My very first genuine professional job was the summer of '43 with Fiction House. A Mr. Byrne owned this two room company. One room, not all that big, was for the artists. Two women and two men occupied the space, and with me added to the group and a Mr. Murphy Anderson, that came to six people jammed into the bullpen. Mr. Byrne had the one remaining room.
This was the hottest part of the summer and no air conditioning. Not many places had that luxury except the movie houses. I was seventeen then and had this great summer on the job training! Mostly adventure, perhaps some romance scripts came my way. The two women and one man who were the longtime pros helped me along, and I managed somehow to get through it all. Murphy and I were just the new kids on the block!
That fall, I enlisted in the Air Force. The winter was about to set in on Fort Dix where I was sent for Basic Training. I remember the bitter cold weather and a hot airblower right above my head. It was a blessing that I had the top bunk in the barracks.
The contrast between Fort Dix and the next place I was shipped to was like entering a red hot hole....Keesler Field, Mississippi became my next home. All my training took place here, and just before the end came and I was about to ship out, I fell ill to Pneumonia. This too was a blessing. My unit, along with several people I could never get along with, went overseas without me to the Occupation Forces in Europe. Good riddance! The atomic bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima & Nagasaki, the war with Japan was over, and I stayed in the Camp hospital until fit to travel.
I was a 'green' kid thrust into high adventure. Our troop ship was caught by a typhoon in high seas. My sea-sickness washed over me, never letting up. The ship stood up on its hind legs as it climbed the monstrous waves. It was like going up a never-ending flight of stairs and at the top of a huge wave, we jerked down to the bottom of the swell, only to repeat the process all over. There was a red light in the hole where we bunked. I was next to the latreen and remember the water spilling out of the toilets and washing back and forth. This visual scene added to my already gut-wrenching motion sickness.
It took about seventeen days to reach the Phillipines, and there I stayed just outside of Manilla for almost two years. Although I joined the Air Force, I never did fly. My ability to draw, stood me in good stead and shortly after a stint driving convoy trucks, I was able to switch over to Special Services. Alas, no more truck driving, just murals!! An assignment came my way to paint a mural for the Officers' Club.
I kept a running 'diary' with sketches of my overseas experiences. With some maneuvering on my part, I managed to get an art assignment with the Manilla Times and ended up making out financially better than with my monthly pay as a Corporal. During all this time, I wrote to Mr. Byrne (remember? The publisher of Fiction House...). He was the only connection I had back home. I didn't want him to forget me. I never heard a word from him and so that was that.
It must have been 1945 when word came that my unit was being sent home for discharge. I was the happiest human being in combat boots! New York City had trolley cars then and for some strange reason, after arriving in New York from Fort Dix, I chose this form of transportation to crawl home. The elevator girls smiled as I was in full uniform. One of them promptly carried me up to the fifth floor. As fate would have it, as the elevator stopped and the gate opened, my father was about to step on. He stood frozen as we gazed at each other. His glasses fell off his face. We embraced each other and arm in arm headed for apartment 5F where we all lived. He had forgotten where he had been heading. You can guess all the rest except for one thing: my entire family looked shorter to me.
LOOKING BACK, it was always clear to me...never doubting for a moment, that
illustrating comic books would be my profession in life. Long before
Fiction House, at around ten years of age, I invented a character named
"Jim Turner, American Spy". My mother would have to literally throw me out
into the street to play stick ball with the guys. I much preferred to
stay indoors working on my comic strip. Jim Turner was clearly taking me
into the greatest, most forbidden places. If push came to shove, my
drawing pad came along with me into the street. Standing at one of two
high square stones flanking the building's entrance, I stood most of the
day, drawing my pictures. Playing games be hanged!
In time, Jim Turner became something else besides personal entertainment. For the first time, I drew a very large picture of him pouring over a hot, blazing machine gun. This was the turning point in the road for me, and I decided to ink it with a nickel pen! I right there and then made the jump from pencil to ink. What followed then was the thought of 'selling' my masterpiece! The corner candy store provided me with the names of publishers and where they were. This was clearly printed on the inside page of every comic book.
Gathering all of my sketches and stories; it wasn't much of a stretch from my front door to D.C. Comics located downtown New York on Lexington Avenue. I must have been thirteen or fourteen then and as I stepped off the elevator into D.C.'s waiting room, there, confronting me, hanging on the wall, was a huge oil painting of Superman! I stood frozen to the spot. Surely, I wasn't expected to do anything as good as THAT?!
I asked to see the Art Director. The receptionist, with no fanfare, made a call and within several minutes, the art director came out. I believe the receptionist sensed this was something I needed to experience. My work was looked at and then after some thoughtful moments, the art director motioned to follow him inside.
Jack Kirby's work was there on paper big enough to cover part of a wall! The art dazzled me. Surely no HUMAN did this?! My jaw dropped to my feet. The panels were way larger than my stamp-sized panels. I never realized that the artwork was drawn so large. All of it was in pencil. I met Bob Kane for just a moment. I remember he had juist finished drawing someone holding a '45 Automatic'. The hand holding this gun was shown, including what looked like every bone in the fingers! I was WAY out of my league.
As a last bit of advice, I was told to go to art school. This was the last thing I ever wanted to hear. Me and school never got along. I was a lousy student and now MORE school to cope with? I let it go...for a while.
Returning home from the Air Force, I remembered the advice from D.C. and thanks to the G.I. Bill of Rights, my first year was paid for at the Art Student's League. Five days a week took up much of my time at the League. I was living at home and so with weekends and spare time in the evenings, my nose was buried in a new approach to a 'strip'.
Being highly influenced by the artist Milton Caniff, my attention was turned towards the idea of working up samples dealing with war. This time, everything was drawn and inked on large illustration board; the very same type shown to me at D.C. I even applied a 'wash' technique for shading even though this was not done in any publications that I knew of. Lettering and dialogue were added to top it off as a finished presentation.
D.C. to me was like trying to break in to MGM Studios in Hollywood. So instead, with several pages of samples, about ten pages, I trundled off to a different Publication. They were located in the Empire State Building at the time and up to one of the higher floors to their offices I went. The process of showing my work to a different Art Director began all over again! His name, I remember, was Mr. Al Sullman. Within a few minutes, he came out to greet me and to scan over my war story. It seemed to me that he took some time in looking at them which transferred in my mind to possibilities. "Wait here" he finally said and took all of the pages inside, leaving me alone in the waiting room. This was now looking better by the second.
Mr. Sullman must have been gone a good fifteen minutes before he finally emerged. He didn't have my work with him but crooked his finger for me to follow him inside. I walked down a long hallway with many offices to the last one and there is where I entered through an open door to meet Stan Lee. It was summertime then and with his window open, a good breeze came through blowing a tiny propeller on top of a beany hat perched on Stan's head. He was playing cards. "So you want a job, 'ey?! ...sit down! " :D".
I don't remember the exact figure, somewhere around $60 a week, but it was the start of my career, and I didn't much care WHAT Stan started me at!
I was determined in working on these samples for my portfolio, to turn out the very best in me. Sometimes in life, you know the answer even before you get it...how things are going to turn out. This was one of those times. And for me, it was Timely Comics, way back when........
