THE $5.95 In The US CELEBRATING THE LIFE & CAREER OF THE KING! Issue #18, Jan. 1998 A “King”-Size Collector 68- page ISSUE on JAck’s work at Marvel COMICS!! A Rare 1970 Kirby Interview A 1975 Interview With Stan Lee Interviews With Every Bullpenner We could find, Including: Roy Thomas John Romita John Buscema Marie Severin Herb Trimpe Flo Steinberg George Roussos Special Features: Ant-Man The Eternals Black Panther & More Unpublished Art including Pencil . pages Before c n I , They Were Inked, t n And Much More!! e m n i a t r e t n E l 1996 & 1997 e v Eisner r Awards a M Nominee © Best s Comics-Related l e Publication n i t n 1997 Harvey e S Awards Nominee , Best Biographical, Historical n or Journalistic Presentation a M - r e d i p S Issue #18 Contents: The Great Atlas Implosion . .4 (Who really created Marvel Comics?) From The Words & Pictures Museum . .7 (Art from their permanent collection) A Cap Rarity . .8 (The earliest Kirby fan sketch?) The Highs & Lows of Henry Pym . .9 (Why didn’t Ant-Man make it big?) Inking Contest! . .11 (Hurry; the deadline’s January 15th!) 1975 Stan Lee Panel . .12 (Who created the Silver Surfer?) Roy Thomas Interview . .17 (A very candid conversation) Super-Heroes With Super Problems . .26 (The newspaper article that started the rift between Stan and Jack) Lee Or Kirby? . .30 (The never-ending question...) George Roussos Interview . .32 (“Inky” speaks!) Centerfold: Captain America . .34 1997 John Romita Panel . .38 (Romita on Kirby, Spidey, and Ditko) Marie Severin Interview . .42 (A few moments with Mirthful Marie) Flo Steinberg Interview . .45 (This girl’s anything but invisible) Herb Trimpe Interview . .47 (Comments from THE Hulk artist) John Buscema Interview . .51 (Buscema discusses Stan and Jack) Kirby’s “Unexpected Constants” . .54 (Continuity was tough on The Eternals) In Gods We Trust . .58 (More on theology in The Eternals) Monarch Of Wakanda . .59 (A fan’s recalls The Black Panther) Jack Kirby Interview . .60 Why Marvel Should Credit Kirby . .62 Collector Comments . .64 Back cover inks: Joe Sinnott Front cover inks & colors: Jack Kirby Back cover color: Tom Ziuko Photocopies of Jack’s uninked pencils from published comics are reproduced here courtesy of the Kirby Estate and the Pure Imagination archives. Thanks to Roz Kirby and Greg Theakston for their continued support. COPYRIGHTS: Ajak, Angel, Ant-Man, Arishem, Aunt May, Batroc, Black Panther, Bradford Miller, Bucky, Captain America, Comrade X, Crystal, Daredevil, Deviants, Don Black, Dr. Damien, Our front cover is an unused Marvelmania poster drawn and colored by Jack, circa 1969. Our back cover is an Dr. Doom, Eternals, Fantastic Four (Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Girl, Human Torch, Thing), Gwen Stacy, Hawkeye, Henry Pym, Hulk, unused Fantastic Four #71 cover (pencils shown above), which Joe Sinnott graciously agreed to ink for us. Ikaris, Iron Man, Living Laser, Loki, Machine Man, Mad Thinker’s Android, Mary Jane Watson, Nick Fury, Odin, Peter Parker, Princess Python, Quicksilver, Red Skull, Rick Jones, Ringmaster, Scarlet Witch, Sentry, Sersi, Sharon Carter/Agent 13, Silver The Jack Kirby Collector, Vol. 5, No. 18, Jan. 1998. Published bi-monthly by & © TwoMorrows Advertising & Design, 1812 Park Drive, Raleigh, NC Surfer, Skull The Slayer, Swordsman, Thor, Tomorrow Man, Vision, Warriors Three (Fandral, Hogun, Volstagg), Wasp, 27605, USA. 919-833-8092. John Morrow, Editor. Pamela Morrow, Asst. Editor. Jon B. Cooke, Assoc. Editor. Single issues: $5.95 ($6.40 Canada, $8.40 Wonder Man, X-Men, Yellowjacket © Marvel Entertainment, Inc. elsewhere). Six-issue subscriptions: $24.00 US, $32.00 Canada and Mexico, $44.00 outside North America. First printing. All characters are © their • Demon, Mr. Miracle, Orion, Scrapper © DC Comics, Inc. • Prisoner © ITV respective companies. All artwork is © Jack Kirby unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter is © the respective authors. PRINTED IN CANADA. 3 In 1957 (cover-date time), Atlas published 75 different titles — monthlies, bi-monthlies, and one-shots — during the July through October period. In November and December of that year they put out The Great Atlas 16 (all bi-monthly). So what happened? And who the heck is Monroe Froehlich, Jr.? Here’s the script. Implosion THE SET-U P: Atlas, as you may have known, was not really a comics company, by Jim Vadeboncoeur, based on a story uncovered by Brad Elliott but was in fact a distribution company. The comics were published by Martin Goodman’s various corporations (Chipiden, Timely, Red (Brad Elliott was originally hired to produce the Marvel 50th anniversary Circle, etc.) and distributed by Atlas Magazines, Inc.; all legitimate book that eventually became Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades by Les incorporated entities. Atlas Magazines (wholly owned by the Daniels, instead of the true history that Brad had envisioned. Brad had Goodmans, Martin and Jean) was paid a fee to distribute Goodman’s full access to all Marvel records for well over a year and here’s what he comics — profits, profits, profits. learned about Marvel/DC and the late ’50s.) f you pay any attention to the names in the Ownership Statements, THE CATALYS T: you’ll notice that up until 1952, Robert Solomon is listed as the Monroe Froehlich, Jr. was Goodman’s golfing partner who some - I Atlas Business Manager. In that year a new name appears in that I how finagled himself into the business manager position. He pretty position: Monroe Froehlich, Jr. Remember him; he created comics as much had a free rein with the comics, the pulps and the newsstand we know them today. Honest! magazines, but he was kept out of the distribution end of the business. For those of you who may not be completely aware of the magni - Being apparently an ambitious sort, he wanted to expand his political tude of the events of 1957, let me explain exactly what the evidence of base in the company to include some measure of control over distrib - the comics shows. ution. Arthur Marchand was the man in charge of Atlas Magazines, Inc. and exerted every effort to prevent this. THE PLO Y: As Froehlich was frustrated in his attempts to gain con - trol over the distribution arm, he eventually resorted to some subtle business maneuvering to accomplish what office poli - tics had failed to do. He somehow renegotiated the contract between the publishing arm and Atlas Magazines so that the latter received a lesser percentage of the price of each publication for the distribution service. On paper, Atlas Magazines, Inc. began to lose money. THE STIN G: Froehlich exploited this apparent change in the distribution situation to convince Goodman that he needed to switch to a national distributor. In the summer of 1956, when Goodman gave the go-ahead, Froehlich negotiated a five-year contract with American News Co. (the ANC on the covers of so many comics in the early Fifties) to distribute comics, magazines and Lion paperbacks. Goodman disbanded his distribution system and Froehlich was apparently “king of the hill.” THE ZINGE R: American News Co. was Mafia- connected and under investigation by the government for less-than-legal transactions of some sort. (ANC was into a lot more than periodical distribution — restaurants, for example — and it was there the troubles lay.) Rumors flew that ANC would soon be out of business. Even before the contract, Arthur Marchand had tried to warn Goodman of the potential problems, but he was viewed as merely playing in office politics against Froehlich. 4 THE CRAS H: American News Co. assumed the distribu - tion of the Goodman line Nov. 1, 1956. Six months later, American ceased operations. Not having time to re-establish his old network, Goodman was forced to lay off the entire staff with the exception of Stan Lee, while he searched for an alternative distributor. It took about a month (corresponding to the October In the mid-1960s, Jack was asked to create poster art for the “Toys For Tots” campaign put on by the 1957-dated books). US Marine Corp. The annual campaign collects donations of toys and distributes them to needy (Note: Brad Elliott has discovered records children at Christmas. On the previous page is his original preliminary pencil rough for the poster; which show that the cover dates of Atlas titles on the back of that art, still in pencil, are rough drawings of several little elf-like creatures (an example were not totally accurate. During any given is shown on this page). Shown below is the final art from his first attempt, and above is the final art that was eventually used on the poster. month, shipments could include books with cover dates spanning three months. We hope to eventually show that books like Dippy Duck, which has an October 1957 cover date, were actually shipped with the August and September books.) THE AFTERMAT H: Goodman did find himself a distributor. It was DC-owned Independent News Co. They agreed to take him as a new account, but the terms were tough indeed: Independent would handle all of Goodman’s magazines, but Lion Books had to go (Independent News was already handling New American Library), and since DC wasn’t about to support its biggest and more successful rival, Independent News insisted that only eight comics per month could be accommodated. Goodman and Lee opted to use that allot - ment to publish 16 bi-monthly titles. The first eight ( Gunsmoke Western, Homer the Happy Ghost, Kid Colt Outlaw, Love Romances, Marines in Battle, Millie the Model, Miss America and My Own Romance ) came out dated November 1957, the second batch ( Battle, Navy Combat, Patsy and Hedy, Patsy Walker, Strange Tales, Two-Gun Kid, World of Fantasy and Wyatt Earp ) in December.