physics should represent a reality in time and space, free from spooky action at a distance. » — Walter Isaacson

Who’s my favorite Batman foil? Why, The Spook, of course! A brilliant and patient (but twisted, natch) planner, engineer, escape artist and… businessman Val Kaliban was a most worthy opponent for the Batman in detective mode. Let’s sneak a gander at his earliest and most significant appearances.

This is Detective Comics no. 434 (Apr. 1973, DC). A middling cover, certainly not Michael Kaluta‘s best Batman cover… nor his worst. I mean, what’s Batman’s left leg doing exactly?

Here’s a fun sequence from the issue’s The Spook That Stalked Batman, scripted by Frank Robbins, pencilled by Irv Novick and inked by Dick Giordano.

This is Detective Comics no. 435 (June-July 1973, DC); an okay cover by Dick Giordano.
Ah, finally… The Spook gets a cover worthy of his mettle. This is Batman no. 252 (Oct. 1973), cover design by Carmine Infantino, pencils and inks by Nick Cardy, and lettering by Gaspar Saladino (well worth mentioning!)

A pair of pages from the issue:

This is Batman no. 276 (June 1976, DC). For the first time, someone other than his creator, Mr. Robbins, handles The Spook. Fortunately, it was talented scribe David Vern (writing as David V. Reed), quite possibly my favourite Batman writer. A fine, moody cover by Ernie Chan.
The Spook’s following appearance, in which Dick Giordano demonstrated he could come up with a crappy Andru-Giordano cover… all on his own. This is Detective Comics no. 488 (Feb.-Mar. 1980, DC).

The Spook’s Death Sentence for Batman, written by Cary Burkett, pencilled and inked by the splendid team of Don Newton and Dan Adkins, was a worthy send-off for this fine character. Beyond that… I don’t much care. The Spook is a difficult personage to write for, but he got three solid writers to chronicle his exploits, and that suits me just fine.

-RG

Hallowe’en Countdown VII, Day 9

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« The last I saw of Count Dracula was his kissing his hand to me, with a red light of triumph in his eyes, and with a smile that Judas in hell might be proud of. » — Bram Stoker

Comics fans of my generation might be forgiven for not fully appreciating Lee Elias‘ artistic assets if they encountered him, say, in Mystery in Space when he took over its lead feature, Adam Strange, from visionary Carmine Infantino. The series was mercifully soon discontinued, the victim of a game of editorial musical chairs designed to save the Batman titles, then — believe it or not — facing cancellation thanks to Jack Schiff‘s mismanagement.

So Schiff and Julius Schwartz traded workloads, Infantino grudgingly took over the Bat, and disaster was averted. But Adam Strange was the casualty.

While I do have a soft spot for Elias’ work on Ultra, the Multi-Alien (in Mystery in Space) and Eclipso (in House of Secrets), it wasn’t until I found out about his earlier, far edgier pre-Code shenanigans at Harvey Comics (with art director/designer/co-conspirator Warren Kremer) and, more directly and subtly his handful of stories for editor Murray Boltinoff‘s spooky titles (Ghosts, The Unexpected, The Witching Hour) in the 1970s, that I came to discern his light.

Boltinoff wisely played to Elias’ strengths in interests, handing him historical gothics to play with, and he delivered some of the finest work of his career.

Written by George Kashdan, The Most Fearful Villain of the Supernatural was published in Ghosts no. 50 (Nov.-Dec. 1976, DC).

Editor Boltinoff had this amusing idée fixe, commissioning purported ‘true’ stories wherein famous authors were “inspired” to pen their immortal works by some supernatural encounter earlier in life. From what I recall, Mary Shelley, Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson and — in this case — Bram Stoker were among the elected.

-RG

Hot Streak: Nick Cardy’s Bat Lash

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« You should be ashamed, Mr. Lash! Making such noises in front of the children! »

Bat Lash was introduced with issue 76 (August, 1968) of DC’s launching pad title Showcase, wedged between the respective débuts of Hawk and Dove and Angel & the Ape. At various stages of his conception, the character of Bartholomew “Bat” Aloysius Lash reportedly went through the hands of Carmine Infantino (who designed or at least supervised all of the following covers), Joe Orlando, Sheldon Mayer and Sergio Aragonés. Sergio plotted and thumbnailed the mise en scène, Dennis O’Neil added dialogue, then Nick Cardy pencilled and inked. For such a product-by-committee, Bat Lash is quite remarkably good — but then consider the talent involved!

Mind you, I make no claims of originality for Bat — he was distinctly a product of the times, when the vogue of Spaghetti Western had peaked* and ironically left its (off)brand on its model. By the time — in 1968 — its market reached its apex, the Italian Oater idiom threatened to congeal into a morass of clichés, becoming, as these things tend to go, (over)ripe for self-parody. Intentional and otherwise.

I surmise that the key model for Bat Lash was the ever-charming Mario Girotti**, reportedly enlisted thanks to his resemblance to the intense but one-note Franco Nero, even replacing the latter in his star-making, titular role of Django (1966) for a 1968 sequel, Prepare a Coffin, Django.

Ripe for its time it may have been, but I suppose that American audiences were still quite allergic to jarring tonal shifts in their entertainment (now commonplace), and would be for some time — just ask, say, John Carpenter. So the blend of light comedy and dark drama that Bat Lash proposed must have been difficult to market.

Our streak begins with Bat Lash no. 2 (Dec. 1968-Jan. 1969, DC) since the covers of Showcase no. 76 and Bat Lash no. 1 were good, but not — imho — great. I daresay this one is, in fact, the finest of the lot, with Cardy at his most Tothian.
A peek inside the same issue, for contrast: lively and loose inking over rock-solid pencilling, and miles away from the tone of the cover. My guess is that some people weren’t happy.
Bat Lash no. 3 (Feb.-Mar. 1969, DC) highlights the comedic side of the feature, which all but evaporated by the last two issues.
This is Bat Lash no. 4 (Apr.-May. 1969, DC). Dig Cardy’s expert use of the ‘drybrush‘ technique on the stones.
This is Bat Lash no. 5 (June-July 1969, DC). I’m reminded of a similar, later cover featuring one of Bat’s successors, Jonah Hex.
The price goes up and the comedy… just goes. This is Bat Lash no. 6 (Aug.-Sept. 1969, DC).
… and there goes the original tagline. This is the final issue, Bat Lash no. 7 (Oct.-Nov. 1969, DC)… and so must end this particular hot streak.

And now, some choice bonuses!

From issue 7, editor Orlando gives us some cheeky insight into the creation of an issue of Bat Lash.
And plotter Aragonés provides some visual direction.
To give you a sense of the less flippant, but not altogether grim, tone of the later issues, this is page two from issue 7. DC Comics of that period were quite ambitious with the limited means of the four-colour reproduction process, using plenty of backlighting and projected light… quite another level.

I was *delighted* to see ol’ Bat Lash turn up in the Weird Western Tales of DC’s outstanding Justice League Unlimited animated series, , along with some of his distinguished colleagues. In the usual order: Ohiyesa ‘Pow Wow’ Smith, El Diablo, Bat Lash, Jonah Hex.

-RG

* “In 1968, the wave of spaghetti Westerns reached its crest, comprising one-third of the Italian film production, only to collapse to one-tenth in 1969.” [ source ]

**alias « Terence Hill ».

Ragged, Starved, Hopeless: DeFuccio and Severin’s ‘Spoilers!’ (1971)

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« History deals mainly with captains and kings, gods and prophets, exploiters and despoilers, not with useful men. » — Henry Louis Mencken

A few months ago, I was reading an old John Severin interview (in Graphic Story Magazine no. 13, Spring, 1971, Richard Kyle, editor) conducted by John Benson, and this passage stuck with me:

BENSON : Who are your favorite comics writers that you’ve worked with?

SEVERIN: I don’t even know who writes half the stories. Well, there are two guys, but they aren’t essentially comics writers. I like to work with Jerry DeFuccio and with Colin Dawkins. They write stories.

Which in turn led me to another Severin interview, this one conducted by Gary Groth in the early 2010s.

GROTH: In the back of the book, I’m looking at one issue of Son of Tomahawk actually, which I guess is a post-Tomahawk spin-off, but Frank Thorne does the lead feature and you did a really beautiful backup, I think one of your best strips during this period called Spoilers, that Jerry DeFuccio wrote.

SEVERIN: Really?

GROTH: You don’t sound like you have any recollection of this whatsoever.

SEVERIN: No, not at all. Oh, there’s an awful lot of stuff. Once I do a script and turn it in, it’s only with minor exceptions that I’ll remember the thing next week! I might remember it later on if somebody reminds me of something, but if somebody said, “What did you do last week?” I’d be damned if I know.

Severin’s reaction, to me, is a reminder of two things: first, that some artists (and fans!) are only interested in the visual aspects of comics. And second, that work conditions in the comics field (and most other commercially driven endeavours) are pretty inhumane if you have to just keep chugging on, with little time or impetus to look back and sniff the newsprint, let alone reflect.

Jerome ‘Jerry’ DeFuccio (1925 – 2001) was born on this day, ninety-eight years ago. While he’s most closely associated with his quarter-century stint as associate editor of Mad Magazine, readers of EC’s war/adventure titles know he could also pen, in excellent fashion, a thoroughly gripping yarn. Here’s one of the handful he later did for DC, for editor Joe Kubert. And while Son of Tomahawk wasn’t commercially successful, it was a highlight of its era, a truly adult comic book. See for yourself:

‘Spoilers!’ saw print in Tomahawk no. 135 (July-Aug. 1971, DC).
Here’s a lovely illustration of some of the EC gang, in civil war drag . Like it says, DeFuccio’s third from the left. Ink and wash over graphite pencil on Bristol board. » Drawn in the 1950s, this piece saw print in 1983, in issue 9 of the excellent EC fanzine Squa Tront.

GROTH: Was DeFuccio working for Mad at that time?

SEVERIN: Yeah.

GROTH: It seems like you remained friends with DeFuccio for a very long time.

SEVERIN: Yeah, I had to. He was my wife’s cousin.

-RG

Bending Reality With Steve Skeates

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« Carefully, the old man utters a cacophonous incantation… then lets his mind go blank. » — Stephen Skeates

We recently (last March 30) lost a fine fellow and writer in Steve Skeates (1943-2023). I’ve long appreciated his work, as I felt he was among the very few ‘mainstream’ comic book writers who could actually be funny, not to mention gripping or thought-provoking*, whatever the situation demanded.

At its peak, his writing also stood out by virtue of its containing actual creative ideas rather than the usual mishmash of bromides and creativity-stifling continuity that the fanboys clamoured for.

Today, I’ll showcase a bicephalous favourite, The Spectre in « The Parchment of Power Perilous » and Dr. Graves in « The Ultimate Evil », both springing from the same author… and the same plot.

How did this come to pass? Skeates told the story in an article entitled « Graves Acting Strangely: The Ultimate Evil Reconsidered », published in Charlton Spotlight no. 5 (Fall 2006, Argo Press, Michael Ambrose, editor).

« … at that particular point in time, I was totally unaware of the unique manner in which Julie [Schwartz ] approached his profession, typically in the dark when it came to the fact that this longtime comic book icon was far more actively involved in the plotting process than any other editor up at DC. […] I ambled into Julie’s well-kempt office armed with an intricate plot… something I had stayed up half the night before constructing, working, reworking, polishing and repolishing, only to have Julie read it over, extract a couple of ideas he liked, and unceremoniously toss the rest of it away. […] the two of us set about constructing what basically amounted to a brand-new plot based on those couple of ideas of mine that Julie liked, ideas that had somehow gotten his creative juices flowing. »

Charles J. “Jerry” Grandenetti (1926-2010) shows to breathtaking advantage his mad compositional virtuosity, anchored by Murphy Anderson’s rational inks. Skeates again: « … inker Murphy Anderson was the perfect stabilizing force, his meticulously detailed inks reining in Grandenetti’s insanity just enough so that even the latter’s wildest notions — colliding planes (no, not aircraft — planes of existence), his frequent disdain for panel borders, the same character shot from two or three separate angles within seemingly the same panel, etc. — became perfectly understandable, making the story so much utter fun to follow (even for someone like me who obviously knew exactly where it was going. ) »
Grandenetti’s two previous issues on the title, illustrating Gardner Fox’s Pilgrims of Peril (check out a stunning excerpt here) and The Ghost That Haunted Money!, had demonstrated that he likely was the only match for Ditko when it came to depicting hallucinatory other-dimensional vistas. Let’s face it, just about all who followed Ditko on Doctor Strange either half-heartedly aped Ditko’s designs or drew other dimensions as if they were Wally Wood’s outer space (or Dali’s The Persistence of Memory). Well, save for Tom Sutton, I guess. Grandenetti could have done a great job, but honestly, I like his career as it is. The day Steve Ditko walked away from Doc Strange is the day the character ceased to exist, as far as I’m concerned.
Five pages from The Spectre n. 8 (Jan.-Feb. 1969), edited by the… mighty hand of Schwartz. Special kudos to the uncredited colourist (though DC’s assistant production manager Jack Adler surely supervised), who did a superlative job, making discerning use of bold contrasts and close harmonies. It would have been so easy to end up with a garish mess!

Unlike (with one notable exception, initials SD) his colleagues who scampered from Charlton to DC along with editor Dick Giordano (Denny O’Neil and Jim Aparo, for instance) in the late 1960s, Skeates maintained his Charlton work for a time. He explained: « I simply possessed too much affection for what I was producing for that Derby, Connecticut company to do anything along those lines. » Skeates enjoyed « … contributing to Charlton’s take on the “mystery” anthology, ghostly compilations somehow edgier, funkier, and far more fun than those produced by DC and Marvel. »

« Furthermore, unlike DC, Charlton didn’t require that I first submit a plot outline, get it approved, and then write my story. Instead, I could just suddenly turn in a finished product, on spec, a way of working I very much preferred — diving right in with the plot idea only sketchily there, not boxed in even by myself but allowing the story to work itself out, to go where it wanted to go. » Amen.

The one time we saw the Doctor M. T. Graves truly get his mystical groove on was in this tale of two Steves, Skeates and Ditko, a splendid bit of recycling-but-not-quite.

And he’s how the whole ball of wax coalesced: « I suddenly remembered that fairly intricate Spectre plot that Julie had long ago summarily tossed aside. Hey, y’know, I might just be able (especially if I placed most of my emphasis on those portions that Julie hadn’t extracted, working on the bulk of my original plot while rather downplaying those couple of ideas that Julie and I had built our new plot on) to transform that baby into a workable Dr. Graves adventure! »

This is The Many Ghosts of Doctor Graves no. 12 (Jan.-Feb. 1969, Charlton). Edited by Sal Gentile.

« Boom! I was into it, writing this story nearly as fast as I could type. Of course, to in effect have Graves play the role of the Spectre, I could see no way around making certain alterations to my protagonist’s makeup, making him far more mystically powerful than he had ever before seemed, more like Marvel’s Doctor Strange than anyone else…

Yet I could see no real problem in any of that, unless of course someone up at Charlton wound up doing something supremely silly like assigning the art for this story to none other than Ditko himself — which, as it turned out, is exactly what happened! »

Some — perhaps all, who knows? — of this tale’s original art (or at least production photostats) has survived, and gives us the opportunity to gaze upon Ditko’s artwork in its raw state, so to speak.

Hail and farewell, Mr. Skeates. You will be missed.

-RG

*From the thought-provoking aisle, may I steer you towards Skeates’ intriguing Dr. Thirteen tale, « … and the Dog Howls Through the Night! »?