CHAPTER FOURTEEN

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FOUR MEN — A WRESTLING CHAMPION, a deep-sea diver, a circus performer, and a jet pilot — walked away from the twisted wreckage of an airplane. Having cheated death, they were living on borrowed time. They decided they liked the thrill, so they formed a team and took on all sorts of daring adventures.

The last thing Jack and I developed in the Mainline offices was Challengers of the Unknown. We only did that first issue, which went on our shelf when Mainline closed its doors. Then Jack and I began working separately. Any time I needed him, though, all I had to do was call, and he always was there for me. I never doubted it for a moment. But to Jack the mantra was, “For the family!” Supporting Roz and his children was the most important thing in his world. If it meant he needed to find freelance work elsewhere, than that was what he did. I understood completely. Before long he was back at DC, doing features like “The Green Arrow.”

Another person I could always count on was Alfred Harvey. Not everyone understood our relationship. Harriet used to say, “Joe, you’re not going to make any money there.” But Alfred would do anything for me, and with Harvey Comics I had a base. It meant that no matter how bad the business got, I always had someplace to fall back. And Harvey Comics always had something they needed to have done. With the industry struggling to survive, they had to cut back on expenses, just like everyone else. So they hired me to do what I had done on the romance books at Crestwood — take existing artwork and write new stories around it. Once the Comics Code was in place, it was particularly important to revise the older material so it would pass inspection.

I knew one person who took the practice to the extreme. Jack Oleck took his work very seriously, but at the same time he was out to make a living. When comics got weak, Jack scrambled around to find whatever assignments he could. He borrowed my bound volumes of Black Magic, Young Romance, and some of the other titles Simon and Kirby had done. He didn’t bring them back, and after a while I forgot about them. Eventually Oleck died, and since we were family the bound volumes were returned to me. They were covered in Post-it notes. Each note indicated how many times he had used the story, and where. He was reusing the stories at Marvel, DC — wherever he found work. By keeping track of them, he never sold anyone the same story twice. But a lot of the stories got used three or four times each!

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Jack Oleck.

I still have the bound volume with those Post-it notes intact.

At Harvey, I also reissued some of the earlier features Kirby and I had done for the company. Stuntman and the Boy Explorers appeared in a title called Thrills of Tomorrow, and the Boys’ Ranch stories were re-packaged in Witches’ Western Tales. The book had been called Witches Tales, and the publisher just continued the numbering in order to retain the second class mailing privileges. It was then renamed again, and became Western Tales, where the Boys’ Ranch stories were joined by some Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie adventures Jack and I produced. Because of the Code, more knives, tomahawks, and other offending elements had to be removed. It looked bizarre, but we had no choice.

At this point Harriet and I were still in Old Westbury, where we lived when Melissa was born. June 28, 1953 — three years after Jimmy, just like clockwork.

While I was out on Long Island I got to know Carmine Infantino’s father, Pasquale. He was in construction and plumbing, and the Simons were house builders. If we were looking at a house with an eye to buy, we would get ahold of the architect’s blueprints, sometimes through the proper channels. I would call Pasquale and we would go over the plans together. He would make recommendations concerning the work the house might need, or improvements we might want to consider.

Carmine’s mother loved Harriet. She often said to Carmine, “Why can’t you get a girl like that?”

Old Westbury was a very insular community. People were protective of their property. They had paid a lot of money for it, and they didn’t want anything cutting into their investments. The state wanted to put an expressway through our area, one of those projects that made developer Robert Moses both famous and hated. It began at the Queens-Midtown Tunnel and eventually ran 71 miles all the way out to the eastern end of Long Island. Our community association banded together to fight it. If you look at a map of the Long Island Expressway, you’ll notice that it dips down below Old Westbury. That shows you how successful we were.

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Our house in Woodbury was huge. We had the columns installed to enhance the front porch.

My next house was in Woodbury, where we moved at about the time the twins were born. Lori and Gail were born November 20, 1956.

Woodbury was also a very upscale community. Bob Powell lived nearby in Oyster Bay, which was similarly rich. He had been born Stanislav Robert Pawlowski, up in Buffalo, New York. Bob had been part of the Eisner and Iger shop. For years he produced a feature called “Mr. Mystic” as a backup in Eisner’s The Spirit supplements. After the war he did a lot of work for Alfred Harvey, and they became close friends. Bob was a mingler, someone who liked to hang around with the blue bloods, socializing and drinking wine. Occasionally I would go along. He was a huge fan of classic sports cars, and at one point he was the president of the regional enthusiast association. When he or his son John would deliver work to my place, they drove up in a plastic sports car.

Bob ran a very tight ship. When you went out to his house during the workday, you would have to talk to him through the intercom at the front gate. He maintained a team of artists there, and he wouldn’t let you interrupt them for anything. He didn’t care who you were, either. Rules were rules.

In addition to his work in comics, Powell did a lot of commercial assignments, including work for the Michelin tire company. He did advertising illustrations featuring the Michelin Man, and it always seemed to me that he and the Michelin Man looked a lot alike. Bob also did work in the display business, designing and producing graphics for the huge display booths companies would set up at conventions and trade shows. And finally, he did terrific fully rendered pornographic comics in a magazine called Pussy, which was produced out of Brooklyn.

I liked Bob a lot. Will Eisner claimed that he was anti-Semitic, but even though I respected Will, it didn’t make sense to me. In all the years I knew Bob, I never knew him to say anything against the Jews. In 1967 Bob called me to tell me that he only had a couple of months to live. He called three people — Alfred Harvey, Myron Fass, and me — to say goodbye and tell us that he loved us. Now, if he were anti-Semitic, why would he call three Jews to tell them he was dying?

“You know what I’m going to miss, Joe?” Bob said when he called.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“I’m going to miss all those times we used to go out drinking,” he replied. Bob had a lot of passions, and a lot of drinking buddies.

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Man in Black was one of Bob Powell’s finest creations.

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This story from Alarming Tales pre-dated Planet of the Apes by six years and Kamandi by 15 years.

Comic publishers had a thing they called trends. They would take distributor reports and study them carefully to see what was hot, what was going to be hot, what would sell, and what would drag. One year they would say that mystery was going to sell, the next year it would be science fiction, and the next year superheroes. As soon as they thought they’d spotted a trend, they would go to the guys who had a reputation for getting things done quickly.

“Romance is going to be hot,” they would say. “We’ve gotta put out five books, and we’ve got to do it right away.” That kind of thinking had resulted in hundreds of imitations of Young Romance.

In the late 1950s they decided the opportunity was in mystery titles, so whatever books we were working on had to turn into mystery books. But then they decided supernatural titles were the way to go. That’s why Black Cat Comics became Black Cat Western, then Black Cat Mystery, and finally Black Cat Mystic. Sometimes the stories that were meant for a title stayed with it through the changes. The artwork we handed in always had the name of the book at the top of the page. If you find pages of original artwork from that period, you’ll often see that one title has been scratched out and another has been written over it.

Starting in 1956 I pulled together several new titles for Harvey. One of them, Alarming Tales, had some of the best artists in the business, including Jack Kirby, Bob Powell, Al Williamson, John Severin, and Doug Wildey. One reason artists liked to work with me was that I knew what I was doing in a way a lot of editors couldn’t match. Since I could do anything that was required on a book, I knew what it took to make a great feature. The other artists respected that.

In the first issue, Kirby had a story called “The Last Enemy!” where a man travels to the future and finds intelligent talking animals. Alarming Tales came out in 1957. Six years later the novel Planet of the Apes was published (originally titled Monkey Planet) and became the basis for the 1968 movie with Charlton Heston. Then in 1972 Jack launched Kamandi at DC. Like my writer had said, “If you’ve got a good idea you should use it at least four times.”

Doug Wildey became famous in different circles. A lot more people know about him than realize it. Doug was the co-creator of the Hanna-Barbera cartoon series Jonny Quest, which he developed with another comic book great, Alex Toth.

Science fiction turned hot in the late 1950s, with titles like Tales of the Unexpected over at DC and Tales of Suspense at Atlas (soon to be Marvel). Jack Kirby contributed to both of those titles, but nothing he did at either of the companies could compare with Race for the Moon.

Once again I was inspired by real-world events, this time the launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik. I’ve always kept track of the news, but when the Soviets put the first satellite in space in 1957, America was taken by surprise, and so was I. To me, the United States was the world. I didn’t think Russia had the stuff needed to challenge us in space. A lot of people freaked out, scared that the communists were going to drop an atomic bomb from space. I wasn’t that worried — I think the world’s a much more dangerous place today.

When I proposed the title, Jack welcomed the work. I wrote most of the stories, although Dick Wood, Dave Wood, and Eddie Herron contributed some scripts. Because Kirby was penciling some of them, I was able to sign up three of the best inkers in the business. Reed Crandall, Angelo Torres, and Al Williamson, each of them a brilliant artist in his own right, all wanted to work with Jack. They worked together as a team, along with a friend of theirs named Roy Krenkel. In addition to inking Jack’s pencils, they got to illustrate some stories on their own. But I had some reservations about one of them.

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A beautiful panel from “The Space Court.”

I was talking with Angelo Torres, who had come in to pick up an assignment.

“Angelo, I’ve got a script here,” I said. “But don’t let Williamson pencil it. He’s a great artist, but his layouts are too stiff. He tells a lousy story.

“Maybe he can ink it,” I added.

So Torres took the script away, and a while later they all came in together. The story had been penciled, inked, and was ready to publish. It was called “The Space Court,” and I could see Angelo’s technique all over it.

“You see?” I said triumphantly. “I knew I was right. This story is beautiful.”

“Yeah, but Joe,” Angelo said, “Al penciled it. Roy and I inked it.” Suddenly they were laughing at me. I was the goat.

But it was a beautiful story. Al Williamson was a great artist.

Williamson, Crandall, and Torres did wonderful inking on Kirby’s stories. They were able to tame his penciling with tight, perfect lines and textures. The result was elegant and illustrative, the most beautiful work you can imagine. Ye t Race for the Moon only lasted for three issues. We had some stories that were supposed to go in the fourth issue, and those went onto the shelf.

Seven years later I put all of the material into a one-shot called Blast-Off. That was the first time “The Space Court” saw the light of day.

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For the next “trend” it was back to superheroes. In 1956 editor Julius Schwartz up at DC spearheaded the return of The Flash, with artwork by Carmine Infantino and Joe Kubert. That issue, Showcase #4, is considered the beginning of what they call the “Silver Age” of comics. Everything before that was the “Golden Age.” Today I think we’re in the Zinc Age or something.

The new Flash was different from the one that had appeared in the 1940s, and the response was tremendous. Schwartz followed up with a new version of Green Lantern, and developed the Justice League of America — a replacement for the Justice Society. Suddenly superheroes were hot again, and publishers were looking for more.

I took Challengers of the Unknown up to Jack Schiff at DC, and he bought it. The first story appeared in Showcase two issues after the Flash story. Since I was at Harvey, I didn’t stay with the series, but Jack Kirby did. Working with Dave Wood and Marvin Stein, he produced three more issues of Showcase and eight issues of the Challengers’ own title. Then he left DC over a legal dispute with Schiff. The fact that he still needed to earn a living (“For the family!”) took him back to Marvel Comics, where Stan Lee welcomed him with open arms. Kirby was doing science fiction, monsters, westerns, romance, and war books — everything but superheroes.

Meanwhile John Goldwater at Archie Comics decided they needed to jump on the bandwagon. He called me up and asked me to come in with some ideas. Having retrieved the pages of “The Silver Spider” from Harvey, I pulled them out. But I didn’t take them with me to the meeting. For once I just did a verbal pitch.

“He’s a superhero who climbs straight up and down a building using a fine thread that he holsters in his costume like a fishing tackle,” I said. “We’ll call him The Fly.” Goldwater liked it, but he wanted another book, as well — something more like Superman. So I proposed The Double Life of Private Strong. With that we’d come full circle, since this was a modern version of The Shield — the character that had caused Archie to threaten Timely with a lawsuit back in 1941. Goldwater liked both proposals, and I went away to get the ball rolling.

Since I was working at the Harvey offices again, I met Kirby at the Columbus Circle corner of Central Park. It was a beautiful New York City day.

“I’ve got something new for us, Jack,” I said. “I’m doing books for Archie.” I gave him the details, and handed over the Jack Oleck-C.C. Beck pages from “The Silver Spider.”

“C.C. Beck is out of the business,” I explained. “We’re doing this over. Same script, only we’re calling him The Fly instead of The Silver Spider.”

“Looks interesting,” he said. He looked up at me. “What does it pay?”

“We’ll be partners,” I assured him. “Just like always.”

Jack took the Beck pages and reworked them in his own style. I contacted other guys for the team, including George Tuska, Jack Davis, and Carl Burgos. I did some penciling of my own, and together we came up with all the material we needed. In both books we returned to the double-page spreads we had started back in the days of Captain America, calling them “The Wide Angle Scream.”

Neither book sold very well, and The Double Life of Private Strong went first — though not because of sales. It was rumored that The Shield had once again become involved in a legal situation, this time on the receiving end. Apparently DC had sent a cease and desist, claiming that Lancelot Strong was too much like Superman. (Actually we did have him doing all of these Superman tricks, and the characters did look a lot alike.) I wondered if there had been another game of gin rummy, with Donenfeld and Goldwater in attendance.

Anyway, the title wasn’t selling well. None of the Archie hero characters ever sold well. The editors at Archie blamed it on the artwork, and decided to produce The Fly in-house. Eventually Archie gave up on the superhero business altogether, and started letting other publishers license their characters. In 1991, DC Comics took a shot at it. I was involved in the negotiations, and Archie Comics agreed to give me back the rights to the issues I had packaged. The contract was drafted in the middle of a meeting at the DC offices, written out by hand. I signed it, and so did Michael Silberkleit, Louis’s son, for Archie. Paul Levitz signed as a witness.

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With the end of the Archie deal, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby went our separate ways.

Jack continued to work with Stan Lee, but sales at Atlas were flagging, and it looked like Martin Goodman was going to close up shop. Stan called me, and we went to lunch at the Carnegie Deli on Seventh Avenue. Strangely enough, while we were talking, the actor Tony Randall was sitting right next to us. That’s New York for you.

“What am I going to do if Martin calls it quits, Joe?” Stan said. “Where should I go?”

“Stan, you’ve got a reputation,” I replied. “Start your own business.”

“How would I do that?” he asked.

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Private Strong bore a resemblance to more than one comic book character.

“Go out and get yourself a distributor. Get them to back you,” I said. “They’ll advance you the money, set you up with a printer. The printers need to keep the presses going, and with Martin gone, they’ll need you even more.”

He really appreciated what I was telling him.

Martin did shut down for a few days. Jack Kirby told me that when they tried to take his desk away, he grabbed it and wouldn’t let go. I’ve never believed that, of course, but Jack was allowed to have his dramatic moments. Kirby convinced Stan to get Martin to hold off while he brought in some new ideas for characters. Then he went home, and brought back the C.C. Beck pages for “The Silver Spider,” along with the logo I had originally drawn up. It’s been rumored that Jack drew up some pages of his own, but that Stan decided to turn the idea over to Steve Ditko. When Ditko looked at the Beck pages, he said, “This is Joe Simon’s ‘The Fly.’” Then he went in his own direction.

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Left: Marty Burstein (on the right) with Senator Jacob Javits. Right: One of the comic books we produced for the Rockefeller Republicans.

Years later Will Eisner interviewed Kirby (as part of a series of audio interviews, published as Will Eisner’s Shop Talk) and asked where Spider-Man had come from. Jack gave this answer:

It was the last thing Joe and I had discussed... “The Silver Spider” was going into a magazine called Black Magic. Black Magic folded with Crestwood and we were left with the script. I believe I said this could become a thing called Spider-Man, see, a superhero character.

The first thing Stan and Jack put out, however, was Fantastic Four, in 1961, which a lot of people have compared to Challengers of the Unknown. It created a sensation, and the next year they released Ditko’s “Spider-Man.” Features like that saved Martin Goodman’s company, which he began calling Marvel Comics.

I was never as panicked as Jack was about finding work. I always knew another opportunity would come along, or that I’d be able to find something new and different.

Marten Burstein, my buddy from Syracuse, had married and moved out near Great Neck, on the North Shore of Long Island. He and his wife formed an advertising agency called Burstein and Newman — that was his wife’s maiden name. They attracted some big accounts, and Martin became a real self-made man. I signed on as his art director. Through my whole career he was working for me, then I was working for him, then he was working for me, and so forth. It always went like that. He had started making political connections back in Syracuse, and by the late ‘50s he was a big-shot in the Republican Party. Marty told me that he was the first Jewish Republican. I guess that makes me the second one.

He was the person who introduced me to Nelson Rockefeller. In 1959 Rockefeller was running for governor of New York. The Rockefeller Republicans represented the left wing of the party. They stood for the distribution of wealth, housing for the poor, things like that, and weren’t very popular with the right wing. But their approach appealed to me. I had grown up poor, and my parents had been very liberal. I don’t think I was registered Democrat, though, since I was listed as a member of the “Independents for Rockefeller” team.

It turned out that Nelson Rockefeller had recognized the value of comic books years before I met him. In 1940, President Franklin Roosevelt had appointed him as Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs to head off the Nazi influence in Latin America. They used comic books to tout the wartime exploits of Americans and dramatize the German threat. So when I joined his team, he was enthusiastic about what I had to offer.

Their group included other politicians like New York State Attorney General Louis Lefkowitz and Lieutenant Governor Malcolm Wilson. Jacob Javits, the former state attorney general, ran for the Senate in 1956 and won. Ken Keating — “Our Friend Ken” — sought re-election to the Senate in 1964, but was defeated by Robert Kennedy. We used to see these guys at all of the dinners and fundraisers. We produced posters, comic books, and other materials they used to fire up their constituencies. Some of it reminded me of the leaflets my parents used to distribute for FDR. Like my folks, I was getting paid for my efforts.

Rockefeller tried for the presidential nomination in 1960, 1964, and 1968, but didn’t get it any of those times. When he threw his support behind Richard Nixon in his 1970 re-election bid, I was a part of the Committee to Re-Elect the President. In 1964 Rockefeller appointed Martin to be the New York State Director of Jewish Affairs. The first thing Marty did was change his name so it would appear to be less Jewish. He went from “Burstein” to “Bursten,” and his whole family followed, like ducks in a row. I never understood it.

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The painting I did for a New York Times supplement featuring the Summer Olympics, adapted to include Bruce Jenner.

Marty had a lot of clients outside of politics, and produced advertising supplements that went into The New York Times. For example, I did the cover paintings for magazines advertising the New York Electrical Contractors Association. In the 1970s I did a painting for the United States Olympic Team.

Not all of my advertising work came through Marty, though. For 30 years I handled all of the advertising for the Miller Paper Company, writing the ads, laying them out, and buying the space where they’d appear. I performed a similar service for Woodruff-Stevens, one of the largest firms in the nation that handled mailing lists for direct-mail advertising.

But I always returned to comic book work.