EXCITING STORIES!
When I was a boy, I drew comic books. Not one or two, but a lot of them: 2,083 pages of them, in fact, and they are all indexed here. The story of how — and why — I drew them is here.
Beginning in 1966, I created a comic called Fatman and Blubber, which I used to do in class. I drew it by hand, page by page, producing my own stories, characters, dialogue, covers, and artwork. The surviving collection eventually grew to twenty numbered issues, with the first twelve dated 1966, issues 13 through 19 dated 1967, and issue 20 — the final Fatman and Blubber comic — dated 1968. I think my friend Sam Foreman (later, Krieger) actually came up with the character names and premise - at least, I credit him with this in the comics. And I think what I have here is actually not the very first issues. I seem to remember that this was a more formal run.
The pages reproduced here are scans of those original comics. Altogether, this archive contains all of my childhood artwork.
The Star Trek connection
There is a story behind the development of these comics that I have remembered for all of my life. My mother worked as a waitress at Toppy's, a coffee shop at the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Western Avenue in Hollywood, California. At the time, this was only about two miles from the Desilu studio where Star Trek was being produced.
Star Trek premiered in September 1966, and it immediately became my favorite television program. I was watching the show from the beginning and followed the first season as it was broadcast. At some point during this period (late 1966/early 1967) my mother waited on William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy at Toppy's. They were wearing their Star Trek costumes. She asked them what they were filming, and they told her that they were working on a new television series called Star Trek.
At some point my mother later grabbed some of my Fatman and Blubber comics and took them to them as a sort of a "Look what my son can do!" thing and asked William Shatner what he thought of them. According to Mom, his response was brief: the comics were fine, he said, but I needed more characters. Whether Shatner intended this as serious artistic criticism or was simply being kind to a waitress who was showing him her son's drawings, I have no idea. But I took the suggestion seriously.
The result was Captain Russian, my version of Captain America.
Captain Russian
My first Captain Russian comic is dated February 1967, and I remember the occasion when it was drawn. My pal Jimmy was staying over the night and we drew. (Jimmy was a much better artist than I was; he was inspirational.) I think Jimmy may have come up with the idea of Captain Russian, but the character became my favorite to draw. We had to give our comic lines titles, and I came up with "E.S." - Exciting Stories. I forget what Jimmy's were. "B.T.W." - "Better than Wesley's" - they should have been.
I did not abandon Fatman and Blubber when I began Captain Russian, however. I drew them in class when I was bored with class assignments, and the two projects overlapped. I continued drawing Fatman and Blubber through 1967, while developing the larger Captain Russian comics.
The surviving Fatman and Blubber comics show this creative transition taking place. In issue No. 16, for example, I introduced Captain Camouflage, a Captain Russian character, while I was also developing the larger stories, which were drawn on sheets of blank 8 1/2" x 11" paper while the covers were bank computer printouts Jimmy's mother - a teller - provided. Colors were via cheap Chinese felt-tipped pen sets Dad bought me from The Akron, a sort of Pier One kind of place before there was the Pier One chain.
Looking back sixty years later, Shatner's offhand suggestion became part of the evolution of my comics. I began with a relatively simple comic centered on Fatman and Blubber and gradually created a larger cast of characters and a more elaborate comic-book universe. I doubt William Shatner ever thought that his casual remark would have any lasting effect.
The Photographs
My mother obtained signed glossy photographs of William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy for me. They are small 5" × 7" photographs, and both were personally inscribed to me. Nimoy's reads: "To Wesley, greetings from Spock, Leonard Nimoy" Shatner's reads: "To Wesely, my best, William Shatner." Those photographs are part of the story of these comics, and I have included scans of them here. The original photographs are now hanging in my oldest daughter's house.
The Nimoy inscription is especially interesting because it identifies him both with the character and with himself: "Spock, Leonard Nimoy." (It's also more legible because it's in darker ink. Shatner used a ballpoint pen, which badly faded.) These photographs appear to date from the first season of Star Trek, when the original series was still in production.
I believe Mom's encounter with Shatner and Nimoy took place in late 1966 or very early 1967. I cannot give an exact date. My recollection is that there was not a long period between Shatner's comment about needing more characters and my creation of Captain Russian No. 1 in February 1967. That chronology is also consistent with the fact that I was still actively drawing Fatman and Blubber in early 1967.
What is Preserved Here
What follows is not a collection of professionally-published comic books. These were comics made by a kid - by an easily distracted kid, at that, who was bad at completing projects he started - for the sheer pleasure of making them. I kept them all this time so that my son could read them, but he never did. Now I have grandchildren. I was talking with my son about bringing them over for his boys to read, but he assured me that they'd just get torn up and treated badly as they are at that boyish stage. He suggested that I scan them, which I have done.
The original pages survived for decades. I have now photographed them all and assembled them here so that the complete surviving collection can be viewed again.
They document not only the stories and characters I invented, but also the development of my drawing, my sense of humor, my storytelling, and my fascination with comic books during a very specific moment in the 1960s. The pages are presented in their original sequence as closely as I can reconstruct it. This is what I was drawing when I was a kid. And, remarkably, almost sixty years later, it is still here.
INDEX
Fatman and Blubber, 1966-1969.
My first effort. I remember also drawing a character I found more interesting, Fate, who had occult powers (he is teased here), but I don't have any of those comics. Perhaps they were taken from me in class by my awful teacher - I forget.
The Aventsters, 1967.
You would have to be living under a rock not to know the cultural influence of Marvel's Avengers. Nearly 60 years ago, I was reading the original comics and came up with a superhero team of my own. The problem was that I never really liked superhero team-ups. Marvel had the Avengers, DC had the Justice League of America, and both seemed cluttered with characters whose main job was to give everybody something to do. I quickly discovered the same problem with my own lame characters in the Aventsters.
Here they are:
(1) The Bowman was my version of the Avengers' Hawkeye, a character I always thought was next to useless. Some computerized threat appears and this guy is taking precious seconds pulling some novelty arrow from his quiver. Lame!
(2) The Shrinkster was my version of Ant-Man. His superpower was that... he could shrink. I mostly drew him as a tiny stick figure agreeing with everyone by saying, "Yeah!" Marvel eventually turned Ant-Man into Giant-Man. The Shrinkster got no such promotion.
(3) Speed Man—I obviously couldn't think of a clever name—was my version of Quicksilver. He was actually useful, building the Aventsters' underground headquarters by running in circles and excavating the dirt. His cowl had a picture of a stick figure running on it. I was being a costume literalist.
(4) The Butterfly was my version of the Avengers' Wonderful Wasp. I couldn't draw females to save my life—well, I couldn't draw males, either — and was never sure how women were supposed to look in my drawings. Butterfly had to wear a mask because she was horribly disfigured while manufacturing a mini-blaster. The accident somehow also gave her wings, allowing her to fly. Freakish! Females in my comics all wore boots, miniskirts and flip hairstyles because those were easy to draw.
(5) Captain Russian led this motley assemblage. He simply ambled onto the page, asked to join, and was promptly made leader, just as Captain America led the Avengers.
I drew only six issues of the Aventsters. I didn't enjoy drawing them, and the final comic—a dreadful showdown with the Sunked-Mariner—eventually descended into name-calling between him and Captain Russian.
Blue Lantern, 1967-1969.
The Green Lantern? Ha! I had the Blue Lantern! And his arch-nemesis? Actually, I didn't care for the Blue Lantern much and he had to share stories with Captain Russian, whom I much preferred to draw.
Bore, 1967-1968.
Not Thor, Bore, the god of Fog, whose father was Odis the town drunk (Andy Griffith Show influence, there); they lived on Catsguard. Marvel's Thor had six big circles on his chest, so naturally my version had squares. Same stupid haircut, though. I was eleven when I drew this epic.
Boy Allies, 1967.
For some strange reason when I was not quite 11 years old I felt compelled to draw my version of a comic book showcasing superhero sidekicks - despite the fact that I never liked superhero sidekicks. (Comic book editors came up with the idea of teenage sidekicks, thinking that the young readers of the comic books would find them identifiable. It was far easier for me to envision myself as the adult superhero, supposing that when I grew up I would have left behind all of the negative traits that made me such an uninspiring young man with academics, sports and girls.) In 1942 Jack Kirby drew a comic book entitled Boy Commandos, which, because he was so talented, was fun to read in the reprinted versions appearing in the Sixties. My comic book version was Boy Allies (the entire run of only three issues is here) and it starred Captain Russian's sidekick Russian Lad and Captain Dart's sidekick Dart Boy. (That's right, Captain Dart and Dart Boy. They threw tactical novelty darts. I don't think I ever created a pair more lame than that.) The super-villains they faced off against were two, both misspelled: The Weardio and The Frezzer. The Weardio was dispatched by the simple act of throwing a lightning dart at it ("Aaaaa!"), and the Frezzer was undone via one punch from Russian Lad. Nobody, hero or villain, was at all formidable in Boy Allies and so I quit drawing them.
Bulk, 1968?
One issue only because I didn't like the Marvel character which inspired him. Sound-effects include "Swish!," "Wroom!" and "Ka-Swoon!"
Bulk and the Sunked Mariner, 1967.
You know what Marvel character always annoyed me? Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner, who had little ankle wings. When I came up with my spoof character, the Sunked-Mariner, I enlarged the size of the ankle wings so they'd at least begin to make some aeronautical sense. They went "Flop flop flop flop..."
Captain Russian, 1967-1985.
Captain Russian was my version of Captain America, who obtained his powers via a super-soldier serum. Captain Russian was no different, except his super-soldier serum wore out and he had to take more. Captain Russian was a drug addict! His sidekick was Russian Lad. Teen sidekicks never helped me to feel a part of the story, which is what the adult comic book editors planned. I thought sidekicks were annoying. I remember an early Batman story, "Robin Dies at Dawn!" "Good," I thought.
Captain Tin, 1967-1969.
Why did I subtitle his comic run "Tales to Make You Sick?" I had a rather poor sense of self-esteem and didn't figure my comics amounted to much. His super-villain was Dr. Cemal (I couldn't spell "chemical" and was too lazy to look it up.) Sharing pages with Captain Tin in Tales to Make You Sick was Star Track, my very-badly-rendered version of Star Trek, which I adored. It starred Captain Dirt, Spot and "Guts" (instead of "Bones," get it?) I don't remember why, but I made Mister Spot and the crew drunks, and everyone aboard the ship hiccups. Guts was a murderous, knife-wielding version of Big Boy Bob; there were a couple of those restaurants in Burbank.
Dr. Stretch, 1967-1969.
Dr. Stretch needs some explanation. He's based on characters who can pull and, well, stretch themselves into freakish shapes like D.C.'s Plastic Man and the Elongated Man, Marvel's Mister Fantastic and Disney's Mr. Incredible. Looking at some of the panels in the first appearance of Plastic Man, I've always found this to be grotesque. In my sarcastic eleven-year-old mind, then, reading a comic containing a guy who can contort himself into hideous shapes was a "Tale to Eat By." Get it? No? No matter. Dr. Stretch's first contest was with a super-villain in pink tights and a sombrero named "The Blob." He could stretch just as disgustingly as our hero. And I have no idea what inspired the choice of the sombrero. At one point Dr. Stretch entirely encased the Blob with his own stretchy body and was going to walk him to the police, but the Blob burst free. One might think this would result in blood and gore being splattered everywhere, but not in my comic book. It elicited only an "Oh, heck!" Issue #2 contained a Dr. Stretch vs. Blob re-match, which was essentially both of them just stretching all over each other. I didn't understand the concept of homoeroticism as an eleven year-old.
Fiction Tales, 1968-1969.
An omnibus comic whose main (and most weird) character was Bronson, who had huge lips and said "Mister Christian" all the time. He was inspired by Charles Laughton's Captain Bligh in a TV viewing of Mutiny on the Bounty.
Flash, 1967.
I liked the Golden Age Flash with that crazy winged helmet (how does he keep it on when he runs at super speeds?!?), and liberally swiped poses from his comics into mine.
Foney Four, 1967-1969.
In 1967, Marvel's Fantastic Four were it, arguably the best comic being published. With stories by Stan Lee and art by Jack "He's the King" Kirby, they pushed the boundaries on comic book storytelling in so many ways. So when I drew my own comic book, it was natural that I should come up with my own version of the Fantastic Four, whom I called the Foney Four. (All of my heroes were basically anti-heroes, endowed with all of my eleven year-old doubts, esteem issues, moral failings, hesitations, clumsiness and even cowardice.)
Human Lake vs. the Sunk Mariner, 1967.
I based it more or less on the colossal battle between the Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner which took place in a 1940 Marvel comic reprint I had read at the time - an epic elemental show-down of fire versus water. However, mine was between two water-based creatures... which meant that it was a lot of splashing, basically. It didn't quite have the intrinsic elemental interest of fire vs. water that the 1940 comic book had. A lot of my childhood comics were lame like that.
Leading Comics, 1967-1969.
My version of the 80-Page Giant reprint comics I loved. The best comic of all in the Leading Comics collection of superheroes was Captain Aqua. I never liked Aquaman, who could talk to and command fish (which I thought was lame), but I still felt obligated to come up with my version of the character. The premise was that while Captain Aqua could talk to fish and they could talk back to him, the fish find him an extremely boring conversationalist. Here's a representative storyline: The fish declare war but Captain Aqua melts the bullets with his powers of boredom. Then, ignoring a worm on a hook, the head fish tries a laser - which is thwarted by Captain Aqua's bad breath. The fish try firing a cannon, but the cannonballs cannot get past Captain Aqua's idiotic grin. Captain Aqua declares victory. Genius!
N-Man, 1967.
N-Man wasn't a steal from D.C. or Marvel's intellectual property; he was my own creation in 1967, when I was eleven. His origin story is curious: Like the Silver Age Captain Marvel - later renamed Shazam! - he was really a kid named Dan Ward. Dan ventured into an "Atomic Testing Cave." The thing was marked "Danger!" and since he was eleven he could presumably read, but he waltzed in anyway. An unannounced (!) atomic explosion went off, and you would suppose this would have blown him into molecules, but no. It gave Dan "neutronic" powers - which I illustrated by grinding a Number 2 pencil into the paper and smearing the mark with my finger. Drawing N-Man was a messy business. The explosion also changed Dan into a fully-grown man, zipping past puberty. (When I made that transition a year later, it was considerably more difficult.) I liked my creation, and after his origin story in Showcase I gave him his own comic book run. In the last issue, where he takes on no less than Bore the Fog God, he evades a beat-down by changing into his eleven year-old self and letting his mother protectively yell at Bore, knocking his helmet off. When a superhero has to call in his mother for help, his story is finished - and so was N-Man.
Ratman, 1967-1969.
Ratman is based at Erv's Liquor Store, which was actually near my house in Burbank. I used to ride my bike home from school for lunch and Dad would give me a dime to buy a Butterfinger at Erv's. It was one of those fascinating Burbank businesses where you could enter from the front or the rear of the store. I drew my bike parked at the rear entrance. The guy working there hated kids, so when I came up with my anti-Batman character Ratman (who had no redeeming qualities whatsoever), I made this guy Ratman's secret identity. The Erv's employee - it may have been Erv himself!- had somewhat ratlike features, as I recall.
Showcase, 1967-1969.
Some characters were one-offs, others got their own comics just like in D.C.'s Showcase comic book.
Superdud, 1967.
Kitty, the teenage girl who used to be my babysitter, came over one day and I noticed that she kept using the word "dud" to describe things she thought were unimpressive. Casting about for a name for my Superman character, the obvious solution was Superdud.
Tales of Mystery, 1967.
Another one of my lesser creations was Dr. Unknown (misspelled, as was often the case with me). He was my version of Marvel's Dr. Strange, the Sorcerer Supreme. His schtick was that his true face was unknown... which is why he was known as Dr. Unknown. DUH. In each story he'd assume somebody else's face.
War of the Worlds, 1967.
Jimmy and I watched the classic 1950s sci-fi adventure on TV one night, and I drew this. One issue only.