*Spotlight on Vince Sullivan* Easter Sunday, 1994 The FDA has decided that Chapparrel is a dangerous drug. Obviously, they're right. I was sitting there enjoying a long draft when I started _thinking about comics_. And suddenly I realized I had yet to transcribe this Vince Sullivan interview from the 1993 San Diego Comic Convention. So, no thanks to the FDA, here it is: *Spotlight on Vince Sullivan*. Remember also that DC doesn't claim to have any history. (What was that? Did someone scrawl "JSA" in blood at the end of the hallway?) Legend: A: Audience AM: Audience Member C: Convention Workers M: Mike Catron (or, possibly, Moderator, since another person may have walked in later on. Really, all it is is someone other than Mr. Sullivan who sounds real loud on the tape.) V: Vince Sullivan Words in brackets [] are words that I'm not sure about. My own comments are set off by arrow brackets <>. I've prettied it up a bit, because I doubt you really want to read everybody's "um's" and "you knows" and rephrasings. Anybody who wants the original text can send me electronic mail at queries2111zt, at hoboes.com. If you have any corrections, especially for the names in brackets, send them to me! Oh, and now that I have your attention, I'd like to point out that today is the anniversary of the return of the greatest superhero of all time. And to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, "At least once in his life, each man walks with Karen to Chicago." Have ye here any meat? Aye, fish and honeycomb. A: Short Applause M: My name is Mike [Hathorin]. I'm gonna vamp until Gary Carter shows up, because he's the expert. But there's a lot of stuff I don't know and since I figure a moderator's job is to ask questions, that's how I'm going to start. This is Vince Sullivan. Vince was the first editor on Action Comics, worked for DC in the mid-30's, and did some work on _New Comics_. You started out as a cartoonist, right? V: I started out as a cartoonist. My whole career has been focused on cartoons and comics and whatnot. I still can't recall how I came together with Malcolm Wheeler Nicholson and Whit Ellsworth, but anyway, we came together and started the first original magazine with [aristeraction]. It was the first magazine with original comics. That was called _More Fun_. After that came _New Comics_, and then _Detective Comics_. So we published the first _Detective Comic_ book. Shortly after that the financial picture became rather sad and we were taken over by Independent News Company, which was the National Periodical Publications, which later became Detective Comics. After they bought us, Nicholson dropped out of the picture and Whit Ellsworth took off for California, so I-- M: Now, this is Donenfeld and Liebowitz? V: Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz. And Jack Liebowitz is still alive. Harry Donenfeld died. So that's the beginning of it. M: You went from being a cartoonist to an editor at some point. Was that during the takeover? V: Yes. I would say I was both a cartoonist and an editor on the beginning of the magazines. I did drawings for the books _More Fun_ and _Detective_- -the first cover of _Detective Comics_ is mine. But I eventually got into the editorial end of things. I sort of dropped the cartoons. M: So you were the editor for Detective, you were dealing with Siegel and Shuster? V: Yes. M: How did you work with Siegel and Shuster before Superman? V: They... I'd have to think on it... M: They were doing Slam Bradley... V: Yes. This is going back fifty years, you know. Perhaps even more. They came into the office--this was when I was with Detective Comics, the second... the first Detective Comics company. They came in with some of the features that looked appealing to me, and I suppose they looked very good to the customers, who bought the book, _Slam Bradley_ and _Monsieur DuBraley_, or it was some name like that, a French name. AM: _Monsieur Duval_ V: _Henri Duval_, that's right. You have a good memory. And then they did bring in, eventually, the _Superman_ strip. In strip form, like a comic strip would appear in the newspaper. And I thought that if we'd cut it apart and make it up into pages, we could put it in the magazine that we were just starting, _Action Comics_. Which we did. They filled in certain areas of the story that were needed, and they came up with the first feature in _Action Comics_. M: They brought it in as a comic strip? V: Yes, they did. M: And now Max Gaines was involved with this. V: Yes. Charlie Gaines. He was with McClure Newspaper Syndicate at that time. I think that Jerry and Joe had been to every newspaper syndicate in New York City to try to sell the feature. And finally mailed it to McClure after the other syndicates turned it down. So Charlie sent it up to me, hoping that we could use it in the magazine. Which we did. I had it cut apart, made into page form, and matted. So that was how it got in. M: And then you were also the editor on Detective when Bob Kane brought that in? V: Yes. As a matter of fact, Bob wrote a feature in People Magazine, about 1989, when Batman first came out to the motion picture business, and he claimed that about six months after _Superman_ was started, he came in one Friday and spoke to "my editor"--I was the editor. He said he thought he'd come out with a feature that would be pretty good, and that these two fellows Jerry and Joe were making a barrel of money (which they weren't). So I said "go ahead and see what you can do." Bob claims that the following Monday he came in, and he presented me with _The Batman_, and according to him, and I quote, he said I liked it very much, and I said "Okay, we'll go ahead with it." That's how that started. So it was not just another feature that came in, but it looked good, they both looked exceptionally good to me. They looked different, and I thought it was something that would pep up the magazines, which they certainly did. M: Now, one classic story, about _Superman_ particularly, was that it was a tough sell to Liebowitz. Do you remember having to...? V: I don't know. I didn't have to sell it. M: He just let you do pretty much what you wanted on the books? V: Yes, I was pretty much in charge of the editorial end of it. No, I don't recall any hesitance on his part to run the thing. In other words, the whole editorial thing was in my hands and which I took care of. M: How big was the office at this time, who else was there? V: I think Fred Guardineer might have been there, if that name means anything to anybody. Fred was the cartoonist that did _Durango Kid_ and a few other things, such as [_The Terror_]. I had a letterer, I think. There weren't too many people in the office. Just the three or four of us. M: As today, I assume most of the artists were freelance? And writers? V: Oh, yes. None of them were under contract. M: When you first realized that _Superman_ was going to take off, and it was going to start making money for the company, how did that change things at the office and the way things were done, especially when you started to get into licensing _Superman_ on the radio? V: I hadn't much part of that. I was there, but I hadn't much part of it. I was still unconnected with the financial end of the organization, so I didn't have too much information about it. M: Well, they wanted more titles, they wanted it more often... V: You mean increasing the number? M: Yes, your workload! V: That was automatically done anyway. It was in _Action Comics_. I think that might have been a bimonthly magazine, and they made it monthly, and then of course we started to feature him-- _Superman_--in his own book. M: Okay, well, what about-- V: I'm trying to remember--as they say, I have to go back in my mind to recall these things that took place about half a century ago. *Questions from Audience Start* Rich: Can you tell us about Gardner Fox? Because I believe he wrote some of the early Batmans after Bob Kane called him in, and some early Zatara's after Guardineer started that up. Said he was an old friend of yours? V: Yes, Gardner was a very old friend of mine. I went to grammar school with him. I knew him all my life, and as a matter of fact I think I persuaded him to jump into the writing field. He was a lawyer. He passed the bar. But he was not particularly interested in law. He was always interested in writing, so I asked him, "why don't you try some of these features" that we were running--writing scripts. He did, and he became very successful doing that. He was a very *prolific* writer. M: One thing I think is important to remember, especially in the context of people who think of comics today, was in the period that Mr. Sullivan's talking about, a comic book was a sixty- four page *package*, but there were *multiple* features, there were lots of strips in a given book. It wasn't just one story that ran sixty-four pages or two stories. You'd have five, six, seven- - V: Seven or eight-- M: --things running at a time. V: --five or six page stories, as a matter of fact. So yes, there were quite a number of characters created and stories written for the numbers of books that we were running. If we had four or five monthly magazines and five or six stories in each one, why you'd have twenty-five, thirty, forty features. M: How did you go about coordinating all of that? That's an awful lot of people to deal with on a regular basis, on a monthly title. Did you have a system for dealing with them? V: I had a system, sure. I had a schedule for them. They knew what work was supposed to be done. I'm sure I had somebody helping me then, at the time, but I don't recall who it was. Some girl or some fellow, I don't remember. Charlie: How did things change when Malcolm Wheeler- Nicholson sold out to Donenfeld and the other people? How did things change for you in the office? V: Not very much. We simply changed the office. We were on a place on Fourth Avenue in New York City and moved uptown about five or six blocks to where Donenfeld and Liebowitz had their office. Charlie: Do you think it was a change for the better? V: Oh, I think so, sure. Because we were sort of floundering around, trying to raise money. At that time, the comic books were sold on a consignment basis. That's what the deal was. In other words, if the books didn't sell, we had to take the copies back. I understand it's changed now, since I think the publishers sell the books directly to the dealers. Is that the way it is now? M: A lot of comics are sold that way, but DC still and Marvel do it both ways. They have two different chains of selling comics. V: They still maintain their distribution company. But that was the way it was then. Editorially it didn't change at all, because Liebowitz and Donenfeld had really nothing to do with the editorial end, and left it up to me and my team. AM: At the time you were making comics, Mr. Sullivan, were you focused particularly on making them for children, or did you think it was important to do some things for adults? V: Well, for *juveniles*. it was a children's audience primarily. Young boys and young girls. Moreso the boys than the girls obviously. That was the reason I selected _Superman_ and _Batman_. The girls were always left on the second shelf it seems to me. I don't know how the girls participate today. Do they buy comic books as much as the boys? I'm sure they-- AM: [DC changed Robin in the Batman into a female Robin.] V: Because I remember years ago I brought out a book called _Keen Teens_, which was modestly successful. Spent a lot of money on it. It had Frank Sinatra on the cover, and Perry Como--this is going back, they were young fellows then. But the thing didn't sell too well. AM: What year was that? V: The _Keen Teens_? In the forties, I think, 19...? M: Who published that? V: I did. M: You did it yourself? Tell us about that. V: You want to know about my life now? Well, I have to go back to the DC organization. This would be 1939. The World's Fair was just being brought into existence. I knew some of the people there, and I also had the idea of bringing out a comic book for the World's Fair. I didn't have the money to actually publish it. First I went to the World's Fair people and secured the right to produce a World's Fair comic. Then I went to Jack Liebowitz and Harry Donenfeld, and asked them if they wanted to participate with me in this joint venture. They said, "sure." It was a twenty-five cent book, ninety-six pages of comics, with a stiff cover, and it was supposed to be sold primarily at the New York World's Fair. It wasn't too successful, quite frankly, even though we had _Superman_ in it, among the many features. So then we took it out of the Fair, we expanded the distribution, and dropped the price to fifteen cents. And still it wasn't a world-beater, but as a result of that, my dealings with DC Comics started to deteriorate, because I was very unhappy with the way we were conducting business. Particularly the two fellows, Siegel and Shuster, I know they were, I hate to say this, but I think they were taken over the coals, if you know what I mean, as far as their operation was concerned. I did suggest before they signed up with DC Comics that they consult an attorney. I was telling Charlie Roberts and Dave here that at that time I was trying to get some business for my brother Frank, who had just passed the bar, he was my attorney also. But they didn't do it, they didn't see anybody, and they--now these dealings I had nothing to do with, but I knew they were going on- -they signed up with Liebowitz and Donenfeld, and in effect they signed their rights away. For everything. I'd say that, plus when the _World's Fair_ returns came in, that there was some difficulty about that. As far as I was concerned, with Liebowitz and Donenfeld. As a result of that, I--at that particular time anyway, the McNaught Newspaper Syndicate, the syndicate that had Joe Palooka and Dixie Doodle and Mickey Finn and quite a few of these characters, they came to me and said they were interested in starting a comic book business, and would I be interested, and I said, "sure," because of my dissatisfaction with DC. So I left them. I left Detective Comics and then went down to McNaught and we formed a company called Columbia Comic Corporations and started the book called _Big Shot_, which was fairly successful. I stayed there two years or something, that's all. And I tried to persuade these fellows, that had these characters who were then being syndicated-- Dixie Doodle, Joe Palooka, Mickey Finn, the Bungles, there were quite a number--to reprint those in comic book form, to expand their market. And they didn't have much interest in it, so I said, "well, do you mind if I try it myself?" So I formed a company, Magazine Enterprises, and started that with--the war was on then--started that with _The United States Marines_, _American Air Forces_, and _Joe Palooka_, which McNaught Syndicate didn't want them producing. M: _The United States Marines_, was that the first war comic? V: Well, it might have been, I don't know either. I think it probably was. I recall how the American News Company--they were distributing my books then--they advised against bringing the book out, because no one had any interest in that type of thing. "The kids wouldn't buy it." But I sunk whatever little money I had into the thing, and it was successful. That was _The Marines_, and _The United States Air Forces_ came next. But during that period I also produced some of the _Joe Palooka_ features, and some of the other characters that McNaught had. AM: Two questions going back, another question on the World's Fair comics. That was something that you went and secured the rights for from them. Was it something that you self-published, and then worked out with DC for the rights to use _Superman_ in the book. V: Oh yes. I was still with Detective Comics, when I approached the World's Fair people. and got the rights to produce a _World's Fair_ comic. AM: But it was published through DC. V: Yes, it was published through their organization. We were supposed to split the profits. And that's where some difficulty arose after... M: Well, Liebowitz was an accountant, right? So he got to define what profits were, is that how it...? V: Those things were very secretive. AM: This is the other question I wanted to ask you. Because I know that you weren't instrumental in making these deals, you touched on the situation with Siegel and Shuster. But I was curious, because I've heard some different things, different versions... although they signed everything away, was Bob Kane ever given a piece of Batman, or did he get the same deal and he and DC maintain a friendly relationship? V: I don't know what his deal was. I was never brought in on the contractual side. But I think Bob Kane made a *better* deal than Siegel and Shuster. AM: I've heard that Siegel and Shuster's mistake was getting a lawyer. V: Yeah, I know that, I explained that, but you mentioned something about Bob Kane? AM: He said "Let's sit down with Jack Liebowitz and work out a fair arrangement. Seeing as you created _The Batman_, you should be guaranteed a certain amount of pages, every year, as long as it holds out, and they didn't have too much trouble with writing that up, because DC still had the rights... V: Sure, and they maintained their rights, even when the motion picture came out. I haven't seen Bob Kane in years. I did speak to him recently on the phone. I don't know how he made out with the picture-- AM: He got a percentage. V: He did a little better with _Batman_ than Siegel and Shuster did with _Superman_. AM: And better than you did with _World's Fair_. V: Well (laughs) I wouldn't say any better. We broke even with that, as you might say. But as a result of that I left. M: Let's get a question from Rich [Morrisey]. Rich: Well, you were talking about Bob Kane. It's come out in later years that he developed Batman with a writer named Bill Finger, and Finger wrote most of the Batman stories that Gardner Fox didn't in that first year, and many of the years afterwards, and yet Finger never was acknowledged as a co-creator, officially, even today. Do you know anything about that, or Bill Finger? V: No. I don't think I ever met Finger. I heard his name mentioned, but I don't know what he did. I think Kane made a deal with Finger, so Finger was working with Bob Kane. Rich: Right. But what I understood is that whatever you paid Kane, he paid Finger out of that. V: Well, he might have. Because some of these fellows eventually had letterers, people that handled the coloring, and penciling, which had nothing to do with me, I mean that was the obligation of the artist, or the fellow like Kane, or whoever, to pay these fellows. Rich: He hired Finger to write and Jerry Robinson came to later help penciling and Gary [Mewchelski], they I think all worked for DC later, but was that after your time? V: Oh, yes. I never met any of these fellows. M: What became of Magazine Enterprises? You say you got started during the war. V: Well, I had to quit that, as a matter of fact I was starting to lose money, a lot of money, when television came along. I was producing a lot of cowboy and Indian books, and westerns and all that. _Hopalong Cassidy_ and _Davy Crockett_. I had _Daniel Boone_. _Tim Holt_ was mine, and _Great Western_, but the-- AM: You did the original _Ghost Rider_, right? V: Yes. I created _Ghost Rider_. I remembered a book- -a song--that somebody sang years ago... AM: Ghost Riders in the Sky, Bill Munroe. V: (laughs) The title fascinated me, and I thought it might make a different type of comic book. And it was. It was pretty good. M: Dick Ayers drew that first issue, right? V: Yes. AM: Didn't Gardner Fox write it for you? V: He may have, yes. Gardner was doing an awful lot of work for me, I know that, but I don't recall what particular ones. AM: So you would've dealt with Frank Frazetta and the other artists. V: Yes. AM: What was it like working with Frazetta, was he--he always seemed aware of the marketplace. V: Frank was an excellent artist. At that time I had an organization, my own editor, and Ray Crank; several girls--Virginia Leahy, and Sally Anderson. I would not see these fellows too often. I was a recluse. M: You had offices in Manhattan. V: Oh yes, Manhattan, and downtown, and Park Place. AM: You talk about publishing comic books, I know a lot of artist, such as Frazetta and Kirby published their own books in the forties. Was it fairly inexpensive to publish a book? Could you give us an estimate? V: It would cost about twelve to fifteen, sixteen thousand dollars a book, and when you pushed, it would vary, probably, up to twenty thousand. That was a lot of money in those days. So when I was producing books that would cost fifteen thousand dollars and doing seven or eight or ten a month, it doesn't require any mathematical genius to know that when you start selling fifty percent or fifty- five percent, taking returns back, as we were doing, you lose a lot of money quickly. You had to sell at least sixty percent to break even, sixty or sixty-five percent. When television came in, that was the thing that killed me. I hung on as long as I could, but how can you hang on to the tail of a tiger? It was thousands of dollars each month. So I had to fold up, and then started a company called the Sussex Foods Company, and we had permission to manufacture Popeye Peanut Butter, which was unsuccessful. That's because the food business is very undependable and very expensive, You need a tremendous amount of money to break into it unless you have an exceptional product. It's the same as comic books--you need an exceptional title and features. AM: At Magazine Enterprises you did something different than a lot of publishers. A lot of them would come out with many different books, each one published by a corporation that would be just a legal entity to prevent them from getting sued. You did it differently, you published most things under A-1 _Comics_, then you would rotate the feature, and you'd never know you were buying an issue of A-1 _Comics_ but after a couple of months it would change its-- V: Well, that was a blanket type of operation. We were using that as a logo that people would recognize. I think others have done it. AM: Mr. Sullivan, were there any exceptional characters or features that you thought would made it, but didn't? Personal favorites, that you thought were going to take off like _Superman_, or _Submariner_, or _Batman_, but didn't quite get going ? V: I can't recall any. AM: Siegel and Shuster worked for you at M.E. after they parted ways with DC. I wonder if you had any remembrances of that-- V: I do. I was mentioning it today with some friends here. Very briefly, they came out with a feature called _Funnyman_, which I thought was quite different, and I produced it, and again I ran into problems with DC Comics because in my other books I advertised _Funnyman_ as having been created and written by the fellows that did _Superman_, and used that as an ad, and of course DC Comics called us about the _Superman_ title on my ads. They were mad as the dickens. But nothing came of it. That didn't last too long anyway. It was a *good* feature, but it didn't catch on. M: It was also a newspaper strip, wasn't it? V: I don't think so. _Funnyman_, I don't recall. M: I think it was, actually. AM1: Yes, it was a newspaper strip that ran, I think a little bit after the comic book did. The comic started right after they left DC in early forty- eight, and the newspaper strip started in October forty-eight and lasted into the middle of Nineteen Forty-Nine, where a supporting character named Reggie van Quirk took over the strip and eventually the title, it didn't last very much longer. V: Yes? I don't recall that. AM1: It wasn't circulated very widely, I just happened to find a newspaper that did carry it, so that's why I remember this stuff. AM: Earlier you talked about _Superman_. _Superman_ was not the first costumed hero in comics. It was the Crimson Avenger. M: I also heard Dr. Occult was one or so. V: Well, Dr. Occult, Siegel and Shuster produced that. Chambers did the Crimson Avenger. AM: Did he create Crimson Avenger? V: I don't know whether he did or not. I might've suggested it to him. He _was_ the one that did it. AM1: I think Crimson Avenger was a bit after Superman. Superman started in June Nineteen Thirty-Eight, Crimson Avenger in-- AM: Thirty-Seven. AM1: Thirty-Seven? Uh... Which issue was that? A: M: We have it on good authority... A: AM: What other characters were created under your tenure? You were there for, what, two, three years? V: Yes, not too long... Well, I'd have to think of all the characters that appeared in the earliest _Detective Comics_. M: You were the only editor at DC for a number of years, up until--? V: Any books or features that came out during that particular period were under my control. M: Do you know the date that you left DC? V: Good God, I don't recall. Could've been Nineteen Forty. M: Was it before or after Bill Harmon? V: I honestly don't know. AM: I think it was Nineteen Forty. _Big Shot_ is in Nineteen Forty, if you started _Big Shot Comics..._ V: It could have been. AM: Were you there when Batman One came out? AM: Did you edit Batman One? V: Oh, yes. AM: Summer of Nineteen Forty, then. Didn't you also do the first romance comic? V: Oh, yes. It was called _Romantic_. M: And that was from M-E? V: Yes. And Craig Flessler did the cover of that. Very nice. AM: And the first Frazetta comic, _Thun'Da #1_, wasn't that yours? A character called Thun'Da? V: Thun'Da? Oh yes. I keep on forgetting these figures. *Thun'Da, the King of the Congo*. AM: [Bob Wilson] and Frazetta, I think. V: Yes, he could have written that. And _Cave Girl_, a female Tarzan, which was quite good. I think Frank Frazetta did some of that. Bob Powell, who was also a very excellent artist, also did some of that. AM: Back when you were at DC, you developed, as an editor, the original _Sandman_. Wasn't that by Gardner Fox and Bert Christman? The original Sandman wore a gas mask and-- V: Yes, I know the character. I still don't remember who created _Sandman_. I'm inclined to think it might have been Bert Christman. Because it seems to me that I was with Craig Flessler in the office, and he came in to inform me that Christman had been shot down--he was an aviator, he joined the Air Force--and he was shot down in the Pacific. And that's where we were talking about the _Sandman_. But he did the first Sandman with Christman as the artist. Now, he may have created the character for all I know. AM: Gardner Fox told me once that he had written it. V: Well, he could have written several stories, or maybe he got together with Christman and wrote a story, for all I know. I don't recall. M: As an editor, how strong was your hand, and what sort of things did you look for in a story? V: Well, certainly action--and good stories. Possibly detective stories too, or mystery stories. There weren't too many of those around, but _The Crimson Avenger_, for instance, would have been a mystery story. M: Did you read a lot of pulps? V: I don't think I ever read the pulps. AM: I notice that a lot of superhero comics back then, particularly ones like Sub-Mariner were on a war theme. They had a lot of particular war stories, with the Nazis. Were there agreements between the government and the comic-book industry, to push the war effort, or was it just something that was done? V: Oh, it was just done. But I did have some assistance when I brought out _U.S. Marines_ and _United States Air Forces_, in the way of stories, and photos, and things of that nature. M: You got photographs and what-not from the *War Effort*. V: Yes. There was a brigadier general, a Marine Corps general. M: Do you remember what his name was? V: I don't know. He's since died. AM: You drew on some of the earlier covers, like _More Fun_. Was this something you pursued at all? Had you harbored ambitions of being a cartoonist? V: I sure did. I wanted to become a cartoonist very much. But I could never succeed--I never came up with a good strip. I liked to draw. I guess I did a lot of cartoons, real cartoons for _More Fun_ and some of the early editions. I think the type of humor that, well, kids don't particularly like humorous things, they prefer the action stories. So, that was out of my range, I couldn't do any of those, I mean draw them. Although I did draw the first cover of Detective Comics. AM: Fu Manchu? V: Fu Manchu, yeah. That was greatly influenced by Sax Rohmer who wrote the Fu Manchu stories. M: When you did those first issues of _More Fun_ and _New Comics_, they were printing in a very large format. Did you make a decision to go to the smaller, what we think of as more standard size? V: I think the printers were the ones that did that. M: How did that come about? V: Well, the first _More Fun_ was a sort of a, they called it a 'bastard size' between tabloid and the full page of a newspaper. And it was very difficult--you couldn't get paper that size. So it was finally decided, just for that reason, that it would be less expensive to produce the books in either the half-tab or quarter-tab, which would be the size of the comic books today. Which is roughly quarter-tabloid size or half-tabloid. M: Did you see sales go up after that change? Or did it make a difference? V: I don't know. M: What became of Major Nicholson? V: I understand he died, Dave here tells me... [to Dave:] When did Nicholson die? Dave?: Nicholson died in Nineteen Sixty-Eight. Whitney Ellsworth passed away in 1980. Charlie: Dave said that you also wrote stories... were they just text stories or did you write comic book stories as well? V: They weren't comic, no, they were all generally adventure stories. Charlie: They weren't just text, though, they were stories with art? V: I'd have a spot of art on the story page. M: Are you talking about text pages with the tier? With your byline, right? V: Right, yes. AM: And what was your pen-name? V: I had several. AM: Larry Dean...? V: [laughs] Paul Dean was one, and I... what were the others? AM: Larry Dean's one that I recall. V: I thought it was Paul Dean. But I wrote under different names. AM: What was your biggest selling title with... well actually, everything you published, what was your best-selling title? And how many did you sell? V: Well, I think my best book was _Straight Arrow_. I don't know if any of you recall that. I was up to close to a million copies. They were selling pretty well. M: You were printing a million, so you must have been selling six hundred, seven hundred thousand? V: Oh yes, more than that. Eight hundred thousand or something. Which is very good. M: It *is* very good. AM: I was just wondering. You were publishing your own book line. With _Straight Arrow_, were you looking at the competition? Because Fawcett had a character called Ghost _Arrow_. V: _Straight Arrow_ was the first Indian character, I think. First comic book character. When they saw that was selling, and catching on, why they jumped in as competition will do. M: Did you know the guys at Fawcett, and Timely, and so forth? Was it a small group of people who knew each other, or... V: Well, yes, I would say. I had nothing to do with them really, but it wasn't difficult to find out what books were selling and what weren't. M: Did you know Baker-Fox? V: Oh yes. Not well or anything. AM: Are you the person that made the decision to put Superman on the cover of _Action #1_? V: Yes. Holding the car up? AM: I know it goes back fifty years, but did you see something special in that character that might have caused you to put it on the cover? V: Oh yes. That was my purpose in buying the feature, it looked very good, different, to have a fellow come in, doing those unusual things. AM: Why didn't you put Superman on the cover of the next couple of issues... did you... V: Well, I think that one of the reasons would be that we didn't know if it would hurt or help the magazine. As far as sales were concerned. And you could start a magazine--you wouldn't know until the third issue came out what the first issue was actually doing. So that you could be making a big mistake, or you could be a little behind in making a big profit following up with the thing, but it's just cautious, that's all. M: Did you get mail on that first issue? V: I don't recall. I imagine we did, yes. I don't recall. M: But you wouldn't have used that as a tip-off. V: No. Well, I think I would if we had a considerable amount of it. M: Had Siegel and Shuster presented _Superman_ to you before at DC? V: No. They were interested in having _Superman_ come out as a newspaper strip. But they had been doing features for me, _Henri Duval_ is one, and _Biff Bradley_ or something like that. But they had ideas of producing _Superman_ as a comic strip in the newspapers. M: Did you know they were trying to sell _Superman_? V: No, I didn't know that. M: So the first time you saw it was when Gaines-- V: When Gaines sent it up to me, yes. AM: Did you know Bill Gaines? V: The fellow that did Mad Magazine? No, I don't ever recall meeting him, no. I know that Gardner Fox did some work for them. AM: Were you still publishing when EC Comics did _Mad_ and the horror comics? V: I was publishing, sure. AM: What was your reaction to horror comics in general? V: I didn't particularly like them. I don't know whether I had any of my own horror books, but, that's... we try different things. I tried the romance, and they didn't work out; and these other fellows were trying horror. AM: I noticed in very early Superman stories, Superman hardly appeared in costume. He would dress up as a miner or as a football player, and he would spend most of the story outside of his costume just incognito as it were. Was this a conscious decision, to play down the costume? V: I honestly couldn't tell you. I don't even recall whether he dressed that way or not. AM: Sort of a follow-up on that. Siegel & Shuster were still at [Fleetwood] throughout this whole process, right? V: Yes, for the most part. AM: So you were... Was there any editorial direction given to what they were doing, or were they just contractors, that were expected to mail in a package, and as long as it wasn't a disaster you'd buy it? C: [Con person notifies us that there are only five minutes left.] V: Well, yes, if they sent it, I'd make some changes in their scripts and their pages and things, but for the most part I accepted whatever they produced, because I assumed they knew what they were doing, they were intelligent-- AM: Not like a production company, where you would have coordinated-- V: No. They were very much on their own. The same way as a comic *strip* artist today. He produces it on his own really. I think the syndicate would have very little to say unless they produced something that would be-- AM: Nowadays the books are almost written creative completely *at office* and everything's done in house. Just the idea of, you know, you hire two creative people, they do their job and send it in and... do it... is different from the way that things are done today. V: Everything changes. M: We're running out of time; I'm going to take a couple more questions. Right here: AM: I have a two-part question; One, why did you move from DC or National over to Columbia, and did DC get upset when you had some of their artists work for Columbia books? V: I think I explained before why I left DC Comics. M: Well, did DC get upset when you stole some of their artists? V: I imagine they did. [Everyone laughs] V: But I had my following. I was glad I did have it. AM: Did you ever dream of all this happening? V: No sir. I don't think anyone did at that time. It'd be great if we had a crystal ball, but I didn't. AM: I just wondered if you'd like to share anything about the reunion you did last year. V: [Dave Single] here, he had the idea of getting together with Craig Flessler and Fred Guardineer. I don't know whether you know these fellows, they were a long time-- M: We know them. V: I said, sure, it'd be fine, because both of them lived on Long Island where I lived, although I hadn't seen them for years and years. So Dave was good enough to arrange a meeting with Craig Flessler and Fred Guardineer and Charlie Roberts at Craig Flessler's house in Huntington, Long Island. That's how it came about. That's why I'm here today, through Dave's urging. AM: There's very little original artwork existing from that period. Do you remember what the procedure was with the artwork that would come in, was it just thrown out, or sent to the printers, what happened to it? M: Did it even come back from the printer? V: Oh, it came back. First it would go to the engraver, of course. The engraver was-- M: That was Strauss, wasn't it? V: [Yellow] Strauss was one of the fellows there. Were there any changes made in the?... M: What became of the artwork after--? V: Oh, I guess they were destroyed... there was a question in New York City at that time as to whether this artwork that was being used in the book still belonged to the artist or was it the company's. I don't know how that was determined. As far as I was concerned, they could have their stuff, you know. In other words, I didn't keep-- AM: [?] V: No, no. Just taking up space. AM: I was just curious what you think of comics today, compared to when you were making them. M: Do you read comics today? V: Do I read, period. (Laughs) I'm not happy with the comic situation today. I think it's not good material for the kids, and some of it, it's too... morbid. I'm speaking of just a few that I've seen, I don't know how the others are, but I'm not impressed with them at all. They're not comics-- not in the sense that they have to be funny, but in the 'comic' sense that we used when I produced things like Durango Kid and that sort of thing. C: [Con folk telling us we're out of time?] V: It's all these _gothic_ structures, which is not, I don't think it's good reading for the kids. M: I hate to say this, but I'm being told we're out of time. Before I break, though, is their another panel scheduled here? [Answer] Is anybody for that panel here, now? [Answer] Because I would like to run this to the last possible minute. [I can give you another...] We'll take whatever we can get. [To Vince:] All right, if it's okay with you. V: It's all right with me. M: Okay. We're going to run over, we're just going to keep talking until they actually kick us out of here. C: [Discussion with Con folks] M: Now, having _totally_ lost track of the conversation... you were talking about comics today. V: And how displeased I am with them. AM: I was going to ask if, it's asking a lot, but if you remember any of the typical circulation figures for either of your comics or DC ones or how accurate those figures turned out. Any idea? V: No. They went well over a million, I remember with _Superman_. My _Straight Arrow_ alone was doing very well at that time at just about a million, that's all. AM: Just a slight follow-up to that, was it your idea to have that page in _Action Comics_ that you ripped out in _Action #1_? Do you know what I'm talking about? V: No. AM: A mail-in page in _Action #1_ which reduces the value nowadays considerably. V: We weren't even thinking about that. AM: That first page of _Chuck Dawson_ was of course black and white in those days, so you said you could color in and send it in and the best coloring job-- V: That would be a contest, that's all AM: The unfortunate thing for collectors was that first page of _Chuck Dawson_ is on the back of the last page of *Superman's* story. V: Well that was a mistake, of course [while he and everyone else is laughing], but we didn't realize that this would be that important. M: You said you had ambitions as a cartoonist and I was wondering what strips _you_ followed when _you_ were a youngster. What were your favorites? V: I'm trying to think of features that were out then. I always liked Jigs and Mary... Maggie. But I first got into it by doing a sports cartoon for the _New York Daily News_. They had a job open at that time. This is going way back. And there were three of us trying to fill the job. Sports. This fellow named Gus Edson who had been working with [Flipperty], believe it or not, he was the assistant. He finally got the job. I was a kid then, and he was an older fellow and he was more familiar with sports. But as far as the strips, I can't really remember what strips were running then. AM: _Captain John_? V: _Captain John_ was, and _Captain and the Kids_-- M: _Mutt and Jeff_, which DC later published. V: _Mutt and Jeff_, yeah, they were running. AM: _Skippy_, who got the rights to that? V: Skippy? No, I never read Skippy. AM: It was something Bill Gaines did when he started up All-American Comics. They had _Mutt and Jeff_, too. What was the relationship between your outfit, and Bill Gaines and Shelly Mayer's ? M: Between DC and All-American. V: Well, there was nothing, really. I had nothing to do with it. Gaines and Liebowitz and [Elefontanier] got together, but I had nothing to do with it. AM: You were doing promotional things. _More Fun Comics_ had a thing called a *[Jolly Bill] and the [Fun Banker]* giveaway button for ten cents, and then the *Superman Club*--_Supermen of America_ with a button and a certificate. Was that your idea? V: It could've been, I don't recall. I'd like to take credit for all these things. AM: What made you finally leave the comic-book industry and what were your last books? V: When TV came into its prominence and the kids were getting into the action things like [M: Superman] Supermen, well, could've been... The kids were getting these action stories and the western stories for nothing, by looking at television, instead of paying ten cents or fifteen cents, they got it for nothing and it started to hurt the sales. Did mine, anyway. I think the last was probably _Durango Kid_ and _The Red Mask_ and a few of the westerns. M: And then you went into the food business. V: Yeah. Popeye Peanut Butter. M: Well, you said that didn't do so well, so then what did you do? V: I've done a number of things. Real estate business. Fund-raising. Banking business. M: You were a banker? V: I was never a banker, no, but I had charge of the advertising and promotion of a bank, savings bank on [Long] Avenue. Various jobs, to keep myself going, to keep the family going. AM: You mentioned that television was an influence in forcing you to close down. What about at the same time when there were several groups, PTA and such who had seen violence in the comics. Did that have an influence on your comics? V: No. Except at that time they formed an organization that... Shelly, do you remember what they called it? The code. And they had a magistrate from New York City, he didn't know nothing about comics. It was ridiculous. I was producing a book, _Robin Hood_, for instance, and we had to present the pages to him, get his approval. He would often tell us, well, you can't have them fighting with swords. Well, how are you going to produce a book like _Robin Hood_ without having them shooting arrows and things of that nature, so we finally got around to it. But they went overboard as far as censoring the book, if you want to call it censoring. Rich: Did you have anything to do with the ceremony at the World's Fair itself, in connection with _World's Fair Comics_, when they had a man dressed up as Superman, who gave out copies at that scene? V: May have. I think I did, I vaguely remember, but... no, I had nothing to do with that really. M: Who would've had--? V: I really don't know. It could've been me though. M: There couldn't've been that many people-- V: Maybe I did, I don't know. AM: The reason we're especially curious is that there's a man named [Bale Conn] who has claimed that he was the first model for Superman. A lot of people know that Joe Shuster didn't use any male models, wondered about that, and a couple of people concluded that maybe he was the man who played Superman at the World's Fair. V: Gee, I don't know. I don't recall. That could've even been an idea coming from the distributor, the Independent News Company, which was owned by Donenfeld and Liebowitz and Paul [Simekleiner]. Somebody in that group may have thought up the idea. I don't know. I don't remember at all. AM: Somewhere along the line Superman stopped leaping and started flying. That's how we think of him today. Did that happen while you were working there? V: I don't think so. He was always leaping when I was there. He had a lot of energy. M: Actually, I think that came about about the time of the cartoons, and I guess that was... you would have been gone by the time they started producing the Paramount cartoons, right? V: Yes. AM: There was another change made to Superman to reflect what was done on the radio show. Originally Clark Kent worked for the Daily Star and his editor was named George Taylor. Then they changed the newspaper to the Daily Planet and the editor's name was Perry White which was supposedly to reflect the radio show. Was that also during your time, or was it after? V: No. I had left then. Whit Ellsworth had produced some of the TV series that appeared in black and white, but no, I had nothing to do with the television or-- M: Did he also work on the radio show, Whit Ellsworth? V: He may have. I don't recall. AM: [?] did the radio show, he later worked on the cartoons in the sixties, at least that was what I was told about that. I think Robert Maxwell, who also worked on the first [meesmemor] TV show was involved in-- V: Who was that? AM: Robert Maxwell. V: I know the name, yeah, a lot of Maxwells, but I had nothing to do with those. I had probably left by that time. AM: They were just starting up the radio show during the thirties or in the forties. Did you ever have anything to do with that? V: No. M: Could you describe the difference between Nicholson and Liebowitz and Donenfeld, what it was like working for them and the difference between them? What kind of guy was Nicholson? V: Nicholson, he was sort of a flamboyant character. He had been a major in the army, but he was very *continental* in his thinking and in his appearance. He favored beaver hats and a cane, big cigarette holder. Spats. So he was a character. But he had a good idea. He had an idea of starting a book filled with original art. Yes, he was something of a character, I thought. M: And then Liebowitz, what was he like? V: Shelly, what do you say? M: Sitting in the audience, pardon me for not saying this earlier, sitting in the audience with us is Shelly Moldoff. V: I think he was sort of a colorless character. Liebowitz. He's still alive right now, I hope he doesn't know that I described him that way. M: What was Donenfeld? V: He was a scrappy little fellow. AM: There's a story that Donenfeld gave FDR a hot foot when he was on the Brain Trust. I don't know if that-- V: Gee, he might've, he might've. Harry liked his Schnapps, too. But... they were quite different, the two fellows, Donenfeld and Liebowitz. And the Major. Whole stories could be written about the Major. M: You don't remember the day he hired you? V: You know, I can't. I don't recall how he and Whit Ellsworth and I came together as we did to come up with _More Fun Comics_. I'm still thinking and I don't recall what the situation was. But Nicholson was the one who had the idea for the comic book. M: Can you recall Jack [Burnley]? V: No, I never met him. I had gone by that time, as a result of my disagreement with DC Comics. AM: What was interesting was that even though you said that they might have told you that it didn't do well, it did well enough so that they did do the second one even after the World's Fair. _World's Finest Comics_ was very much the same package for many years. That was basically based on your own idea. M: I'm afraid I'm being given the high sign. If you want to add a comment before we go? V: No. I appreciate these people being so polite. C: [Discussion] M: Okay, well there's signings next door, and I guess we'll continue it informally there. A: [Applause] The End