November 17, 2025 • 53 mins
In this 2016 conversation, acclaimed comics historian Bill Schelly takes us deep into the life and legacy of Otto Binder, one of the most influential — and too often overlooked — writers in the history of American comics and science fiction. Schelly discusses his expanded biography, Otto Binder: The Life and Work of a Comic Book and Science Fiction Visionary, and lays out why Binder’s fingerprints are all over the Golden and Silver Age. We cover:
- Binder’s prolific run on Shazam!/Captain Marvel in the 1940s
- The creation of Mary Marvel, the Marvel Family, and Mr. Tawny the Talking Tiger
- How Binder built classic villains like Mister Mind and crafted the landmark Monster Society of Evil saga
- His leap to DC Comics in the 1950s, where he co-created Supergirl, The Legion of Super-Heroes, the Bottled City of Kandor, and helped reshape the Superman mythos
- Binder’s parallel career in science fiction, and how his SF instincts informed his storytelling across both mediums
- Why his influence still resonates with modern superhero comics
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, welcome back time again for Word Balloon the
Comic Book Conversation show. John suntris here reaching back for
a fantastic comic history discussion with the late great Bill Shelley.
Bill Shelley was a wonderful comic historian and biographer. He
wrote biographies of people like Joe Hubert and Harvey Kurtzman
and today's subject Otto Bender. Who's Onto Bender? Shame on you. You
(00:22):
should know Auto Binder. You certainly know his work. He's
the man who gave us so many facets of the
Marvel family back in the fawcet days. That's right, shazam.
But we still call him Captain Marvel here in word
Balloon parts. But he created Talkie Tony, he created mister
Mind in the Superman universe. Well, he gave us the
first Carrazo carrazorrel Supergirl story. He also gave us the
(00:48):
early legion of superhero stories and a lot of other
facets of the Superman mythos. A really important guy. He
also had a wonderful history in pulps, including I Robot,
the I Robot short story that he and his brother
wrote under the pen name Eando Binder. We talk about
that and more, because that's our main focus is Auto's career,
(01:08):
Bill Shelley talking about the Lake Great Auto Bender and
the late great Bill Shelley having that conversation with me
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(01:28):
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(01:51):
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(02:14):
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Thank you for your support. League of Word Balloon listeners. Man,
(02:36):
I am really excited to welcome Bill Shelley to word
Balloon because I've been reading mister Shelley's work in Alter
Ego magazine and some of his books about comic fandom.
So it's a real pleasure to welcome you here, sir.
Thank you for coming on.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Well, thanks for having me, John, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
I'm thrilled with this Autobender book and right now they
sent me a PDF and it's on my kindle. So
give me the title of the book, please, well the.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Whole title, and it is rather long. Auto Binder, The
Life and Work of a comic book and science fiction visionary.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
You know that sums it up, though, because my god,
what a career. I was aware that he was a
Captain Marvel writer, knew that he was a very important
Superman writer. But really this is you know, a full
biography his early years up to the early seventies, when
he was writing novels and also doing kind of speculative science,
(03:34):
kind of in that vein of Chariots of the Gods.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Well, that's right, he was. In the early sixties, he
started Space World magazine, and so he was a serious
science reporter for a magazine that he owned, taking a
bit of a break from the comic books. And then
he became known as a serious science writer. And then
people started contacting him and asking him his opinion of UFOs,
(03:58):
and he said, well, I have never seen one, so
I guess I don't believe one. Won't believe in one
until I see one. But he became more and more
interested and finally ultimately wrote a bunch of articles, several
articles about UFOs in the sixties. He's known as a
ufologist just for these early articles.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
And another interesting kind of side interest of his was
that exploration of uh. They made a movie about this,
a couple of years ago called white Noise, but just
that you know, the spirit, you know, kind of contact
with the spirit world through just you know, kind of
recording a silent room and just kind of the surface noise,
you know, hearing stuff. And I want to say it
(04:39):
might have been one of your articles or Mark Evan year.
I'm not really sure. Maybe it was. Is it Dick
loop Off? Is he or looped Off?
Speaker 2 (04:47):
For how do you say?
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Loop? Okay, Dick? Maybe it was Dick loop Off or somebody.
But I and as I remember from your book, you
said you never got to meet him face to face unfortunately,
but I know fortunately, but mister Loopoff did and I
and I'm not sure if I year did or not,
but yeah, that they were even like got to hear
him play some of his white Noise and be like here,
that's the weird part. And you know, it's that kind
(05:10):
of stuff that ghost hunters are kind of looking for today.
But he had an interest in that world as well.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Well, that's right, because he was trying to speak to
his brother who had died relatively young across the spirit world.
And also more importantly really was his daughter was killed
tragically when she was fourteen, and so he was trying
to reach he became so distraught he would believe and
try to do anything to try to speak to her
(05:35):
again if he could, including these recordings, recording things and
playing them, speaking into the tape recorder and then trying
to listen back and see if these noises, if they
were played backwards, or if they were played slowly, sounded
like voices.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
Unbelievable. Yeah, really really interesting. Honestly, I bring it up
not to mock him at all, but really I think
probably helped his imagination as well. I mean, you know,
again that was after the fact, and certainly after he
and his brother were writing, and in fact that we
should mention a lot of people might know his credits
as Iando Bender and you know, right, and then it.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Was all right. It started out with his older brother
wanting to be a writer, Earl, and then Auto's teamed
up with him and they came up with the name
E and O, and so all of his science fiction writing,
even after Earl stopped teaming with him, was signed Iando
because that name became very well known.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
That's awesome. Yeah, he had this really long career in
Pulp's or well, I guess you know, yeah, over ten
years and of course created a very important character, Adam Link,
that people might know if they're big Outer Limits fans,
in particular because they did an adaptation of the I
Robot story. And it's funny. I always thought that was
an Asimov story.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Well I think most people do. They go, well, gee,
he must have ripped it off from Asimov, But actually
it was the other way around.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Auto's story with original Adam Link story about the first
sentient robot was titled I Robot. And later, when Asimov's
agent was putting together a collection of the short stories
about robots, his agent took that title and slapped it
on the book without Asimov realizing it until it was
(07:25):
too late and it was in print. Wow. And so
Asimov went to Bender and said, I'm so sorry about this.
I don't know what to do, and Bender just said, well,
send me a copy and I'll sign it for you.
Don't worry about it. But if you think about it,
I mean, even the movie with Will Smith I Robot.
You know this is a Bender idea that's floating around now.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Yes, And you know, I used to say, what a
shame they took Asimov's great story and really made it
into a you know, just something very different. And it's
too bad because and now obviously I've been corrected, it's
auto story. But if you go back to that original
Outer Limits episode and in fact the nineties remake of
the original story, both had both had Leonard Nimoy. He
(08:10):
plays a news reporter. In the first, it's basically a
robot that is accused of murder and murdering his creator. It,
I guess, as I learned from your book, it covered
two pulp stories, and because the first one ended kind
of with a cliffhanger where the murder happens and he's
on the run, and actually, you tell.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Me, becoming a whole series, yes, yes, it ended up
becoming a series of I think there's maybe seven or
eight of them. And that was that was actually, you know,
it's like even today, you create something and so people
want more. Yeah, And so he responded to that and
came up with wonderful new twists and turns to the
(08:49):
stories like put Animalink on Trial, which is the second story,
and then the scientist invents a mate for Adam called Eve,
and all these things happened. It is quite interesting, But
that was his big claim to fame as a science
fiction pulp writer, which you're right, he did that for
about ten years and was you know, I would say
(09:10):
he was in the upper tier, if not one of
the most one of the greatest, he was sort of
in the near great category.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Understood well, you know, And I also appreciated in mister
Lupof's forward to your book too, where he said, look,
this guy was in Shakespeare. He was just an entertaining
writer that really knew how to you know, write fun
stories for his audience. And it's true, you know, yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
He never wanted to be a writer, even he just
started helping his brother, and it turned out he had
this facility for it and as a very fertile imagination,
and more than anything, he had sort of an inner
childlike quality that he brought this sense of wonder to
his stories that made them tremendously appealing.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
You know, Honestly, I appreciate your writing and mister Lupov's writing,
and Roy Thomas all the stuff I read an alter
ego because you guys give us the real history. Because
I sometimes find uh, bloggers and podcasters of my generation
we all have this amazing respect for you know, these
(10:12):
great Golden and Silver Age creators and their amazing concepts,
but sometimes they really put them up on this pedestal,
and it's like, hey man, these were guys that were
grinding it out, and certainly in Bender's case, in the
pulps for a quarter of a cent per word or
half a cent per word, and.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
More like more like a quarter quarter.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
Yeah, And then you know, you point out too that
one of the reasons why he went into comic books
was because of the demand of comics. The pay rate
was like, you know what, three bucks a page or
something like that for a much shorter story compared to
you know what he had to do to grind out
pulp novels and pulp short stories.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Well, yeah, he resisted comics at first. Well, his brother
became a comics entrepreneur, bringing artists together to churn out
pages of all artwork for comics, and his brother Jack
did this for a living and kept asking Auto, hey,
get into this, get into this. You can make some
good money here. But at first Auto was skeptical, and
he thought that comics were rather shoddy. But then comics
(11:14):
got better in the early forties than they were in
the late thirties. And the money went up up because
the comics were exploding. And at the same time there
was a shortage of good people because of the draft.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Absolutely yes, people were going to war, so they needed
people to be able to fill the jobs, and.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
There was a demand. And Auto had bad hearings, so
he was for f and so he couldn't serve. So
that's how he served. Was he you know, he did
comic books that were read by gis around the world.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Absolutely No, And you know, I can't even remember if
I mentioned, you know, certainly the big impact on Superman,
but before that, a huge impact on the Captain Marvel
and the Fossad line, and even before well maybe around
the same time. I saw a handful of credits and
you mentioned him in your book, things like Captain America's
(12:05):
story very early in the Simon and Kirby running like
Captain America issue eight or nine.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
You know, Yes, he wrote for Faucett Comics, which is
a major comic book publisher, one of the ten majors
in the forties or so, but he wrote for several
of the others, including his second biggest client was Timely Comics,
where now we call him Marvel Comics and he wrote
a great deal of Captain America and other more of
(12:31):
the subsidiary characters. But he wrote the entire first issue
of Young Allies, for example, which was a team comic book.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
Yeah, that was Bucky and a lot of the sidekicks.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
That's right. He wrote the first issue and that was
like a forty five page novel, which was quite unusual
at that time.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Well, that's a big claim to fame. And then also
you can argue that Atto Binder wrote or co wrote
the biggest first comic book event, and that's Captain Marvel
and the Monster Society of Evil. Right.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Well, right, I mean that's we think of the comic
of the big event comics of the nineties and going forward.
But that was certainly an event comic because it was
a twenty five chapter serial that ran for well, I
mean it ran for a long time. I don't remember.
You know, sometimes some of those comics were actually published
every two weeks. There were such a demand. So I
(13:22):
couldn't say exactly what, but it was ninety forty three
through nineteen forty five right in there. And he created
this villain, mister Mind, who he had no idea what
the physical reality was going to be for this villain.
He was just this name. And then of course you're
laughing because you know the story. At the end it
turns out that mister Mind is really this little, tiny
(13:42):
worm who happens to be a criminal genius.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
That's awesome, man. Yeah, and you know he figured into
oh god, I forget which recent current deal, Oh fifty two,
the weekly DC event from about ten years ago.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Was he in that?
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Yeah, he was one of the big bags of fifty two. Absolutely,
Oh yeah, it was great. And they, of course, you know,
had to make him this like I think, to be
in the DC universe, he was a worm. But then
if you saw his real the way he really looked
in his own dimension and stuff, he was a giant
and everything. And that's okay, you know, yeah, you know exactly.
That's comics. They take stuff and they move it into
(14:17):
a different direction. That's all right, right, But no, it was.
And also I compared your a lot of what I
read from your book, and also some of the stuff
on Wikipedia. They say that he wrote nearly half of
the Marvel family, you know stories in terms of just
volume of stories.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
That's right. He wrote you know, Captain Marvel, and then
there was Captain Marvel Junior, and then Auto wrote the
original stories with Mary Marvel. Otto didn't create Captain Marvel.
He came in about a couple of years later, but
he wrote. And then there was also The Marvel Family,
a comic book by that title, and he wrote. He
kept records and he wrote about half of all their stories,
(14:59):
which is you know, pretty amazing.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Absolutely, my god, what a body of work just for fawcet.
We haven't gotten to the DC universe and everything he
did for the Superman Family.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Well, right, just in the forties, I would say, from
what I know about the history of comics, he was
probably the most prolific writer of comics in the forties. Wow,
more than Stanley, because Stanley was young and didn't get
started until really going into a little later. And no,
he's I think he is the most prolific comic book
writer of the forties because he wrote tons of comics
(15:31):
for like Canadian Bubblishers and things.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Oh, that's fantastic. I've just been like kind of discovering
that golden age of Canada comics and stuff and talking
to I don't know if you've encountered Hope Nicholson at all.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
No, I haven't, but I did look a little bit
into that area because Otto wrote so much of that
stuff in forty four forty five. But then after the
war that went away.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
But yeah, it was almost because they couldn't import American
comics during the war, and that kind of gave them,
you know, the reason to create more of their.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Own exactly, and had to do with paper supplies and
different things. But you're right, I mean, as far as
we haven't talked about d C, but he actually started
with DC when he was still at Fawcett. He was
writing stories for in the late forties, like forty seven,
forty eight, he was writing Tommy Tomorrow, and he was
(16:22):
writing a backup stories, minor characters and backup stories at
that time. He didn't do the major ones. But he
had been best friends with mort Weisinger and Julius Schwartz,
who were editors at DC. So they said, sure, we'll
give you some stuff, but you know, since you do
Captain Marvel, who was our arrival, maybe be best if
you didn't do Superman, and so we'll give you these
(16:45):
other auto courses. More than happy to do those because
they were very easier to write well.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
And that was what was interesting, and I was wondering
given the fact that there was the lawsuit going on
between national public periodicals, so that published Superman and certainly
fostered the published Captain Marvel. Yeah, it was. But again,
you really point out this friendship between Weisinger, Julie Schwartz,
and Auto Bender, especially in their early years traveling across
(17:13):
the country meeting other science fiction fans. This is when
Weisinger and Schwartz were not only big proponents of science
fiction fandom, but also were agents for sci fi right
pulp writers to get them gigs right right.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
I mean they were the first agents for people like
Ray Bradberry and I think it was called Solar Sales Agency,
but Auto didn't. He used some they used got to
play some of Auto's stories, but Otto had already other arrangements.
But they were best buddies, and they drive across country
(17:49):
together and all kinds of things.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Well, and I love the information that you had access
to because and I'll let you describe where these resources
came from. But you've got a lot of correspondents from
Bender to his brother and also to Schwartz and Wisinger,
some of these other agents that repped him and you
get this real genuine feel of what it must have
been like to be a freelancer in the pulp era.
(18:13):
And I really found that early stuff as fascinating as
the comic book stuff.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Well yeah, because for one thing, he's a very engaging
letter writer and people corresponded back then, yes, And fortunately
a lot of those letters were saved by some of
those anal retentive science fiction fan and we know about
that as anal retentive comic fan, but anyway, they were saved,
and then eventually they were put into a special collection
(18:41):
at Texas A and M University and their Cushing Library
where I was able to find them. And it was
unbelievable to find a stack of thirty forty letters from
Earl to Otto.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Wow and.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Back and different, all kinds of letters and correspondents and
things like that. And of course I was also able
to talk with Julia Schwartz, who also had material that
he shared with me, including a lot of photographs, rare photos.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
That's really cool. Now there really is amazing, and you
get this real legitimate history of the paulp era, and
again this golden age of comics from the forties through
you know, the pre Barry Allen flashyears, I mean, and
then certainly they do spill into the Silver Age as well.
And my god, his contributions to the Superman mythos. And
(19:30):
I'll let you list a few, and I'll go into
detail on the ones that I really want to spend time.
But yeah, yeah, go for it. Just give us the
give us the laundry list to begin with.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
Well, I mean, of course, you know when he went
to after Captain Marvel went out of business in nineteen
fifty four, Auto switched right over to DC and he
started working on the Superman mythos because they were trying
to develop it beyond what had been done by Jerry
Siegel and Joe Schuster and the late fifties. He worked
with editor Mort Weisinger, and I would say Auto co
(20:05):
created the Legion of Superheroes. He co created Supergirl. He's
the one that named her Kara. He he created his
Superboy super Dog Crypto. He he created Lucy Lane, Lois
Lane's sister. He added and fleshed out the Superman mythos
is what he did. He added to He created Brainiac
(20:27):
and the Bottle City of Candor, which was you know,
Brainiac was a space alien that that stole up a
city from candor and shrunk it into a bottle, which
is as a kid, that's such a that's such a
cool thing to think about a city and a bottle.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
You know, absolutely bad, No, I agree with you. You know
in your was it your forward or was I can't
remember it was in the Loopop's forward or in your
book where the first issue you are he read was
that first eighty page Giant.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Well that's me because that was a seminal event in
my life because I had never read a Superman collu
before then, and I was a years old and I
was going on a train trip, and I convinced my
father give me a quarter instead of just a dime
to buy a comic book because I wanted that for
some reason. And six of the eight or nine stories
were written by Auto Bender in that Annual Wow. So
(21:14):
my connection with him goes back to my discovery of
comic books, and his stories were what turned me on to.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Comics, you know, man. And I think about twelve or
fifteen years later, when I was about eight years old,
I was reading one of the last eighty page Giants
before they became the one hundred page spectaculars yea. And
I don't know if he wrote the imaginary story of
Superman's sons, but I do know I read a lot
of early Candor stories and that's what made me think
(21:43):
of it. And I absolutely agree with you. I wish
that that collectible bottle City of Candor wasn't as pricey
as it is, because I buy it in a heartbeat,
and I mean, my god, that is absolutely man No,
just the idea of an entire city in this water
cooler side bottle that had the oxygen on top and
everything it was. It was just great and just a
(22:05):
great imagination.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Well, to fill in just a little bit more about
his contribution so you can understand how much he contributed.
At this time, he wrote the entire first thirties or
so issues of Jimmy Olsen in his own comic. He
wrote a story two or at least one or two
stories in every issue of Superboy from the time he
(22:27):
started working on them and in the late fifties, and
so he wrote an awful lot. He loved the character
of Jimmy Olsen because it probably kind of reminded him
of Billy Batson, who was Captain Marvel's secret identity, so
to speak. And he loved Superboy because you know, Auto
grew up in a small town that he based Smallville on.
(22:48):
I mean, Smallville is based in his stories. It's based
on Randolph, Nebraska, which is where Auto spent his childhood.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
That's great.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
And he lived there like a Tom Sawyer in this
little town. And so he didn't invent Smallville, just like
he didn't invent Bizarro. But he he wrote the first
Bizarro story for comic books. Bizarrow had appeared first in
the Superman Daily newspaper strip. So Auto can't actually be
(23:19):
said correctly that he, you know, co created Bizarrow. He didn't.
He just wrote that great story where super super Boy
meets Bizarro and it's just a classic.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
You know, Thank you. I'm really glad there are people
like you that let us know these kind of details,
because seg goes for Leo Dorfmann and Alvin Schwartz, these
are you know, silver age writers for the listeners who
may not know I know, you know.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Well, I'm kind of astounded that, you know, because they
just aren't that well known.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Well, you know, because I'm friends with people like Mark
Wade and and you know, I mean, so they kind
of helped me out as well.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
I'm sure Mark, I'm sure Mark Dog.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
But that's the thing. I mean, it's you know, they
didn't have the credits in those great stories, and so
you don't know until you, you know, find the historian
who goes, yeah, this is what the contributions were of
these people. We know Kurt Swan's art. We might know
Kurt Schoffenberger's art. Did I say his name? Right?
Speaker 2 (24:16):
That's correct?
Speaker 1 (24:16):
All right, there we go. Before we started recording, Bill
was like, you know, if you know, just so you know,
it's Bender not Binder. And I'm like, OK, I'm like,
actually I did know, but I appreciate that. And I
was gonna say, there's gonna be some names that we
might come across during the interview. But that's the thing.
Nobody knew these guys. They were, you know, nameless, faceless
guys that were making incredible contributions to the Superman mythos.
(24:40):
It is because this cast of characters were allowed to
develop in their own stories that Superman's you know mythos
I think stands above everyone else's. It's you know, you know,
Daredevil's Foggy Nelson and Karen Page because of maybe the
Netflix thing, and even if you're a hardcore fan, but
there are so many great heroes that they don't have
(25:01):
the Greek chorus.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
There's there's no Karen Page comic, and there's no Foggy
Nelson comic. But there was a Jimmy Olsen comic, and
there's this lois Land comic. Yeah, and yeah, you know so,
but you know, I think that's the important thing. It's
interesting though, on the in the comics now, I think
they're stating that Supergirl was created by Siegul and Schuster,
(25:26):
and I think it's a little bit misleading. True, she's
based on the myth of Crypton and and you'd have
to say that they were co creators. But Otto wrote
the first story of Supergirl, named her, named Argo City,
you know all these things. You know, he he is
(25:47):
definitely one of the co creators a Supergirl, and he's
not being credited, not that you know his errors. Are
you know, are all upset about it or anything like that,
because I don't think that's the big issue, but in
terms of fairness, it would be nice.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
I did hear though that they and I'm gonna have
to go back and watch that first episode that the
plane that Superhero saves is about to hit the Auto
Bender bridge.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
That is correct, and so that was a very that
was a very nice nod, and of course it made
me smile.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Absolutely, No, that's fantastic. You know, you're right, And it's
it's funny too, because as we're recording today, the word
came out that Superman physically will finally well you know,
we saw his boots in one episode last season, but
that they're finally going to cast a Superman character for
the first two episodes of season two for Supergirl. And
(26:40):
I even was talking to somebody on Twitter, another comic
book blogger, and he's like, oh, you know, I'm really
worried that the fans might want more Superman and it
might push Supergirl out of the picture. And I'm like, no, man,
I'm like, she's first of all, the first season is
I think proven it. But also because of things like
Superman's girlfriend Lois Lane and Jimmy it's like, these characters
(27:02):
live and breathe on their own. Yes, Superman, but you know,
will be in the stories. But they really were Lowest
Lane stories. They really were Jimmy Olsen stories, and certainly
Supergirl and and that's the thing. It's like, no, I
really think everything's going to be fine. And the great
thing is, I think the television producers really get that.
And I'm like, I really think you're worried about something
that isn't going to exist. I wouldn't swear I'd have
(27:24):
to agree with you on that. There you go, you know,
I mean, I don't.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Think it's I don't think it's something that I think
it'll be very interesting to see what they do with that.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Yeah, yeah, no, And what have you thought of? As
you know, And honestly, I wanted to get to that
as far as even the big, bigger picture as well,
because you've been, you know, this lifelong comic fan. And also,
I mean, you know, you're you're an original gangster, you know,
you know, I mean that's you know, you you put
out the fanzines and stuff when there was no internet
to connect all of us. You were one of those
(27:52):
guys doing the mimiographs and sending them out in mail.
I mean, you know, as a child of the seventies
and eighties, I cut the light end of that before
where technology really exploded, we were.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
The people that used to get letters full of with coins,
with sticky tape on them, and from you know, maybe
one hundred people would order it. They'd they'd send you,
you know, twenty cents tape to their letter. And yeah,
I mean I dealt with the did those things when
I was a kid, because I'm you know, I've always
been a writer. It's been in my blood. And so
(28:26):
the minute I even heard of such a thing as
fancy to say, oh, I can do one, so I
immediately was seized with this urge to publish and did so.
And so I did a bunch of fancies in the sixties.
And that was, of course the period of time when
fantom was really getting rolling, when there were the early
conventions and the actually Auto was a part of that.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
Yes, I wanted to. That's kind of what my leading
was going to be. Tell me about his appearances at
those early sixties conventions.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
Well, yeah, the first time he got involved, he was
invited by Richard Lupoff, you know who wrote the introduction
to my book, to the Loopoff's Home, because Loopoff had
discovered that Auto was working at Space World in New
York and made the connection and they were going to
show the Captain Marvel Cereal movie Cereal and he invited
Auto and his wife, and Auto met all these comic
(29:14):
fans for the first time, and he said, I never
had any idea there were people that actually were fans
of comics. I figured people just read them and traded
them or throwing it, threw them away. And he became
aware of this whole fan phenomenon, and finally at one
point he said, I feel like I'm being doused by fans.
I mean, he was he was a celebrity.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
That's excellent. Well that's that's really great, and you know,
I remember, oh god it now I'm playing Jim Aparo
before he passed away, got to go to San Diego
and was really touched at how many people really loved
his work now and certainly much bigger stage than the
cons in the sixties. Now, this first convention that Loopoff
had was it literally at his house in just like
(29:54):
a couple dozen people or.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
Yeah, that was I wouldn't say that was a convention.
But what happened is all got involved with these fans
and ended up going to the first what was called
the first real convention, true convention, which was in sixty
five in New York City. There was one in sixty
four but it only lasted a few hours and it
was one afternoon, whereas in sixty five it was at
a hotel and they had a full program. It was
(30:16):
over multiple days, and it was a real convention. Auto
was the guest of honor.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
That's excellent, that's fantastic. Your fanzines, what were some of
the names of your fancines.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Well, my first one, I was called Superheroes Anonymous, Okay,
I mean, I have no idea what it meant or
why I thought that was cool. I just came up
with it. But what I'm best known for was a
fancy I did a little bit later, when I finally
got my act together somewhat. It was called Sense of Wonder, Okay, Yeah,
And I did twelve issues a Sense of Wonder from
nineteen sixty seven to nineteen seventy two, and by the
(30:49):
end it was a rather professional photo offset magazine. And
only problem was I wasn't good enough to be in
my own fan anymore. You know, My art wasn't that great,
and at that time I wasn't the best writer around
or anything. I've developed somewhat as a writer since then.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Did you did you create comic strips? As I know
some fanzines did create their own heroes and as okay.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
In fact, I was known for a character called the
Immortal Corpse.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
Awesome.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
The Immortal Corpse was the first debt hero that was dead,
and you know, think about how many dead heroes there
are now, and he was he literally and his power
was that he could control his age, so he could
he could freak people out by grabbing them and the
aging in front of them, and they thought they were
going crazy.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
And I don't know, that's fantastic, No, man, I'm I'm
laughing with joy. I'm not mocking.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
I swear it's okay. But but the character became quite popular,
appeared in a number of different fanzines, and then more
recently some people said, well, gee, you know you should try,
you know, marketing that as a TV show or video game.
And I just by the time that happened, there'd been
so many others, you know, I Corpse, I this, I
that that. You know, it was just an old idea
(32:03):
at that point.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
Well, DC's on a zombie obviously as well.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Yeah, I mean, you know, what are you going to do?
I mean that I had the idea back in sixty four,
but hey, I.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
Hear you man, No, it's all right. I I honestly,
I truly have. I have great respect for the fanzines.
I used to get similar things that covered boxing back
in the day. I'm a big boxing fan, okay, And
then I would get fanzines that were initially mimeographed. And
then you know, as things got better and stuff like
you say, yeah, no, they became more quality magazines and stuff.
(32:35):
But no, I got a lot of you know, overstuffed
business letter envelopes and stuff that would have legal sized
paper kind of you know, wrapped together.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Well, that was that was the Internet of the day. Yes, no,
absolutely it was.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
Yeah. Did you do interviews with you know, the publishers
and the editors and writers as.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
Well back then? Yeah, well no, it was a problem
for me because, you know, people a when I was
thirteen or fourteen, the idea of making long distance calls
my parents. My parents would never have countenanced it. They
would have just said forget it because it was expensive. Yes,
And then later what happened was we moved to Idaho,
(33:16):
so I was in the middle of nowhere, so I
couldn't really get to conventions, and so I've only I
only went to one big convention, which is the nineteen
seventy three New York Con. I went there after I
graduated from high school or from college. And that's the
only big con I ever went to.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
Who'd you see at that con that's all?
Speaker 2 (33:33):
Well, Harvey Kurtzman was there, and William Gaines, Wow, Storenko.
Let's see Bob Kane gave a speech where the room
by the end, the room was empty.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
Why is that what happened?
Speaker 2 (33:49):
Now? He's just he was a very, very full of himself.
And after you've heard someone bragg about how great they are,
you know, for a while, at first you're indulgent because you,
forg well, you created Batman. But after a while it's
just like, oh Jesus, guy's a real chure.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
And so the room emptied. And but I did see
other people. I meet other people there, of course, who
are at the convention. Jim Warren I talked to. In fact,
I even even interviewed for a job at Creepy and
Area at that Oh wow, and Gil Caine I met
at an elevator von Boudet. Wow. Yeah it was it
was a comic Batman and was going great guns in
(34:27):
nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
That's awesome, that's fantastic. Oh, you know again, that's kind
of when I got into it, the twenty cent per
issue era. That's that's why.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
Well, that's that's a real popular era right now. The
bronze age is a big deal right now, you know.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
And I always feel getting back to Superman kind of neglected.
And it was like I loved it when he was
working for WGBS and Steve Lombard was was pulling pranks
on him.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
And you know, your golden age is what age you
were when you were twelve.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
This is true. This is one hundred percent all right. Now.
You mentioned Harvey Kurtzman and I said this, we're recording.
You're nominated for an Eisener for your harmy Harvey Kurtzman book.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
Yes, I'm very happy about that. Of course.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
Yeah, I want you know, like I said before before
the San Diego convention happens, I do want you back
because I'd love to talk more about about the Kurtzman
book in full.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
Uh. Well, it was an amazing project. I'd be very
happy to come back. It would take it would be
good to dedicate a whole show to it, or a
great part of a show rather than try to talk
about him.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
Now that's what I figured. Yeah, I didn't want to.
I didn't want to overtax you either, and you know,
we just met, so I don't want you know, I
don't want to ingratiate myself on you too much. Shut up,
We're done talking.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
It's it's no, it's okay. I I'm happy to be
I'm just really glad to be able to talk about
Auto and uh, be able to talk about the book.
And because you know, he's such a wonderful, warm man
who really had some tough breaks later in his life
with the death of his daughter, but he he survived them,
and he he's just everybody who knew him loved Auto.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
That's cool, and I I really think it comes through
in the book. And again, I just love the amount
of research you were able to do and put into this.
And also, this is a second edition of this book.
You originally released it in two thousand.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
And three, right when I first got back into comic
fandom in the early nineties after being away for a while.
I started wanting to write, but I just really didn't
have any credentials, so I started self publishing. So I
did my book, The goldendjew Comic Fandom. Myself published that,
which was the first book link history of fandom. And
then after I did several books on the history of fandom,
(36:34):
I decided I wanted to branch out a little bit,
and Roy Thomas and I were talking about how great
it would be if there was a book on autobinder,
because Roy knew auto and so I said, well, gee,
maybe that'd be a project I could do, and so
I self published the first edition, and then recently I
was moaning on Facebook about, yeah, I'd sure like to
do another edition of this. There were only a thousand
(36:56):
copies printed of the original and a publisher, Atlantic Books.
The representative got in touch with me from that little
rant on Facebook, and thus we have.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
A book that's excellent. I'm really glad that happened, and
you know, available at Amazon. You know, as we're recording,
the book drops this week, so it's.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
Supposed to be tomorrow is a publication date.
Speaker 1 (37:16):
Yes, so that the seventh, June seventh is the day
that it appeared and or that it debuted. So if
you're listening after that, it's already out there and go
to Amazon and check North Atlantic Books.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
The Earth Atlantic Books, And this book is almost one
hundred pages longer than the first edition.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
That's excellent. Yeah, and I also, again I was reading
the difference a lot of supplemental material in terms of
personal papers and correspondence, more of that stuff in the book,
and also a lot more photographs as well.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Exactly, it's just a better book. All the errors that
people pointed out to me have been fixed. It's just
I'm you know, I'm a little better writer now, so
I was able to kind of smooth it out a
little bit and make it better. I'm very happy with
the way it turned out.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
So and again we'll talk again if you're able. I'd
love to talk about Kurtzman. But what other figures would
you like to do full biography biographies of?
Speaker 2 (38:09):
Well, you know, it takes three things to do that. A.
It has to be somebody that you really want to
spend two years of your life doing and thinking about.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
Understand.
Speaker 2 (38:18):
B it takes access to the material. You know, I
don't want to work on a book and just regurgitate
everything that's been written. I want to get access to
things that haven't been known to family, photographs and different
things like that. And that's not always possible, of course.
And then third you have to it has to be
as someone who's could really be well enough known to
(38:40):
support a book and for a publisher to be interested
in publishing a book on someone because I figured they
could sell enough copies. So it's tricky figuring out, you know,
how many how many people are in comic books are
there that really would make all those cuts? And so
you know, obviously you know I would you know, there
could be a book on Frank Furzetta, be a book
(39:01):
on Robert Crumb, there could be in comics. There's certainly,
you know, but there've been biographies of Wallywood, and he'd
be a great subject. But there's already a book on him.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
And so right now I have some things in the works,
but I don't have anything I can talk about. I
have one. I just finished a book that's a major
person in the history of comics. So I have to
tease you with that. I can't tell you who it is, okay,
but it's I turned it all and it's going to
be a big coffee table book and biography that's going
to come out early next year.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
Excellent. Well, that's an excuse to have you back and
we'll talk about that when when that time comes. Now,
I kind of scratched the service of this, but I'm
really interested in your opinion of today's comic fandom and
also comic fan press, and and you know, it's okay.
I'm a big boy. I can take it, you know.
And I don't feel I'm the sole representative of of
(39:54):
of that group of people as well. But yeah, what
do you I mean? Because really I talked to Walt
Simonson at a Marvel telephone press conference when he and
Brian Bennis were just about to start and Arc of
the Avengers, and we talked about story and what was
going on specifically in their story. But I'm like, Walter,
what do you think of this almost twenty four hour
news cycle devoted to comics? And you know, so now
(40:17):
I'm asking you that question.
Speaker 2 (40:19):
Well, you know, I think you might be asking the
wrong guy, because honestly, I can't keep up with all that,
all the websites and the material that's coming out. I
see this cycle and it's like the media we see everywhere.
Everything is this, you know, one minute, wonder the next
day something else, and the short attention span theater of
(40:43):
it all, and you know, I just I just kind
of am agog and I think that has sort of
invaded the comic book area too. But I also think
we just have to realize that, you know, that that's
what's happening now, and there are reasons why it's happening,
and let's just see if we could make the best
of it. Because you know things too, If you're not changing,
(41:07):
you're not going anywhere. And I think it's important to
have changed.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
So okay, yeah, no, and I agree with that. I
kind of feel like I straddle both. There is because
I was this kid, as you know, you were going
to the seventy three super Con and stuff like that
in New York, and I, you know, now am part
of this you know, kind of blog a sphere. I
mostly podcasts, but you know, and I and I try
to do you know, kind of in depth interviews like
(41:31):
what we're doing to really get legitimate answers, but you know, no,
it's it's fun. And also, yeah, I and there are
days that I think it's great, and then there are
days like in the last couple of weeks. I'm sure
through the transom you at least heard about all the
Captain America hal Hydra Oh yeah, fu're any any thoughts
on that?
Speaker 2 (41:52):
Well, you know, my thought on that is that this too.
Speaker 1 (41:54):
Will change there you go, exactly, and so let's.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
You know, it's a it's a it's a nine Days
Wonder or however long this happens. And just like the
death of Superman in the nineties, I mean, come on,
everybody was so concerned about Superman. What will happened to him?
Will we come back? Of course he'll come back, you know,
And the same way with Captain America. You know, this
is just what's happening now, and it's a way of
coming up with a new take on the character and
(42:20):
some drawing some interest to the character. I wouldn't think
the character would need much new interest given the popularity
of the movies, but I'm not an executive at Marvel.
Speaker 1 (42:30):
Sure, sure were there were there those kinds of outrages
back in the sixties, like how dare Bouncing Boy get
booted out of the Legion?
Speaker 2 (42:37):
Or so?
Speaker 1 (42:37):
I mean, you know, were there were those kinds of
stories in fancies of your era.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
Well, of course there was commentary on the comics that
were coming out, and definitely there were people that felt
that for example, when the Flash came back. You know,
it wasn't the original Flash. It was a new Flash.
And so I think that there are people that probably
felt like, well, geez, this, why don't why do we
have to reinvent the Flash? Why don't we just bring
back Jay Garrick the Flash? That would be just fine.
(43:05):
But you know, there was something great about the reinvention
of the Flash. And what was so great about it
was he became the Flash because he was reading a
Flash comic book when he got hit by lightning. I mean,
how that is just so clever. I just love that.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
Yeah, absolutely, that's excellent.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
Well that's in the comic book. It's not in the
TV show, I'm sure right.
Speaker 1 (43:25):
Unfortunately, Well, and what do you think of the current
TV shows and the movies and everything.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
Well, I like a lot of them. I liked the
first season of Arrow a lot. When it became a
situation where he was getting kicked pillar to post by
about five different women, I started to feel like, well, geez,
you know this is what this is his team Greenow.
For one thing, it's not Green Arrow anymore. And secondly,
I thought Green Arrow, could you know, it was a
(43:51):
little tougher character than this. But he ended up getting
kicked around and awful lot, and by mostly by you know,
bouncing from his various female sub characters there, And doesn't
matter if it would be, it's not a matter of female.
It's just that he just wasn't as in control of
his situation as he seemed for a while there, and
so I kind of lost the interest. I felt like
(44:11):
they took the character and made him weak. But you know,
other shows I really like, and I thought this, I
think the Supergirl show is very good. I think that, uh,
you know, well, the Greg Burlanti shows, you know, Flash
is of course probably the most popular. And I mean
it's it's just a it's a terrific show, and it
(44:33):
got off to a wonderful start, and it has an
excellent star. You know, he's a little young to be
a police scientist. But hey, you know, maybe maybe he
just looks so young because I'm so old.
Speaker 1 (44:45):
You know, well, I kind of felt the same way,
like got these kids all look like they're barely out
of college. If that how they were in college.
Speaker 2 (44:52):
They looked awfully young. They were cast you very young.
But see the benefit of that is that if the
show lasts, they can get older and still be youngish
in everything, whereas sometimes you can cast somebody like I
think when they cast Daniel Craig is James BONDI who
was in his forties. True, So you know, if a
guy's going to play a character over a period of time,
maybe it's better to cast on the young side.
Speaker 1 (45:14):
Well, and it's getting interesting now, and I've talked about
this with some of the executives in Marvel about how
you know, Robert Downey is in his early fifties now
looks great and is in his amazing shape. But you know,
are you going to I mean it was I use
the I use the James Bond and the Star Trek
examples where you know, we got to see Shatner and
(45:35):
Nimoya the play the roles through their seventies, right, you know,
and that's cool, But you know, are we going to
be able to do that? And will will that work?
And also how would that impact the comics because you
know you've got Tony Stark potentially at sixty years old
being iron Man.
Speaker 2 (45:51):
Well, you know, there's different ways they can solve it,
but there could certainly be a new actor playing iron Man.
Speaker 1 (45:55):
Sometimes absolutely well, or you know that, or again, do
you do you introduce legacy. I mean, like like Jay
Gerrick and Barry Allen, does there become a to a hero.
Speaker 2 (46:03):
You know, that could very easily happen too, that he
could become more of a guru to the new Iron Man. Absolutely,
or maybe he would do it to Roady. I don't know,
but whatever the case, there's all kinds of ways that
you can handle that. But I think when you're casting
a television show on the CW, you has a very
young viewership, you nat you want to cast you on?
Speaker 1 (46:23):
Oh no, absolutely no. And you know, I love seeing
and I never know how to say Grant is a
Grant Gustin or whatever. I know his first name is.
Speaker 2 (46:30):
I think that's right.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
But when you see him and he's just in the
outfit and the mask is, you know, hanging from his
neck the way that we've seen it a million times
in the comics, it blows my mind. And you're the
kind of guy that I could talk to and say,
we remember when you know, Marvel was doing those seventies
movies and yeah they sucked, but it was like who cared?
It was a Captain America movie, it was a Doctor
(46:51):
Strange movie. We were thrilled.
Speaker 2 (46:53):
You know, well, it was very exciting, and let mean,
of course the Hulk, Yes, series was probably possible for
keeping the Hulk going and for creating a tremendous amount
of added interest in the Hulk, I think, no question.
So yeah, no, you know we well, hey, the Superman
Show in the sixties, I mean in the late fifties,
(47:15):
when you know, when I was a little kid in
the early sixties, when they were showing repeats, I'd watched that.
It was like magic. It was like lightning in a bottle.
Speaker 1 (47:22):
Absolutely no, you're right, so you know.
Speaker 2 (47:27):
At the time, but I don't know what's going to
really throw people. What's going to be new in the
future that's going to throw people when they can do
everything now.
Speaker 1 (47:34):
Yeah, but do you you know it's funny because some
people are like, this is great, but it's going to
end and we should all enjoy ourselves with Maybe in
about ten years people are gonna get sick of superheroes.
I disagree because they used the Western as an example,
and I'm like, hey, guys, the Western lasted literally from
Edison creating movies to you know, the seventies where we
(47:55):
had non stop westerns and then within ten years, Silverado
came out and Westerns we're back. So I kind of
think we are bomb proof as far as movies or
TVs goes. There might be a reduction, but I kind
of think that the genre is here to stay as
far as supervis goes.
Speaker 2 (48:11):
Well, I mean, I think you're right. I think what'll
happen is it'll become like anything else, will be good
ones and bad ones, so will be flops and be terrible,
others will be great, and people will learn to discriminate,
just as they discriminate between a good detective movie or
a bad detective movie or whatever. But I think that
there's the mythological and the colorful aspects of the superhero
(48:32):
movies is something that is very attractive to people, all
kinds of people. And we always knew it when we
were in the comic school. We always thought this stuff
is so cool if only people really understood. And now
that they see it, they do respond to.
Speaker 1 (48:46):
It, which I think explains some of the outcry of
this Captain America a hale hydra thing. A lot of us,
you know, being you know, used to these kind of
twists and comic books. We're cool, but it amazes me,
how many any bloggers are really pouring their heart into
Oh my god, you've destroyed this character. It's over, It's
(49:07):
all over.
Speaker 2 (49:08):
Well, I hate to bring up Daniel Craig again, but
when they cast him, there were there were practically riots
in the streets. It's the level of insanity. You know,
it's hard to even imagine how excited people get over
this stuff. So, you know, but then again, you know,
(49:29):
there's so much noise on the Internet. You can't pay attention.
You have to just pick the parts of it that
you really want to pay attention to, so you can
kind of tune out a lot of it.
Speaker 1 (49:37):
Agreed, And I try to do that on word Balloon
when I when I have no lie guests on like yourself,
because also I don't want people to think Another thing
that drives me nuts is they think all that a
lot of this stuff is so brand new. But you
as you point out, we had television with the syndicated
Superman show, and by the way, in the way that
(49:58):
they want, oh why don't they do commercials for comic books?
I know, you know it. At the very end of
every Superman episode, you got the narrator going Superman appairs
monthly in Action and Superman comic books exactly. And that's
because they owned the show.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
Oh yeah, and uh, you know the you know there.
But you know, there's no question now is a great
time to be a fan of these movies because they're
just i mean, the New Civil War just blew my mind.
It was really a terrific movie. Oh yeah, I mean,
it's just it's just, you know, to think for me,
(50:35):
being an older guy, to watch this, it's like I
never dreamed in a million years we'd be able to have,
you know, Giant Man lumbering around an airport or something
like that. I mean, I just I wrapped up when
I saw that. I was just so thrilled.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
I just couldn't believe it, absolutely, and that that many
different heroes performing their powers against each other. Yeah no,
I my, you know, really, man, you're early, like a
decade and a half or so I have, and I
felt the same way. It's like, oh my god, and
thank god we live to see all this happened.
Speaker 2 (51:04):
Oh great, it's a great it's a great time for that.
I mean, god, no.
Speaker 1 (51:07):
And also, well that's why when the younger people are
like nah, and you know, like it was okay, and
it's like, oh, you guys have no idea the crap.
We were like, yay that that superhero roast, the celebrity
roast from the seventies, even that crap. We're like, yeah, good, yeah.
Speaker 2 (51:24):
Yeah, yeah, well no it is it is great. And
you know, on the other hand, those are some great
comics that were published back then. And I mean to
be a fan back when Frank Muller first got into
comics and was doing Daredevil for the first time, and
to see that talent flower like it did, and to
see him come along and Alan Moore to get into
comics and people like that in the eighties is just
(51:44):
a you know, there's just something so exciting about seeing
that kind of talent just find itself and create great
comic book.
Speaker 1 (51:52):
Well, and again you have a few decades earlier, and
that's exactly the kind of description you make for Atto Bender.
Speaker 2 (51:58):
Yeah yeah, oughto. Otto really had the magic touch when
it came to how to write these stories, and he
did so many of them, and he knew what he
was doing from start to finish. And you know, it's
good to give credit where it's due, and he hasn't
always gotten the recognition that he probably deserves. And so
I'm hoping that this book will really touch a nerve
(52:20):
with people that they'll recommend it to their friends, they'll
talk about it on Facebook. And really the advance and orders,
I mean, I don't have specific numbers, but the publisher
told me they went back to press before they even
the book even came out.
Speaker 1 (52:32):
Fantastic.
Speaker 2 (52:34):
It sounds like there's going to be a real good
reception for this book.
Speaker 1 (52:38):
That's excellent. I'm happy to help pass the word onto
the word Balloon audience and let them know that now
this is a great book and really a very important
game changing creator that should not be forgotten. And luckily
we've got your book, Otto Binder, The Life and Work
of a comic book and science fiction Visionary from Bill Shelley.
It is out this week. Look for look forward to
(53:00):
at your comic stores. I bet a lot of them
are ordering it as well as regular bookstores, and you
can find it online in Amazon. And good luck with
the nomination for Harvey Kurtzman. The Man who created Mad
and revolutionized Humor in America is.
Speaker 2 (53:15):
One of those long titles.
Speaker 1 (53:16):
Yeah, well, I luckily, you see, I got the cover
in front of me now sound good.
Speaker 2 (53:20):
Well, thanks for having me on, John, It's really been
a pleasure talking to you.
Speaker 1 (53:23):
Likewise, Bill seriously, and I will be stalking you so
that you'll come back before the Eisners and we can
talk about Kurtzman. That would be great.
Speaker 2 (53:32):
Let's do that.
Hey, everybody, welcome back time again for Word Balloon the
Comic Book Conversation show. John suntris here reaching back for
a fantastic comic history discussion with the late great Bill Shelley.
Bill Shelley was a wonderful comic historian and biographer. He
wrote biographies of people like Joe Hubert and Harvey Kurtzman
and today's subject Otto Bender. Who's Onto Bender? Shame on you. You
(00:22):
should know Auto Binder. You certainly know his work. He's
the man who gave us so many facets of the
Marvel family back in the fawcet days. That's right, shazam.
But we still call him Captain Marvel here in word
Balloon parts. But he created Talkie Tony, he created mister
Mind in the Superman universe. Well, he gave us the
first Carrazo carrazorrel Supergirl story. He also gave us the
(00:48):
early legion of superhero stories and a lot of other
facets of the Superman mythos. A really important guy. He
also had a wonderful history in pulps, including I Robot,
the I Robot short story that he and his brother
wrote under the pen name Eando Binder. We talk about
that and more, because that's our main focus is Auto's career,
(01:08):
Bill Shelley talking about the Lake Great Auto Bender and
the late great Bill Shelley having that conversation with me
on today's word Balloon. Word Balloon is brought to you
by Alex Ross Art dot com, the home for stunning,
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(01:28):
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(01:51):
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(02:14):
the Word Balloon Book Club. That's where myself and Brian
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a Patreon subscriber at Patreon dot com slash word Balloon.
Thank you for your support. League of Word Balloon listeners. Man,
(02:36):
I am really excited to welcome Bill Shelley to word
Balloon because I've been reading mister Shelley's work in Alter
Ego magazine and some of his books about comic fandom.
So it's a real pleasure to welcome you here, sir.
Thank you for coming on.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Well, thanks for having me, John, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
I'm thrilled with this Autobender book and right now they
sent me a PDF and it's on my kindle. So
give me the title of the book, please, well the.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Whole title, and it is rather long. Auto Binder, The
Life and Work of a comic book and science fiction visionary.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
You know that sums it up, though, because my god,
what a career. I was aware that he was a
Captain Marvel writer, knew that he was a very important
Superman writer. But really this is you know, a full
biography his early years up to the early seventies, when
he was writing novels and also doing kind of speculative science,
(03:34):
kind of in that vein of Chariots of the Gods.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Well, that's right, he was. In the early sixties, he
started Space World magazine, and so he was a serious
science reporter for a magazine that he owned, taking a
bit of a break from the comic books. And then
he became known as a serious science writer. And then
people started contacting him and asking him his opinion of UFOs,
(03:58):
and he said, well, I have never seen one, so
I guess I don't believe one. Won't believe in one
until I see one. But he became more and more
interested and finally ultimately wrote a bunch of articles, several
articles about UFOs in the sixties. He's known as a
ufologist just for these early articles.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
And another interesting kind of side interest of his was
that exploration of uh. They made a movie about this,
a couple of years ago called white Noise, but just
that you know, the spirit, you know, kind of contact
with the spirit world through just you know, kind of
recording a silent room and just kind of the surface noise,
you know, hearing stuff. And I want to say it
(04:39):
might have been one of your articles or Mark Evan year.
I'm not really sure. Maybe it was. Is it Dick
loop Off? Is he or looped Off?
Speaker 2 (04:47):
For how do you say?
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Loop? Okay, Dick? Maybe it was Dick loop Off or somebody.
But I and as I remember from your book, you
said you never got to meet him face to face unfortunately,
but I know fortunately, but mister Loopoff did and I
and I'm not sure if I year did or not,
but yeah, that they were even like got to hear
him play some of his white Noise and be like here,
that's the weird part. And you know, it's that kind
(05:10):
of stuff that ghost hunters are kind of looking for today.
But he had an interest in that world as well.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Well, that's right, because he was trying to speak to
his brother who had died relatively young across the spirit world.
And also more importantly really was his daughter was killed
tragically when she was fourteen, and so he was trying
to reach he became so distraught he would believe and
try to do anything to try to speak to her
(05:35):
again if he could, including these recordings, recording things and
playing them, speaking into the tape recorder and then trying
to listen back and see if these noises, if they
were played backwards, or if they were played slowly, sounded
like voices.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
Unbelievable. Yeah, really really interesting. Honestly, I bring it up
not to mock him at all, but really I think
probably helped his imagination as well. I mean, you know,
again that was after the fact, and certainly after he
and his brother were writing, and in fact that we
should mention a lot of people might know his credits
as Iando Bender and you know, right, and then it.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Was all right. It started out with his older brother
wanting to be a writer, Earl, and then Auto's teamed
up with him and they came up with the name
E and O, and so all of his science fiction writing,
even after Earl stopped teaming with him, was signed Iando
because that name became very well known.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
That's awesome. Yeah, he had this really long career in
Pulp's or well, I guess you know, yeah, over ten
years and of course created a very important character, Adam Link,
that people might know if they're big Outer Limits fans,
in particular because they did an adaptation of the I
Robot story. And it's funny. I always thought that was
an Asimov story.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Well I think most people do. They go, well, gee,
he must have ripped it off from Asimov, But actually
it was the other way around.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Auto's story with original Adam Link story about the first
sentient robot was titled I Robot. And later, when Asimov's
agent was putting together a collection of the short stories
about robots, his agent took that title and slapped it
on the book without Asimov realizing it until it was
(07:25):
too late and it was in print. Wow. And so
Asimov went to Bender and said, I'm so sorry about this.
I don't know what to do, and Bender just said, well,
send me a copy and I'll sign it for you.
Don't worry about it. But if you think about it,
I mean, even the movie with Will Smith I Robot.
You know this is a Bender idea that's floating around now.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Yes, And you know, I used to say, what a
shame they took Asimov's great story and really made it
into a you know, just something very different. And it's
too bad because and now obviously I've been corrected, it's
auto story. But if you go back to that original
Outer Limits episode and in fact the nineties remake of
the original story, both had both had Leonard Nimoy. He
(08:10):
plays a news reporter. In the first, it's basically a
robot that is accused of murder and murdering his creator. It,
I guess, as I learned from your book, it covered
two pulp stories, and because the first one ended kind
of with a cliffhanger where the murder happens and he's
on the run, and actually, you tell.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Me, becoming a whole series, yes, yes, it ended up
becoming a series of I think there's maybe seven or
eight of them. And that was that was actually, you know,
it's like even today, you create something and so people
want more. Yeah, And so he responded to that and
came up with wonderful new twists and turns to the
(08:49):
stories like put Animalink on Trial, which is the second story,
and then the scientist invents a mate for Adam called Eve,
and all these things happened. It is quite interesting, But
that was his big claim to fame as a science
fiction pulp writer, which you're right, he did that for
about ten years and was you know, I would say
(09:10):
he was in the upper tier, if not one of
the most one of the greatest, he was sort of
in the near great category.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Understood well, you know, And I also appreciated in mister
Lupof's forward to your book too, where he said, look,
this guy was in Shakespeare. He was just an entertaining
writer that really knew how to you know, write fun
stories for his audience. And it's true, you know, yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
He never wanted to be a writer, even he just
started helping his brother, and it turned out he had
this facility for it and as a very fertile imagination,
and more than anything, he had sort of an inner
childlike quality that he brought this sense of wonder to
his stories that made them tremendously appealing.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
You know, Honestly, I appreciate your writing and mister Lupov's writing,
and Roy Thomas all the stuff I read an alter
ego because you guys give us the real history. Because
I sometimes find uh, bloggers and podcasters of my generation
we all have this amazing respect for you know, these
(10:12):
great Golden and Silver Age creators and their amazing concepts,
but sometimes they really put them up on this pedestal,
and it's like, hey man, these were guys that were
grinding it out, and certainly in Bender's case, in the
pulps for a quarter of a cent per word or
half a cent per word, and.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
More like more like a quarter quarter.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
Yeah, And then you know, you point out too that
one of the reasons why he went into comic books
was because of the demand of comics. The pay rate
was like, you know what, three bucks a page or
something like that for a much shorter story compared to
you know what he had to do to grind out
pulp novels and pulp short stories.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Well, yeah, he resisted comics at first. Well, his brother
became a comics entrepreneur, bringing artists together to churn out
pages of all artwork for comics, and his brother Jack
did this for a living and kept asking Auto, hey,
get into this, get into this. You can make some
good money here. But at first Auto was skeptical, and
he thought that comics were rather shoddy. But then comics
(11:14):
got better in the early forties than they were in
the late thirties. And the money went up up because
the comics were exploding. And at the same time there
was a shortage of good people because of the draft.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Absolutely yes, people were going to war, so they needed
people to be able to fill the jobs, and.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
There was a demand. And Auto had bad hearings, so
he was for f and so he couldn't serve. So
that's how he served. Was he you know, he did
comic books that were read by gis around the world.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Absolutely No, And you know, I can't even remember if
I mentioned, you know, certainly the big impact on Superman,
but before that, a huge impact on the Captain Marvel
and the Fossad line, and even before well maybe around
the same time. I saw a handful of credits and
you mentioned him in your book, things like Captain America's
(12:05):
story very early in the Simon and Kirby running like
Captain America issue eight or nine.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
You know, Yes, he wrote for Faucett Comics, which is
a major comic book publisher, one of the ten majors
in the forties or so, but he wrote for several
of the others, including his second biggest client was Timely Comics,
where now we call him Marvel Comics and he wrote
a great deal of Captain America and other more of
(12:31):
the subsidiary characters. But he wrote the entire first issue
of Young Allies, for example, which was a team comic book.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
Yeah, that was Bucky and a lot of the sidekicks.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
That's right. He wrote the first issue and that was
like a forty five page novel, which was quite unusual
at that time.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Well, that's a big claim to fame. And then also
you can argue that Atto Binder wrote or co wrote
the biggest first comic book event, and that's Captain Marvel
and the Monster Society of Evil. Right.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Well, right, I mean that's we think of the comic
of the big event comics of the nineties and going forward.
But that was certainly an event comic because it was
a twenty five chapter serial that ran for well, I
mean it ran for a long time. I don't remember.
You know, sometimes some of those comics were actually published
every two weeks. There were such a demand. So I
(13:22):
couldn't say exactly what, but it was ninety forty three
through nineteen forty five right in there. And he created
this villain, mister Mind, who he had no idea what
the physical reality was going to be for this villain.
He was just this name. And then of course you're
laughing because you know the story. At the end it
turns out that mister Mind is really this little, tiny
(13:42):
worm who happens to be a criminal genius.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
That's awesome, man. Yeah, and you know he figured into
oh god, I forget which recent current deal, Oh fifty two,
the weekly DC event from about ten years ago.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Was he in that?
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Yeah, he was one of the big bags of fifty two. Absolutely,
Oh yeah, it was great. And they, of course, you know,
had to make him this like I think, to be
in the DC universe, he was a worm. But then
if you saw his real the way he really looked
in his own dimension and stuff, he was a giant
and everything. And that's okay, you know, yeah, you know exactly.
That's comics. They take stuff and they move it into
(14:17):
a different direction. That's all right, right, But no, it was.
And also I compared your a lot of what I
read from your book, and also some of the stuff
on Wikipedia. They say that he wrote nearly half of
the Marvel family, you know stories in terms of just
volume of stories.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
That's right. He wrote you know, Captain Marvel, and then
there was Captain Marvel Junior, and then Auto wrote the
original stories with Mary Marvel. Otto didn't create Captain Marvel.
He came in about a couple of years later, but
he wrote. And then there was also The Marvel Family,
a comic book by that title, and he wrote. He
kept records and he wrote about half of all their stories,
(14:59):
which is you know, pretty amazing.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Absolutely, my god, what a body of work just for fawcet.
We haven't gotten to the DC universe and everything he
did for the Superman Family.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Well, right, just in the forties, I would say, from
what I know about the history of comics, he was
probably the most prolific writer of comics in the forties. Wow,
more than Stanley, because Stanley was young and didn't get
started until really going into a little later. And no,
he's I think he is the most prolific comic book
writer of the forties because he wrote tons of comics
(15:31):
for like Canadian Bubblishers and things.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Oh, that's fantastic. I've just been like kind of discovering
that golden age of Canada comics and stuff and talking
to I don't know if you've encountered Hope Nicholson at all.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
No, I haven't, but I did look a little bit
into that area because Otto wrote so much of that
stuff in forty four forty five. But then after the
war that went away.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
But yeah, it was almost because they couldn't import American
comics during the war, and that kind of gave them,
you know, the reason to create more of their.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Own exactly, and had to do with paper supplies and
different things. But you're right, I mean, as far as
we haven't talked about d C, but he actually started
with DC when he was still at Fawcett. He was
writing stories for in the late forties, like forty seven,
forty eight, he was writing Tommy Tomorrow, and he was
(16:22):
writing a backup stories, minor characters and backup stories at
that time. He didn't do the major ones. But he
had been best friends with mort Weisinger and Julius Schwartz,
who were editors at DC. So they said, sure, we'll
give you some stuff, but you know, since you do
Captain Marvel, who was our arrival, maybe be best if
you didn't do Superman, and so we'll give you these
(16:45):
other auto courses. More than happy to do those because
they were very easier to write well.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
And that was what was interesting, and I was wondering
given the fact that there was the lawsuit going on
between national public periodicals, so that published Superman and certainly
fostered the published Captain Marvel. Yeah, it was. But again,
you really point out this friendship between Weisinger, Julie Schwartz,
and Auto Bender, especially in their early years traveling across
(17:13):
the country meeting other science fiction fans. This is when
Weisinger and Schwartz were not only big proponents of science
fiction fandom, but also were agents for sci fi right
pulp writers to get them gigs right right.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
I mean they were the first agents for people like
Ray Bradberry and I think it was called Solar Sales Agency,
but Auto didn't. He used some they used got to
play some of Auto's stories, but Otto had already other arrangements.
But they were best buddies, and they drive across country
(17:49):
together and all kinds of things.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Well, and I love the information that you had access
to because and I'll let you describe where these resources
came from. But you've got a lot of correspondents from
Bender to his brother and also to Schwartz and Wisinger,
some of these other agents that repped him and you
get this real genuine feel of what it must have
been like to be a freelancer in the pulp era.
(18:13):
And I really found that early stuff as fascinating as
the comic book stuff.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Well yeah, because for one thing, he's a very engaging
letter writer and people corresponded back then, yes, And fortunately
a lot of those letters were saved by some of
those anal retentive science fiction fan and we know about
that as anal retentive comic fan, but anyway, they were saved,
and then eventually they were put into a special collection
(18:41):
at Texas A and M University and their Cushing Library
where I was able to find them. And it was
unbelievable to find a stack of thirty forty letters from
Earl to Otto.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Wow and.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Back and different, all kinds of letters and correspondents and
things like that. And of course I was also able
to talk with Julia Schwartz, who also had material that
he shared with me, including a lot of photographs, rare photos.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
That's really cool. Now there really is amazing, and you
get this real legitimate history of the paulp era, and
again this golden age of comics from the forties through
you know, the pre Barry Allen flashyears, I mean, and
then certainly they do spill into the Silver Age as well.
And my god, his contributions to the Superman mythos. And
(19:30):
I'll let you list a few, and I'll go into
detail on the ones that I really want to spend time.
But yeah, yeah, go for it. Just give us the
give us the laundry list to begin with.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
Well, I mean, of course, you know when he went
to after Captain Marvel went out of business in nineteen
fifty four, Auto switched right over to DC and he
started working on the Superman mythos because they were trying
to develop it beyond what had been done by Jerry
Siegel and Joe Schuster and the late fifties. He worked
with editor Mort Weisinger, and I would say Auto co
(20:05):
created the Legion of Superheroes. He co created Supergirl. He's
the one that named her Kara. He he created his
Superboy super Dog Crypto. He he created Lucy Lane, Lois
Lane's sister. He added and fleshed out the Superman mythos
is what he did. He added to He created Brainiac
(20:27):
and the Bottle City of Candor, which was you know,
Brainiac was a space alien that that stole up a
city from candor and shrunk it into a bottle, which
is as a kid, that's such a that's such a
cool thing to think about a city and a bottle.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
You know, absolutely bad, No, I agree with you. You know
in your was it your forward or was I can't
remember it was in the Loopop's forward or in your
book where the first issue you are he read was
that first eighty page Giant.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Well that's me because that was a seminal event in
my life because I had never read a Superman collu
before then, and I was a years old and I
was going on a train trip, and I convinced my
father give me a quarter instead of just a dime
to buy a comic book because I wanted that for
some reason. And six of the eight or nine stories
were written by Auto Bender in that Annual Wow. So
(21:14):
my connection with him goes back to my discovery of
comic books, and his stories were what turned me on to.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Comics, you know, man. And I think about twelve or
fifteen years later, when I was about eight years old,
I was reading one of the last eighty page Giants
before they became the one hundred page spectaculars yea. And
I don't know if he wrote the imaginary story of
Superman's sons, but I do know I read a lot
of early Candor stories and that's what made me think
(21:43):
of it. And I absolutely agree with you. I wish
that that collectible bottle City of Candor wasn't as pricey
as it is, because I buy it in a heartbeat,
and I mean, my god, that is absolutely man No,
just the idea of an entire city in this water
cooler side bottle that had the oxygen on top and
everything it was. It was just great and just a
(22:05):
great imagination.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Well, to fill in just a little bit more about
his contribution so you can understand how much he contributed.
At this time, he wrote the entire first thirties or
so issues of Jimmy Olsen in his own comic. He
wrote a story two or at least one or two
stories in every issue of Superboy from the time he
(22:27):
started working on them and in the late fifties, and
so he wrote an awful lot. He loved the character
of Jimmy Olsen because it probably kind of reminded him
of Billy Batson, who was Captain Marvel's secret identity, so
to speak. And he loved Superboy because you know, Auto
grew up in a small town that he based Smallville on.
(22:48):
I mean, Smallville is based in his stories. It's based
on Randolph, Nebraska, which is where Auto spent his childhood.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
That's great.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
And he lived there like a Tom Sawyer in this
little town. And so he didn't invent Smallville, just like
he didn't invent Bizarro. But he he wrote the first
Bizarro story for comic books. Bizarrow had appeared first in
the Superman Daily newspaper strip. So Auto can't actually be
(23:19):
said correctly that he, you know, co created Bizarrow. He didn't.
He just wrote that great story where super super Boy
meets Bizarro and it's just a classic.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
You know, Thank you. I'm really glad there are people
like you that let us know these kind of details,
because seg goes for Leo Dorfmann and Alvin Schwartz, these
are you know, silver age writers for the listeners who
may not know I know, you know.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Well, I'm kind of astounded that, you know, because they
just aren't that well known.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Well, you know, because I'm friends with people like Mark
Wade and and you know, I mean, so they kind
of helped me out as well.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
I'm sure Mark, I'm sure Mark Dog.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
But that's the thing. I mean, it's you know, they
didn't have the credits in those great stories, and so
you don't know until you, you know, find the historian
who goes, yeah, this is what the contributions were of
these people. We know Kurt Swan's art. We might know
Kurt Schoffenberger's art. Did I say his name? Right?
Speaker 2 (24:16):
That's correct?
Speaker 1 (24:16):
All right, there we go. Before we started recording, Bill
was like, you know, if you know, just so you know,
it's Bender not Binder. And I'm like, OK, I'm like,
actually I did know, but I appreciate that. And I
was gonna say, there's gonna be some names that we
might come across during the interview. But that's the thing.
Nobody knew these guys. They were, you know, nameless, faceless
guys that were making incredible contributions to the Superman mythos.
(24:40):
It is because this cast of characters were allowed to
develop in their own stories that Superman's you know mythos
I think stands above everyone else's. It's you know, you know,
Daredevil's Foggy Nelson and Karen Page because of maybe the
Netflix thing, and even if you're a hardcore fan, but
there are so many great heroes that they don't have
(25:01):
the Greek chorus.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
There's there's no Karen Page comic, and there's no Foggy
Nelson comic. But there was a Jimmy Olsen comic, and
there's this lois Land comic. Yeah, and yeah, you know so,
but you know, I think that's the important thing. It's
interesting though, on the in the comics now, I think
they're stating that Supergirl was created by Siegul and Schuster,
(25:26):
and I think it's a little bit misleading. True, she's
based on the myth of Crypton and and you'd have
to say that they were co creators. But Otto wrote
the first story of Supergirl, named her, named Argo City,
you know all these things. You know, he he is
(25:47):
definitely one of the co creators a Supergirl, and he's
not being credited, not that you know his errors. Are
you know, are all upset about it or anything like that,
because I don't think that's the big issue, but in
terms of fairness, it would be nice.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
I did hear though that they and I'm gonna have
to go back and watch that first episode that the
plane that Superhero saves is about to hit the Auto
Bender bridge.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
That is correct, and so that was a very that
was a very nice nod, and of course it made
me smile.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Absolutely, No, that's fantastic. You know, you're right, And it's
it's funny too, because as we're recording today, the word
came out that Superman physically will finally well you know,
we saw his boots in one episode last season, but
that they're finally going to cast a Superman character for
the first two episodes of season two for Supergirl. And
(26:40):
I even was talking to somebody on Twitter, another comic
book blogger, and he's like, oh, you know, I'm really
worried that the fans might want more Superman and it
might push Supergirl out of the picture. And I'm like, no, man,
I'm like, she's first of all, the first season is
I think proven it. But also because of things like
Superman's girlfriend Lois Lane and Jimmy it's like, these characters
(27:02):
live and breathe on their own. Yes, Superman, but you know,
will be in the stories. But they really were Lowest
Lane stories. They really were Jimmy Olsen stories, and certainly
Supergirl and and that's the thing. It's like, no, I
really think everything's going to be fine. And the great
thing is, I think the television producers really get that.
And I'm like, I really think you're worried about something
that isn't going to exist. I wouldn't swear I'd have
(27:24):
to agree with you on that. There you go, you know,
I mean, I don't.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Think it's I don't think it's something that I think
it'll be very interesting to see what they do with that.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Yeah, yeah, no, And what have you thought of? As
you know, And honestly, I wanted to get to that
as far as even the big, bigger picture as well,
because you've been, you know, this lifelong comic fan. And also,
I mean, you know, you're you're an original gangster, you know,
you know, I mean that's you know, you you put
out the fanzines and stuff when there was no internet
to connect all of us. You were one of those
(27:52):
guys doing the mimiographs and sending them out in mail.
I mean, you know, as a child of the seventies
and eighties, I cut the light end of that before
where technology really exploded, we were.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
The people that used to get letters full of with coins,
with sticky tape on them, and from you know, maybe
one hundred people would order it. They'd they'd send you,
you know, twenty cents tape to their letter. And yeah,
I mean I dealt with the did those things when
I was a kid, because I'm you know, I've always
been a writer. It's been in my blood. And so
(28:26):
the minute I even heard of such a thing as
fancy to say, oh, I can do one, so I
immediately was seized with this urge to publish and did so.
And so I did a bunch of fancies in the sixties.
And that was, of course the period of time when
fantom was really getting rolling, when there were the early
conventions and the actually Auto was a part of that.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
Yes, I wanted to. That's kind of what my leading
was going to be. Tell me about his appearances at
those early sixties conventions.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
Well, yeah, the first time he got involved, he was
invited by Richard Lupoff, you know who wrote the introduction
to my book, to the Loopoff's Home, because Loopoff had
discovered that Auto was working at Space World in New
York and made the connection and they were going to
show the Captain Marvel Cereal movie Cereal and he invited
Auto and his wife, and Auto met all these comic
(29:14):
fans for the first time, and he said, I never
had any idea there were people that actually were fans
of comics. I figured people just read them and traded
them or throwing it, threw them away. And he became
aware of this whole fan phenomenon, and finally at one
point he said, I feel like I'm being doused by fans.
I mean, he was he was a celebrity.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
That's excellent. Well that's that's really great, and you know,
I remember, oh god it now I'm playing Jim Aparo
before he passed away, got to go to San Diego
and was really touched at how many people really loved
his work now and certainly much bigger stage than the
cons in the sixties. Now, this first convention that Loopoff
had was it literally at his house in just like
(29:54):
a couple dozen people or.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
Yeah, that was I wouldn't say that was a convention.
But what happened is all got involved with these fans
and ended up going to the first what was called
the first real convention, true convention, which was in sixty
five in New York City. There was one in sixty
four but it only lasted a few hours and it
was one afternoon, whereas in sixty five it was at
a hotel and they had a full program. It was
(30:16):
over multiple days, and it was a real convention. Auto
was the guest of honor.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
That's excellent, that's fantastic. Your fanzines, what were some of
the names of your fancines.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Well, my first one, I was called Superheroes Anonymous, Okay,
I mean, I have no idea what it meant or
why I thought that was cool. I just came up
with it. But what I'm best known for was a
fancy I did a little bit later, when I finally
got my act together somewhat. It was called Sense of Wonder, Okay, Yeah,
And I did twelve issues a Sense of Wonder from
nineteen sixty seven to nineteen seventy two, and by the
(30:49):
end it was a rather professional photo offset magazine. And
only problem was I wasn't good enough to be in
my own fan anymore. You know, My art wasn't that great,
and at that time I wasn't the best writer around
or anything. I've developed somewhat as a writer since then.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Did you did you create comic strips? As I know
some fanzines did create their own heroes and as okay.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
In fact, I was known for a character called the
Immortal Corpse.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
Awesome.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
The Immortal Corpse was the first debt hero that was dead,
and you know, think about how many dead heroes there
are now, and he was he literally and his power
was that he could control his age, so he could
he could freak people out by grabbing them and the
aging in front of them, and they thought they were
going crazy.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
And I don't know, that's fantastic, No, man, I'm I'm
laughing with joy. I'm not mocking.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
I swear it's okay. But but the character became quite popular,
appeared in a number of different fanzines, and then more
recently some people said, well, gee, you know you should try,
you know, marketing that as a TV show or video game.
And I just by the time that happened, there'd been
so many others, you know, I Corpse, I this, I
that that. You know, it was just an old idea
(32:03):
at that point.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
Well, DC's on a zombie obviously as well.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Yeah, I mean, you know, what are you going to do?
I mean that I had the idea back in sixty four,
but hey, I.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
Hear you man, No, it's all right. I I honestly,
I truly have. I have great respect for the fanzines.
I used to get similar things that covered boxing back
in the day. I'm a big boxing fan, okay, And
then I would get fanzines that were initially mimeographed. And
then you know, as things got better and stuff like
you say, yeah, no, they became more quality magazines and stuff.
(32:35):
But no, I got a lot of you know, overstuffed
business letter envelopes and stuff that would have legal sized
paper kind of you know, wrapped together.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Well, that was that was the Internet of the day. Yes, no,
absolutely it was.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
Yeah. Did you do interviews with you know, the publishers
and the editors and writers as.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
Well back then? Yeah, well no, it was a problem
for me because, you know, people a when I was
thirteen or fourteen, the idea of making long distance calls
my parents. My parents would never have countenanced it. They
would have just said forget it because it was expensive. Yes,
And then later what happened was we moved to Idaho,
(33:16):
so I was in the middle of nowhere, so I
couldn't really get to conventions, and so I've only I
only went to one big convention, which is the nineteen
seventy three New York Con. I went there after I
graduated from high school or from college. And that's the
only big con I ever went to.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
Who'd you see at that con that's all?
Speaker 2 (33:33):
Well, Harvey Kurtzman was there, and William Gaines, Wow, Storenko.
Let's see Bob Kane gave a speech where the room
by the end, the room was empty.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
Why is that what happened?
Speaker 2 (33:49):
Now? He's just he was a very, very full of himself.
And after you've heard someone bragg about how great they are,
you know, for a while, at first you're indulgent because you,
forg well, you created Batman. But after a while it's
just like, oh Jesus, guy's a real chure.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
And so the room emptied. And but I did see
other people. I meet other people there, of course, who
are at the convention. Jim Warren I talked to. In fact,
I even even interviewed for a job at Creepy and
Area at that Oh wow, and Gil Caine I met
at an elevator von Boudet. Wow. Yeah it was it
was a comic Batman and was going great guns in
(34:27):
nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
That's awesome, that's fantastic. Oh, you know again, that's kind
of when I got into it, the twenty cent per
issue era. That's that's why.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
Well, that's that's a real popular era right now. The
bronze age is a big deal right now, you know.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
And I always feel getting back to Superman kind of neglected.
And it was like I loved it when he was
working for WGBS and Steve Lombard was was pulling pranks
on him.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
And you know, your golden age is what age you
were when you were twelve.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
This is true. This is one hundred percent all right. Now.
You mentioned Harvey Kurtzman and I said this, we're recording.
You're nominated for an Eisener for your harmy Harvey Kurtzman book.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
Yes, I'm very happy about that. Of course.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
Yeah, I want you know, like I said before before
the San Diego convention happens, I do want you back
because I'd love to talk more about about the Kurtzman
book in full.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
Uh. Well, it was an amazing project. I'd be very
happy to come back. It would take it would be
good to dedicate a whole show to it, or a
great part of a show rather than try to talk
about him.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
Now that's what I figured. Yeah, I didn't want to.
I didn't want to overtax you either, and you know,
we just met, so I don't want you know, I
don't want to ingratiate myself on you too much. Shut up,
We're done talking.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
It's it's no, it's okay. I I'm happy to be
I'm just really glad to be able to talk about
Auto and uh, be able to talk about the book.
And because you know, he's such a wonderful, warm man
who really had some tough breaks later in his life
with the death of his daughter, but he he survived them,
and he he's just everybody who knew him loved Auto.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
That's cool, and I I really think it comes through
in the book. And again, I just love the amount
of research you were able to do and put into this.
And also, this is a second edition of this book.
You originally released it in two thousand.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
And three, right when I first got back into comic
fandom in the early nineties after being away for a while.
I started wanting to write, but I just really didn't
have any credentials, so I started self publishing. So I
did my book, The goldendjew Comic Fandom. Myself published that,
which was the first book link history of fandom. And
then after I did several books on the history of fandom,
(36:34):
I decided I wanted to branch out a little bit,
and Roy Thomas and I were talking about how great
it would be if there was a book on autobinder,
because Roy knew auto and so I said, well, gee,
maybe that'd be a project I could do, and so
I self published the first edition, and then recently I
was moaning on Facebook about, yeah, I'd sure like to
do another edition of this. There were only a thousand
(36:56):
copies printed of the original and a publisher, Atlantic Books.
The representative got in touch with me from that little
rant on Facebook, and thus we have.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
A book that's excellent. I'm really glad that happened, and
you know, available at Amazon. You know, as we're recording,
the book drops this week, so it's.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
Supposed to be tomorrow is a publication date.
Speaker 1 (37:16):
Yes, so that the seventh, June seventh is the day
that it appeared and or that it debuted. So if
you're listening after that, it's already out there and go
to Amazon and check North Atlantic Books.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
The Earth Atlantic Books, And this book is almost one
hundred pages longer than the first edition.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
That's excellent. Yeah, and I also, again I was reading
the difference a lot of supplemental material in terms of
personal papers and correspondence, more of that stuff in the book,
and also a lot more photographs as well.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Exactly, it's just a better book. All the errors that
people pointed out to me have been fixed. It's just
I'm you know, I'm a little better writer now, so
I was able to kind of smooth it out a
little bit and make it better. I'm very happy with
the way it turned out.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
So and again we'll talk again if you're able. I'd
love to talk about Kurtzman. But what other figures would
you like to do full biography biographies of?
Speaker 2 (38:09):
Well, you know, it takes three things to do that. A.
It has to be somebody that you really want to
spend two years of your life doing and thinking about.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
Understand.
Speaker 2 (38:18):
B it takes access to the material. You know, I
don't want to work on a book and just regurgitate
everything that's been written. I want to get access to
things that haven't been known to family, photographs and different
things like that. And that's not always possible, of course.
And then third you have to it has to be
as someone who's could really be well enough known to
(38:40):
support a book and for a publisher to be interested
in publishing a book on someone because I figured they
could sell enough copies. So it's tricky figuring out, you know,
how many how many people are in comic books are
there that really would make all those cuts? And so
you know, obviously you know I would you know, there
could be a book on Frank Furzetta, be a book
(39:01):
on Robert Crumb, there could be in comics. There's certainly,
you know, but there've been biographies of Wallywood, and he'd
be a great subject. But there's already a book on him.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
And so right now I have some things in the works,
but I don't have anything I can talk about. I
have one. I just finished a book that's a major
person in the history of comics. So I have to
tease you with that. I can't tell you who it is, okay,
but it's I turned it all and it's going to
be a big coffee table book and biography that's going
to come out early next year.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
Excellent. Well, that's an excuse to have you back and
we'll talk about that when when that time comes. Now,
I kind of scratched the service of this, but I'm
really interested in your opinion of today's comic fandom and
also comic fan press, and and you know, it's okay.
I'm a big boy. I can take it, you know.
And I don't feel I'm the sole representative of of
(39:54):
of that group of people as well. But yeah, what
do you I mean? Because really I talked to Walt
Simonson at a Marvel telephone press conference when he and
Brian Bennis were just about to start and Arc of
the Avengers, and we talked about story and what was
going on specifically in their story. But I'm like, Walter,
what do you think of this almost twenty four hour
news cycle devoted to comics? And you know, so now
(40:17):
I'm asking you that question.
Speaker 2 (40:19):
Well, you know, I think you might be asking the
wrong guy, because honestly, I can't keep up with all that,
all the websites and the material that's coming out. I
see this cycle and it's like the media we see everywhere.
Everything is this, you know, one minute, wonder the next
day something else, and the short attention span theater of
(40:43):
it all, and you know, I just I just kind
of am agog and I think that has sort of
invaded the comic book area too. But I also think
we just have to realize that, you know, that that's
what's happening now, and there are reasons why it's happening,
and let's just see if we could make the best
of it. Because you know things too, If you're not changing,
(41:07):
you're not going anywhere. And I think it's important to
have changed.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
So okay, yeah, no, and I agree with that. I
kind of feel like I straddle both. There is because
I was this kid, as you know, you were going
to the seventy three super Con and stuff like that
in New York, and I, you know, now am part
of this you know, kind of blog a sphere. I
mostly podcasts, but you know, and I and I try
to do you know, kind of in depth interviews like
(41:31):
what we're doing to really get legitimate answers, but you know, no,
it's it's fun. And also, yeah, I and there are
days that I think it's great, and then there are
days like in the last couple of weeks. I'm sure
through the transom you at least heard about all the
Captain America hal Hydra Oh yeah, fu're any any thoughts
on that?
Speaker 2 (41:52):
Well, you know, my thought on that is that this too.
Speaker 1 (41:54):
Will change there you go, exactly, and so let's.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
You know, it's a it's a it's a nine Days
Wonder or however long this happens. And just like the
death of Superman in the nineties, I mean, come on,
everybody was so concerned about Superman. What will happened to him?
Will we come back? Of course he'll come back, you know,
And the same way with Captain America. You know, this
is just what's happening now, and it's a way of
coming up with a new take on the character and
(42:20):
some drawing some interest to the character. I wouldn't think
the character would need much new interest given the popularity
of the movies, but I'm not an executive at Marvel.
Speaker 1 (42:30):
Sure, sure were there were there those kinds of outrages
back in the sixties, like how dare Bouncing Boy get
booted out of the Legion?
Speaker 2 (42:37):
Or so?
Speaker 1 (42:37):
I mean, you know, were there were those kinds of
stories in fancies of your era.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
Well, of course there was commentary on the comics that
were coming out, and definitely there were people that felt
that for example, when the Flash came back. You know,
it wasn't the original Flash. It was a new Flash.
And so I think that there are people that probably
felt like, well, geez, this, why don't why do we
have to reinvent the Flash? Why don't we just bring
back Jay Garrick the Flash? That would be just fine.
(43:05):
But you know, there was something great about the reinvention
of the Flash. And what was so great about it
was he became the Flash because he was reading a
Flash comic book when he got hit by lightning. I mean,
how that is just so clever. I just love that.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
Yeah, absolutely, that's excellent.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
Well that's in the comic book. It's not in the
TV show, I'm sure right.
Speaker 1 (43:25):
Unfortunately, Well, and what do you think of the current
TV shows and the movies and everything.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
Well, I like a lot of them. I liked the
first season of Arrow a lot. When it became a
situation where he was getting kicked pillar to post by
about five different women, I started to feel like, well, geez,
you know this is what this is his team Greenow.
For one thing, it's not Green Arrow anymore. And secondly,
I thought Green Arrow, could you know, it was a
(43:51):
little tougher character than this. But he ended up getting
kicked around and awful lot, and by mostly by you know,
bouncing from his various female sub characters there, And doesn't
matter if it would be, it's not a matter of female.
It's just that he just wasn't as in control of
his situation as he seemed for a while there, and
so I kind of lost the interest. I felt like
(44:11):
they took the character and made him weak. But you know,
other shows I really like, and I thought this, I
think the Supergirl show is very good. I think that, uh,
you know, well, the Greg Burlanti shows, you know, Flash
is of course probably the most popular. And I mean
it's it's just a it's a terrific show, and it
(44:33):
got off to a wonderful start, and it has an
excellent star. You know, he's a little young to be
a police scientist. But hey, you know, maybe maybe he
just looks so young because I'm so old.
Speaker 1 (44:45):
You know, well, I kind of felt the same way,
like got these kids all look like they're barely out
of college. If that how they were in college.
Speaker 2 (44:52):
They looked awfully young. They were cast you very young.
But see the benefit of that is that if the
show lasts, they can get older and still be youngish
in everything, whereas sometimes you can cast somebody like I
think when they cast Daniel Craig is James BONDI who
was in his forties. True, So you know, if a
guy's going to play a character over a period of time,
maybe it's better to cast on the young side.
Speaker 1 (45:14):
Well, and it's getting interesting now, and I've talked about
this with some of the executives in Marvel about how
you know, Robert Downey is in his early fifties now
looks great and is in his amazing shape. But you know,
are you going to I mean it was I use
the I use the James Bond and the Star Trek
examples where you know, we got to see Shatner and
(45:35):
Nimoya the play the roles through their seventies, right, you know,
and that's cool, But you know, are we going to
be able to do that? And will will that work?
And also how would that impact the comics because you
know you've got Tony Stark potentially at sixty years old
being iron Man.
Speaker 2 (45:51):
Well, you know, there's different ways they can solve it,
but there could certainly be a new actor playing iron Man.
Speaker 1 (45:55):
Sometimes absolutely well, or you know that, or again, do
you do you introduce legacy. I mean, like like Jay
Gerrick and Barry Allen, does there become a to a hero.
Speaker 2 (46:03):
You know, that could very easily happen too, that he
could become more of a guru to the new Iron Man. Absolutely,
or maybe he would do it to Roady. I don't know,
but whatever the case, there's all kinds of ways that
you can handle that. But I think when you're casting
a television show on the CW, you has a very
young viewership, you nat you want to cast you on?
Speaker 1 (46:23):
Oh no, absolutely no. And you know, I love seeing
and I never know how to say Grant is a
Grant Gustin or whatever. I know his first name is.
Speaker 2 (46:30):
I think that's right.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
But when you see him and he's just in the
outfit and the mask is, you know, hanging from his
neck the way that we've seen it a million times
in the comics, it blows my mind. And you're the
kind of guy that I could talk to and say,
we remember when you know, Marvel was doing those seventies
movies and yeah they sucked, but it was like who cared?
It was a Captain America movie, it was a Doctor
(46:51):
Strange movie. We were thrilled.
Speaker 2 (46:53):
You know, well, it was very exciting, and let mean,
of course the Hulk, Yes, series was probably possible for
keeping the Hulk going and for creating a tremendous amount
of added interest in the Hulk, I think, no question.
So yeah, no, you know we well, hey, the Superman
Show in the sixties, I mean in the late fifties,
(47:15):
when you know, when I was a little kid in
the early sixties, when they were showing repeats, I'd watched that.
It was like magic. It was like lightning in a bottle.
Speaker 1 (47:22):
Absolutely no, you're right, so you know.
Speaker 2 (47:27):
At the time, but I don't know what's going to
really throw people. What's going to be new in the
future that's going to throw people when they can do
everything now.
Speaker 1 (47:34):
Yeah, but do you you know it's funny because some
people are like, this is great, but it's going to
end and we should all enjoy ourselves with Maybe in
about ten years people are gonna get sick of superheroes.
I disagree because they used the Western as an example,
and I'm like, hey, guys, the Western lasted literally from
Edison creating movies to you know, the seventies where we
(47:55):
had non stop westerns and then within ten years, Silverado
came out and Westerns we're back. So I kind of
think we are bomb proof as far as movies or
TVs goes. There might be a reduction, but I kind
of think that the genre is here to stay as
far as supervis goes.
Speaker 2 (48:11):
Well, I mean, I think you're right. I think what'll
happen is it'll become like anything else, will be good
ones and bad ones, so will be flops and be terrible,
others will be great, and people will learn to discriminate,
just as they discriminate between a good detective movie or
a bad detective movie or whatever. But I think that
there's the mythological and the colorful aspects of the superhero
(48:32):
movies is something that is very attractive to people, all
kinds of people. And we always knew it when we
were in the comic school. We always thought this stuff
is so cool if only people really understood. And now
that they see it, they do respond to.
Speaker 1 (48:46):
It, which I think explains some of the outcry of
this Captain America a hale hydra thing. A lot of us,
you know, being you know, used to these kind of
twists and comic books. We're cool, but it amazes me,
how many any bloggers are really pouring their heart into
Oh my god, you've destroyed this character. It's over, It's
(49:07):
all over.
Speaker 2 (49:08):
Well, I hate to bring up Daniel Craig again, but
when they cast him, there were there were practically riots
in the streets. It's the level of insanity. You know,
it's hard to even imagine how excited people get over
this stuff. So, you know, but then again, you know,
(49:29):
there's so much noise on the Internet. You can't pay attention.
You have to just pick the parts of it that
you really want to pay attention to, so you can
kind of tune out a lot of it.
Speaker 1 (49:37):
Agreed, And I try to do that on word Balloon
when I when I have no lie guests on like yourself,
because also I don't want people to think Another thing
that drives me nuts is they think all that a
lot of this stuff is so brand new. But you
as you point out, we had television with the syndicated
Superman show, and by the way, in the way that
(49:58):
they want, oh why don't they do commercials for comic books?
I know, you know it. At the very end of
every Superman episode, you got the narrator going Superman appairs
monthly in Action and Superman comic books exactly. And that's
because they owned the show.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
Oh yeah, and uh, you know the you know there.
But you know, there's no question now is a great
time to be a fan of these movies because they're
just i mean, the New Civil War just blew my mind.
It was really a terrific movie. Oh yeah, I mean,
it's just it's just, you know, to think for me,
(50:35):
being an older guy, to watch this, it's like I
never dreamed in a million years we'd be able to have,
you know, Giant Man lumbering around an airport or something
like that. I mean, I just I wrapped up when
I saw that. I was just so thrilled.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
I just couldn't believe it, absolutely, and that that many
different heroes performing their powers against each other. Yeah no,
I my, you know, really, man, you're early, like a
decade and a half or so I have, and I
felt the same way. It's like, oh my god, and
thank god we live to see all this happened.
Speaker 2 (51:04):
Oh great, it's a great it's a great time for that.
I mean, god, no.
Speaker 1 (51:07):
And also, well that's why when the younger people are
like nah, and you know, like it was okay, and
it's like, oh, you guys have no idea the crap.
We were like, yay that that superhero roast, the celebrity
roast from the seventies, even that crap. We're like, yeah, good, yeah.
Speaker 2 (51:24):
Yeah, yeah, well no it is it is great. And
you know, on the other hand, those are some great
comics that were published back then. And I mean to
be a fan back when Frank Muller first got into
comics and was doing Daredevil for the first time, and
to see that talent flower like it did, and to
see him come along and Alan Moore to get into
comics and people like that in the eighties is just
(51:44):
a you know, there's just something so exciting about seeing
that kind of talent just find itself and create great
comic book.
Speaker 1 (51:52):
Well, and again you have a few decades earlier, and
that's exactly the kind of description you make for Atto Bender.
Speaker 2 (51:58):
Yeah yeah, oughto. Otto really had the magic touch when
it came to how to write these stories, and he
did so many of them, and he knew what he
was doing from start to finish. And you know, it's
good to give credit where it's due, and he hasn't
always gotten the recognition that he probably deserves. And so
I'm hoping that this book will really touch a nerve
(52:20):
with people that they'll recommend it to their friends, they'll
talk about it on Facebook. And really the advance and orders,
I mean, I don't have specific numbers, but the publisher
told me they went back to press before they even
the book even came out.
Speaker 1 (52:32):
Fantastic.
Speaker 2 (52:34):
It sounds like there's going to be a real good
reception for this book.
Speaker 1 (52:38):
That's excellent. I'm happy to help pass the word onto
the word Balloon audience and let them know that now
this is a great book and really a very important
game changing creator that should not be forgotten. And luckily
we've got your book, Otto Binder, The Life and Work
of a comic book and science fiction Visionary from Bill Shelley.
It is out this week. Look for look forward to
(53:00):
at your comic stores. I bet a lot of them
are ordering it as well as regular bookstores, and you
can find it online in Amazon. And good luck with
the nomination for Harvey Kurtzman. The Man who created Mad
and revolutionized Humor in America is.
Speaker 2 (53:15):
One of those long titles.
Speaker 1 (53:16):
Yeah, well, I luckily, you see, I got the cover
in front of me now sound good.
Speaker 2 (53:20):
Well, thanks for having me on, John, It's really been
a pleasure talking to you.
Speaker 1 (53:23):
Likewise, Bill seriously, and I will be stalking you so
that you'll come back before the Eisners and we can
talk about Kurtzman. That would be great.
Speaker 2 (53:32):
Let's do that.
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