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SUNDAY, FEB. 25, 2 PM

I was sitting in Room 1E16 of the Javits Center, waiting for the start of the last panel I would attend at this year’s New York Comic-Con, “Dave Cockrum Remembered.” Cockrum is best known as a fan favorite artist on DC’s Legion of Super-Heroes in the 1970s, and as the co-creator of the “new” X-Men, who debuted in Giant-Size X-Men #1 back in 1975. For that landmark issue, Cockrum and writer Len Wein jointly created three of the X-Men’s most prominent members, Colossus, Nightcrawler, and Storm, all of whom were derived from drawings in Cockrum’s legendarily voluminous sketchbooks. Cockrum, whom I interviewed decades ago for Fantagraphics’ X-Men Companion, was one of the foremost superhero comics artists of the 1970s and early 1980s. But a new generation of readers and editors seemed oblivious to his considerable talents. Worse, Cockrum became seriously ill with pneumonia and diabetes, and he finally passed away last November.

There were four speakers on the panel. First was the moderator, Clifford Meth, Cockrum’s longtime friend. In 2004 Meth edited a tribute book, filled with contributions from other comics artists and writers, to raise money to pay for Cockrum’s medical care. Aardwolf Publishing has just republished the book in hardcover form as The Uncanny Dave Cockrum, with additional artwork by Cockrum and other comics professionals. During Cockrum’s lifetime Meth also successfully negotiated a deal with Marvel whereby Cockrum would receive royalties for the members of the X-Men he co-created.

Also on the panel were three of Cockrum’s collaborators on X-Men: writer Chris Claremont, editor Louise Simonson, and inker Joe Rubinstein. Present as well was Paul Levitz, president and publisher of DC Comics, who is also renowned for his work on the Legion of Super-Heroes. (During the panel Levitz pointed out that his run on the Legion followed Cockrum’s, but that they did collaborate on a short story in Legion #300.)

Following his appearance at last year’s New York Comic-Con, Claremont had health problems of his own, and had vanished from public view for months. However, he looked hale, hearty, and energetic as a participant on the Cockrum panel.

Starting the panel, Meth said he would “open with a joke,” which proved to be a grim one. He recalled visiting Cockrum in the hospital three years ago. Cockrum had tubes in his throat and arms, in such a bad state that he was being fed through his rectum. On this occasion, Meth said, Cockrum felt “antsy” and told the nurse he “needs a cup of coffee.” The nurse warned Cockrum about it, but Cockrum said, “I don’t care.” So the nurse poured some coffee through the aforementioned orifice, and Cockrum screamed. “Was it too hot?” asked the nurse. Cockrum replied, “Too sweet.”

And that said a lot about Cockrum’s personality. Meth then told the audience that Cockrum had been released from the hospital, but that “we lost Dave” at the end of November. Meth brought up the tribute book and said that there “wasn’t a single person in the industry who didn’t want to participate in the tribute while Dave was alive.”

Louise Simonson praised Cockrum as “really good-natured.” With her taste for the concise, she explained simply that he was “a really good guy. That’s it.”

Claremont reminisced that when “You sat down” with Cockrum and “started talking ideas, you never knew where they would lead you,” or “where he would inspire you to go with it.”

In the “early days, working on X-Men“ in the 1970s, Claremont said, “We wanted to do aliens.” X-Men was a book about mutants, but “Why not? If we could imagine it, let’s do it. Suddenly he would come in with design sketches for spaceships based on bugs” and “beetles,” referring to the Shi’ar spacecraft that you can see in X-Men (first series) #97 (1976) and subsequent issues. Then Claremont recalled the “race of evolved dinosaurs” they had come up with for “two issues of Ms. Marvel“ (#20 and 21 in 1978) and expressed his “frustration” that they could “never take” the idea further because the “book got canceled.”

“With Dave it was a never-ending delight,” Claremont said, “every time you explored imagination with him.” You “left wishing other people could see with those eyes,” and there could be “more books, more opportunity” to work with him. But, Claremont added, sounding a recurring theme for this panel, “how transitory the creative turned out to be.” He was talking about how his periods of collaboration with Cockrum inevitably came to an end, for one reason or another, but one could not help but think of the end of a creative artist’s life, as well.

Paul Levitz told the audience that it was “important to put it in context,” and that the “time when Chris did his X-Men work with Dave” and “when Dave did his Legion work” was a “period when the heart of the comic industry was set up” so that people would “not to do more than necessary to get your paycheck”: there were “no royalties” and “no shares” in the profits for freelancers. Levitz recalled an old joke: “They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work.”

Then Levitz stated that “from his first moment as an artist in the field” Cockrum was “not only generous in spirit but had a generosity of creativity to his readers.” Cockrum “would labor for hours recostuming a Legionnaire,” and designed “modern costumes for each Legionnaire,” most of whom had been created twenty years earlier. If it was decided “let’s do aliens,” Levitz said, Cockrum would “come back with an entire universe of aliens sketched out.” According to Levitz, the “old pros of the period” wouldn’t do such a thing, and would say, “they’re not paying me to do this,” while the “young pros breaking in generally didn’t have the skill yet.” Cockrum, Levitz continued, was “one of the first” whose attitude was “Screw the deal. I’ve got to give this everything I’ve got.”

Joking that the panel’s unanimity of opinion might be getting “monotonous,” Joe Rubinstein agreed that “Dave was a really nice guy.” But Rubinstein found his own variation on the theme, telling us that “Dave was childlike.” with regard to working in comics, “he loved it, he loved it. If you paid him he’d like it better.” If Cockrum hadn’t been employed in the comics industry, Rubinstein contended, “he would’ve worked in a shoe store [or] a bookstore, and go home and draw the Blackhawks.” Rubinstein summed up, “His work was filled with joy.”

Thanks to the way the comics industry ran in the 1970s, Cockrum did not receive a cut of the money Marvel made from characters he had co-created.
The panel turned to the subject of the settlement that Meth negotiated with Marvel for Cockrum. “Without the money,” Meth asserted, Cockrum “wouldn’t get out of the hospital.” However, Cockrum was “happy” with the settlement he finally received, and was “absolutely thrilled” that on of his artistic heroes, “Will Eisner contributed” to the benefit tribute book. “He was always a fan. He created things he wanted to look at.”

Claremont stated that Cockrum had “a tremendous work ethic. When you ask for a character to be designed now, and to an extent then,” he continued, you will “get a sketch, maybe two sketches.” But there is no time to do more, “you take what you can get,” because the “book’s got to go to press.” In contrast, Claremont told the audience, “When Dave and I say down and decided we were going to redesign Phoenix”–by which Claremont probably meant devising the Phoenix identity and costume for X-Men cast member Jean Grey– “he did 50 designs”: there were “a couple of dozen specific visualizations,” and the rest were variations on those. Claremont praised Cockrum for “a wealth of creativity, a wealth of commitment, a wealth of craft.”

Claremont worked with Cockrum on X-Men in the initial years of its revival in the 1970s, then John Byrne came in as penciler and co-plotter, and Cockrum returned in the early 1980s after Byrne departed the series. Claremont declared that the “X-Men‘s success” lay in the fact that for the revival’s “first eight years” it was the “product of two men” (along with himself): Dave Cockrum and John Byrne. Claremont asserted that this was “a commitment of creativity that very few books, especially today, have.” Again, he told us that you “don’t realize how wonderful an experience” it is “until it’s not there.”

Cockrum left X-Men the second time to try his hand at writing and drawing his own creator-owned project, The Futurians. It’s “not a bad thing to try to make something that you own,” observed Louise Simonson. But The Futurians wasn’t as commercially successful as he might have hoped.

Claremont revealed that “one of the things that knocked me over as a reader, reading Legion of Super-Heroes, was the marriage of Duo Damsel and Bouncing Boy.” Claremont continued, “Way back then we were used to seeing the superheroes in costume or they wore an [everyday] suit. There was very rarely a sense of individuality” to what a character wore out of costume “that extended beyond being a superhero.” But for this 30th century wedding in Legion, “Dave designed the clothes for everybody and they were different.” In other words, each character’s clothes expressed his or her individual personality. “It wasn’t like they all went to the same futuristic tuxedo shop. They [the clothes] were consistent with character, culture and the future. And they were cool.”

Similarly, “In X-Men if Storm was going out to the opera, she wore a gown that was unique to an African in America.” Claremont didn’t mention this, but it was Cockrum who not only designed Wolverine’s highly distinctive unmasked face, but also his characteristic Western style of dressing when he is out of costume. “The costuming, the look of characters defined by. . .who they were as people,” Claremont said, was not only a “revolutionary. . .concept” but “It became an inspiration.” According to Claremont, Cockrum’s attitude was “I love the characters; let’s just have fun.”

Paul Levitz recalled that in the 1970s Cockrum and his friends “were frustrated with the comics industry of the time.” Returning to the subject of the Legion wedding, Levitz again established a context: “This was the last. . . year or two before original art began being returned to the artist.” The highlight of the wedding story was a “double-page spread.” Levitz said that “Dave put his heart and soul into this scene” and “must have done an army of sketches.” Cockrum even drew the scene on the larger sized pages that had been used in the 1960s so that he “could pour the detail in.” Moreover, Cockrum spent his own money on photostats in that pre-computer era, and “probably paid half his page rate”–which was low by today’s standards–“just to do the page right.” In exchange, Cockrum “thought he’d get to keep the page,” but, of course, the “company wouldn’t let him.” That was “one of the reasons he left Legion and went to Marvel to do X-Men.” That was “right at the cusp moment,” Levitz commented, when there was a sense “boiling up in the community” that artists had a right to get their original art back. And indeed Cockrum did finally get that double-page spread back years later.

Rubinstein reminisced about inking Cockrum’s second run of X-Men and his Nightcrawler miniseries in the 1980s. “Dave wasn’t a penciler or writer,” Rubinstein asserted; “he was a comic book creator.” Nightcrawler was Cockrum’s personal favorite of the X-Men, and he turned him into an updated version of the swashbuckler heroes of another era. “Nightcrawler turned into Errol Flynn for a while,” remarked Rubinstein.

That reminded Claremont of another highlight of Cockrum’s career, “Kitty’s Fairy Tale” in Uncanny X-Men #153 (1982), in which the series’ familiar characters took on new guises, like Kitty Pryde as what Claremont called “a runaway pirate,” and Wolverine resembled Looney Tunes‘ Tasmanian Devil. Claremont described Cockrum’s work on the story thus: “Each page is “˜Can you top this?'”

Claremont continued, “With Dave there was a sense there was nothing you couldn’t ask for, and he’d make you plotz with delight.” For example, “You ask for a starship that’s fifty miles long, and he gives you one that’s made of a fish, and it works!” (This is a reference to the Acanti, the “˜space whales” introduced in Uncanny X-Men #156 in 1982.)

Claremont revealed that he felt obliged to get his script “up to that level,” to match Cockrum’s creative achievement, and then the following month “he’d top you again.” Claremont explained that “You want to be on his level,” as Cockrum kept “raising the bar.” Claremont then confessed that “It was so much fun that you didn’t notice” how special this collaboration was “until it was gone.” and Cockrum had left the series. Then, Claremont said, “There’s this hole in your page.”

But then why is it that a man of such great talent as Dave Cockrum had trouble getting work in the comics industry after the 1980s, and fell into obscurity in the current comics marketplace?

“All of us see it, particularly these days” Louise Simonson said carefully, presumably referring to veteran comics professionals of the 1970s and 1980s like Cockrum and herself. She explained, “Editorial people have forces that drive them,” one of which is “market forces.” Hence, “they’re looking for the bright new thing.” From their point of view, “Dave was an old, tarnished object, not a bright, shiny one,” and he “faded into obscurity.”

Clifford Meth noted that “for twelve years ” Cockrum “could only get work from small publishing companies.” (One of these was Claypool Comics, for which Cockrum drew Soulsearchers & Company for nearly three years, in what appears to have been his last regular assignment. Claypool editor Richard Howell was not asked to speak on the panel, but you can find his tribute to Cockrum on the inside back cover of Soulsearchers #82, its final issue, currently on sale. So for a time Soulsearchers was written by Peter David, drawn by Dave Cockrum, and had covers drawn by Amanda Conner, all acclaimed comics professionals, and yet it was still ignored by most of the comics industry and readership!)

Meth said that Cockrum would look for work by making phone calls to editors. One highly placed person at one of these companies “hurt” Cockrum by telling him, “Your work is just too stodgy.” Meth said that “He felt largely ignored at that point in his career.” He “would get work but not regular work.”

Louise Simonson noted that “Dave was also very slow.” He could do “zillions of sketches,” but when it came to doing “actual comics pages,” he was “not fast.”

But his creativity remained high. Meth said that one day Cockrum sent him “five redesigns” of Marvel’s character Quicksilver; he ended up “putting them on eBay.”

So why didn’t someone at a comics company realize how valuable it would be to have Cockrum regularly designing costumes and characters and starships and such for them? On the panel Louise Simonson suggested that Cockrum should have been doing character designs for animation, but Meth responded that Cockrum “was too sweet a guy to work in that environment,” implying it was dog-eat-dog.

Claremont again extolled Cockrum’s talents, stating that “as a writer toy could present anything” to Cockrum, “whether it was a castle in Scotland full of leprechauns”–this is actually a reference to the Banshee’s leprechaun-infested castle in Ireland in X-Men (first series) #102–“or an alien invasion, and he would do it. . .and find a way to make it work and make it better. That is rare in any era of the industry.”

Cockrum “made the characters” into the readers’ “friends,” Claremont said, “people the readers wanted to see every four weeks,” whose lives they relate to.

So, apparently, did Cockrum: Meth told the audience that when Cockrum saw the X-Men movie, “he cried” because he was so “happy to see his characters on film.”

Claremont recalled that when the “new” X-Men began, Jean Grey and other members of the original team left the series. But then Claremont and Cockrum brought her back for a guest appearance, and when Claremont saw how Cockrum drew her this time, he said “She’s hot! Why did we write her out of the book? Can we bring her back, please?” And thus, Claremont asserted, began the road that “led to Phoenix and Dark Phoenix.”

As for another character in the series, Meth told us that “Dave often commented that Nightcrawler was his alter ego.” And it seems it was Nightcrawler who prevailed in Meth’s negotiations with Marvel. The Marvel lawyers maintained that Nightcrawler had been created under a work-for-hire agreement. But then, Meth told us, he revealed that Cockrum had published the “exact” design he used for Nightcrawler in a fanzine before Giant-Size X-Men #1! Now wouldn’t you like to have seen the Marvel lawyers’ faces when they first heard that? In what Meth called the “unprecedented deal” that was worked out, Cockrum’s widow Paty will continue to receive royalties for Nightcrawler and other Cockrum co-creations for the rest of her life.

And there is still more work by Dave Cockrum still to be seen; Joe Rubinstein announced on the panel that he is inking an unpublished Futurians story that Cockrum did.

Towards the end of the panel, Chris Claremont delivered a thought-provoking eulogy to Cockrum. “You always keep thinking that there’s more time,” he told us, saying that he assumed he would work with Dave Cockrum again. “The reality is we are finite, as much as we like to imagine ourselves being like our characters, who are not.” Cockrum’s passing, he stated, was “a reminder to cherish people and talents while they exist,” and “not to be in a position of talking about what should have been but [what] was.” Dave Cockrum created “what may not be as large a body of work as others’,” Claremont declared, but it “will last and bring credit to him long after many of us have moved on.”

Concluding the panel, Paul Levitz commended the Hero Initiative, the organization that offers financial aid and medical care to veteran comics creators in need. Levitz then told the audience that there was “something else” that was within “your power” to do, and that was to help in what he called the “emotional protection of the old creators.” He told us that if you see any of them at a convention, you “don’t have to commission a sketch,” but you should at least “spend a minute with them, [and] tell them how much you like their work.” Levitz noted that many of the older creators worked in anonymity and “frankly didn’t know anyone gave a damn.” Hence, he continued, meeting their fans at conventions has provided “some of the best moments of their lives” and that “in most cases that’s more important than economic health.”

Then Levitz observed that “comics people generally not smart about their economic health” whereupon Claremont burst into loud laughter at the truth of this observation. (Why, it was as if they were talking about me!) Levitz joked that “I’m the last guy Hero Initiative has to worry about. I’ve gone over to the Dark Side.” But he made the point that comics fans should show their appreciation not just to the Golden and Silver Age pros, but also to younger comics writers and artists who, for whatever reason, are, in his words, “not the flavor of the month.” Though he did not say so, obviously Dave Cockrum would have been in that category.

As if to exemplify what Paul Levitz had said about the elders of the comics profession, shortly after the convention ended, Arnold Drake, the co-creator of Deadman and Doom Patrol, passed away. Drake was one of the people whom I had been scheduled to interview on the convention’s “Classic Age of Comics” panel. That assignment fell through, and now I would never have my chance to interview him.

SUNDAY, FEB. 25, 3 PM:

Following the Cockrum panel I made a last stop on the main convention floor, which has seemed pleasantly, relatively quiet on Sunday morning but was again jam packed in the afternoon. High overhead still floated the malevolent elder god Cthulhu in his guise as a balloon of Pikachu, draining America’s youth of their life energies and taste in cartoon art. Then, below him, I saw a horrifying sight: a small, child-size Pikachu standing on the floor beneath him (her?), posing for passers-by. To adapt W. B. Yeats’ celebrated line, what rough beast slouches towards the Javits Center to be born? It’s Pikachu, Jr., that’s who. It was time for me to escape, and spend the evening at home writing up convention reports for Publishers Weekly’s Comics Week.

And so ends my coverage of this year’s New York Comic-Con, but not my discussion of the issues raised by the Cockrum memorial panel. The way that significant creative artists fall victim to the changing tides of taste and fashion and the marketplace deserves further examination. The Dave Cockrum panel reminds me of another panel discussion I recently heard about another important comics artist of the mid-1970s who passed away in the month following the convention. This was Marshall Rogers, whom I mentioned last week, whose work ranged from Don McGregor’s Detectives, Inc. to Chris Claremont’s Daughters of the Dragon to his many collaborations with Steve Englehart, including Batman, Silver Surfer, Mister Miracle, and his alternative strips for the early independent comics publisher Eclipse, Captain Quick and a Foozle, Coyote, and Scorpio Rose.

In Comic Zone’s Internet radio tribute to Marshall Rogers, his contemporary, inker Terry Austin, talked about how when they were breaking into the comics business, certain unnamed people in authority at DC Comics would castigate both them and their work. According to these people in power. Marshall and Terry were doing their art all wrong. The Comic Zone interviewer sounds clearly astonished by this. How could anyone not recognize the talents of Marshall Rogers and Terry Austin?

That’s the fate of innovators. There is an Old Guard who rejects the new, perhaps because the Old Guard’s tastes are different, perhaps because they are overly set in their ways, perhaps their artistic vision is too limited to see the potential of the new work that is right before their eyes. Once the innovators have made their mark, the Old Guard’s attitude looks ridiculous.

And so, once Steve Englehart, Marshall Rogers and Terry Austin’s collaboration on Batman appeared in Detective Comics in the mid-1970s, discerning members of the comics readership hailed it as an instant classic. I should know; I was one of them. Their Batman work was so influential that it served as an inspiration for the Batman movie that producer Michael Uslan was developing for Warner Brothers.

But a decade later it was Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns that was considered the most influential treatment of Batman. As I pointed out last week, it took over a quarter of a century for DC Comics to reunite the Englehart, Rogers and Austin team for Batman: Dark Detective. Uslan briefly, loyally mentions the Englehart-Rogers Batman on the special edition DVD of the 1989 Batman movie, but otherwise the DVD’s special features ignore it.

Neither Rogers not Austin were as much in demand recently as they had been in the late 1970s and 1980s. Peter Gillis observes in his blog’s tribute to Rogers that “deserved the fame he got and didn’t deserve the waning of that fame.” (Look further down on Gillis’s blog, and you will find his moving tribute to Cockrum.) Yet both the original Englehart/Rogers/Austin Batman and the new Dark Detective remain great, and will surely be recognized as classics ten, twenty or fifty years hence.

There’s the period when a creator hasn’t yet become fashionable, then he has his time in the spotlight, which may seem as if it will be permanent, but then the fashions change, and he may fall from favor, even though the quality of his work may not have changed. This is what happened to Cockrum.

It happens to others as well. Lately I’ve been reading Walt Disney and Europe, written by Robert Allan, and published in 1999 by the Indiana University Press. I picked up a remaindered copy at the New York Is Book Country street fair some years back, and I’ve never seen a copy anywhere else. That’s too bad, because this is an excellent study of how Walt Disney and his artists were influenced by European art, literature and music in creating their animated films. This book is the obvious basis for much of the “Once upon a Time” Disney art exhibition that is currently in Montreal (see “Comics in Context” #161).

In this book Allan writes about Kay Nielsen, a Danish artist whom Disney appointed as art director for the “Night on Bald Mountain” and “Ave Maria” sequences in Fantasia (1940). (The only important film I saw at Lincoln Center’s 2005 festival of musical cartoons that I haven’t yet written about was Fantasia. Maybe someday!) According to Allan, “after the second world war Nielsen returned to Denmark, endeavoring to obtain work again as book illustrator or stage designer, but without success; his style was too rigidly locked into the precise art mould which had originally brought him fame. It was too soon for a revival of interest. He returned to California where he died destitute in 1957. His wife Ulla died a year later. Forty years later his original artwork was fetching tens of thousands of dollars at auction.” (Walt Disney and Europe p. 163).

Here’s the pattern again: Nielsen became famous for his work, but fashions changed, and his work did not change with it, and he died in poverty. But consider Allan’s brief line: “It was too soon for a revival of interest.” If art has enduring value, then the “revival of interest” will come. Art which lasts transcends fashion and becomes classic.

Nielsen and his wife were unlucky in that they did not live to see this happen to his work. Their fate reminds me of the famous case of Vincent Van Gogh, who was recognized as a brilliant artist during his lifetime by fellow artistic giants such as Monet and Toulouse-Lautrec. Even so, it is said that Van Gogh only sold one painting during his lifetime (and used the paintings to pay the rent or other bills).

Jack Kirby was lionized by comics fans in the 1960s, but in the 1970s, as I’ve said before, I’d hear comics pros refer to him as “Jack the Hack.” But his skill as an artist hadn’t changed, and luckily for him, the pendulum swung back quickly, and he was hailed by comics pros and fans alike as a living icon in the 1980s. Had Kirby lived twelve years longer he would have seen his artwork hang in museums as part of the “Masters of American Comics” exhibition.

Time is a determining factor of greatness. Work that conforms to the passing fashions of the day may achieve great popularity in its time, but unless it rises above fashion, it will be forgotten as the decades pass. Great work may fall from fashion for a time, but its lasting merits will be rediscovered by new generations. Great work speaks not just to its own time, but to all time, as I shall attempt to illustrate in next week’s column.

ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF

I have just written a review of Fantagraphics’ collection The Comic Strip Art of Lyonel Feininger, a pioneering early 20th century cartoonist, for Publishers Weekly’s Comics Week. Ad you may be interested in seeing what my Comics Week editor says about “Comics in Context” over at the Beat.

–Copyright 2007 Peter Sanderson

SATURDAY, FEB. 24, 4:16 PM
There I was in Room 1E12/13 at the Jacob Javits Convention Center, waiting for the next panel at the New York Comic-Con to start: “NYCC’s Behind the Panels: The 60s Marvel Bullpen.” The panel was supposed to have begun at 4 PM, but for fifteen minutes I’ve been watching people milling about on the right side of the hall.

Finally, at 4:16 PM Stan Lee himself, Marvel’s editor in chief and head writer in the 1960s, took charge and commanded that the panel begin.

Moderator Adam McGovern of TwoMorrows Publishing introduced what he called a “very distinguished panel” comprised of members of the Marvel “Bullpen” of the 1960s, “a critical mass that changed comics history.”

First McGovern introduced Marvel senior editor Ralph Macchio, whom he called a “link from the first Marvel Age to the present.” Well, that was actually a bit of a stretch. Ralph started at Marvel in 1976, when Stan Lee was still based in the New York offices, but in the role of publisher, having ceded the post of editor in chief back in 1972. So Ralph wasn’t part of Marvel’s Silver Age revolution of the 1960s; during that decade he was a fan reading Marvel comics just like other Boomers who later became comics pros. He was one of the first Boomers to join Marvel editorial, and now he’s virtually their Last Boomer standing.

Next McGovern introduced the great inker of Jack Kirby’s Fantastic Four art, Joe Sinnott. Stan pointed to Sinnott, and the audience applauded. Then McGovern presented Gene Colan, the Silver Age artist of Daredevil, Iron Man, Sub-Mariner and more, sitting down at the end of the table, and there was tumultuous applause. McGovern praised Colan as “the painterly genius” and “master of moods.” McGovern then turned to Stan’s secretary in the Sixties, “Fabulous” Flo Steinberg, who endures at Marvel as a part-time proofreader. Stan, sitting between Flo and Joe, pointed to her and applause burst forth once more.

Finally, McGovern said, there was “a man who needs no introduction.”

“They always say that!” exclaimed Stan the Showman, enacting his comedic public persona. “For once just give me an introduction!”

After complying with Mr. Lee’s request, McGovern attempted to open a discussion about working at Marvel in the 1960s, and noted that Colan had come to the company “from other places.”

“Makes you sound very mysterious, Gene,” commented Lee. “‘Came from other places,'” Stan repeated ominously.

But Colan’s ability to respond was handicapped by his lack of a microphone down at his end of the long table. Ever practical, Stan solved the dilemma by giving Ms. Steinberg’s microphone to Colan. “You have nothing to say anyway,” Stan assured Flo. Then Mr. Lee advised the audience to pay attention to Colan: “When this guy talks, the world listens.”

Colan explained to the audience that he thought comics would be a “great place to be,” and that he was “very influenced by film” in drawing comics. “I don’t know where I’d be if not for Stan,” Colan said.

“Probably rich and famous,” speculated Mr. Lee.

Stan wasn’t being serious, but Colan was. “Other people couldn’t see what I could do,” Colan continued. “Stan could,” he told us, and “gave me my break.” The audience was very still, intently listening to Colan’s quiet voice.

“See,” Stan commented, “the big thing is, we got “˜im because he worked cheap.”

Taking this in stride, Colan told us, “Stan always reminded me of Jack Lemmon.”

“He always compares me to dead people!” Stan exclaimed in mock protest.

“I told him that when he”–meaning Lemmon–“was alive,” Colan informed the audience, explaining that Stan had the same “energy” that one sees in Lemmon’s performances.

As if waving Colan’s compliments aside, Lee declared, “Joe Sinnott’s dying here,” thinking that “they’ll never get to me.” But then Lee went on to extol the cinematic aspect of Colan’s artwork. “Every strip he drew was a storyboard,” Lee said, meaning that it looked like a shot-by-shot breakdown for a film. “He viewed all of his artwork as if it was a movie.”

But Stan did not stay serious for long. “Joe Sinnott, on the other hand,” he continued, is “a man of little talent and great charm.” Lest anyone take that at face value, Lee quickly added that Sinnott was a “great inker” and “also a great penciler,” but, shifting back into facetiousness, “we didn’t tell anyone because Kirby would get jealous.”

Sinnott also made his gratitude to Lee plain, telling the audience “I’ve been working for Stan for fifty-three years.” (It would be more precise to say that Sinnott has worked for Marvel all those years, but Stan Lee was either editor or publisher for most of that time.) Sinnott told us that he once worked in the cement industry and “if not for Stan, I’d still be there.”

Once again, Lee resorted to what seems to be one of his favorite lines: “What they don’t realize is these people worked cheap.”

“Don’t believe that,” Sinnott instructed the audience. Then Sinnott began, “You could almost expect when Stan was going to give you a raise. . . .”

Before Sinnott could expose him as a generous man, Stan hurriedly changed the subject and turned to Ralph. “We’ve got a Johnny-come-lately” on the panel, Stan said, claiming that Ralph was just “out of his teens” and yet had ended up “on an old-timers’ panel.”

Ralph told Stan he had actually started at Marvel in the 1970s, taking Mr. Lee somewhat aback. Then Ralph started reminiscing about the days when Lee was still based in Marvel’s New York offices, and took obvious pleasure in recounting a time when he heard Lee sharply criticizing a certain Marvel writer/editor of that time.

“This is great for me,” Stan said happily, “because I have no memory!” He told us “I’m learning” things about his own past just by being there.

Then Ralph too voiced his gratitude to Stan, recalling how Lee “would call me into the office, and since I was the new kid. . . He would sit down on the couch with me like there was no one else in the world and for twenty minutes he’d show me” how to do “word balloon placement.” Macchio summed up, “There was energy there working with Stan that you couldn’t deny.”

“He was the only guy who would listen,” explained Stan. “He was the new kid.”

Then Mr. Lee turned to Ms. Steinberg. “It’s Flo’s turn. I have no idea what she’s doing here.” Then, referring to times past, he added, “I don’t know what you were doing there.”

Flo, however, can see right through Stan’s act. “Working at Marvel was SUPER,” she told the audience, audibly putting the word in capital letters. As for Stan, she assured us, “He was a joker, too.”

“She means the villain,” noted Stan.

As for the differences between Marvel Then and Marvel Now, Flo wisely observed that in the 1960s Marvel “wasn’t the corporate place it is now,” and that it “had a greater sense d’estime,” slipping into French.

“She was Fabulous Flo,” Lee said. “What were you, Ralph?”

“Reliable Ralph,” Macchio responded.

“We could’ve gotten you something better than that,” Stan responded.

Turning back to the subject of Flo, Lee told us that “we thought at first Flo was putting on an act.” He recalled that once she was all upset, and it turned out that it was because the office had run out of staples. “You can’t find anyone like that! She cared!”

Joe Sinnott added that it was a pleasure dealing with Flo over the phone: she “had the sweetest voice when she called.”

“You were never mean,” Lee told Flo onstage, setting her up for another gag. “You were wrong often, but never mean.”

On the other hand, Stan claimed “I was scared of Gene.” More precisely, “If I wanted to make a correction, I was scared to criticize Gene, because he took it so seriously:  ‘Do you mean a hand has to have five fingers?'”

Commenting on the way the panelists were interacting, moderator McGovern remarked, “It was a family then and a family today.”

Shortly afterwards, Flo mentioned “little MMMS,” the company’s in-house fan club in the 1960s, the Merry Marvel Marching Society.

“Small MMMS!?” retorted Stan, as if insulted. Referring to the club’s theme music, he maintained, “It was a great song.”

“Every morning before work we’d sing,” Flo told the audience, being something of a joker herself.

“You think we forgot?” asked Stan, who then, as he had on his panel the previous day, launched into singing the Merry Marvel Marching Society anthem. The audience clapped along, merrily and marvelously. Then, when Stan finished, he apologized, “Excuse me, I should have stood up when I sung it.”

Then Lee was asked about the time that the great Italian film director Federico Fellini (8 1/2, La Dolce Vita) dropped by the Marvel offices in the 1960s. According to Stan, his receptionist told him, “Stan, there’s a Fred Felony to see you.”

“Nobody ever visited me,” Lee told us. “I’d see anybody.”

When Lee saw Fellini, “All of a sudden I recognized him.” Fellini wasn’t alone: “he had four other associates with him,” Stan said. Moreover, “They were in descending order of height,” with Fellini, in the lead, as the “tallest.” Stan continued, “And they were all in black raincoats.” Fellini had his over his shoulder. Though Lee did not say so, this was clearly a Felliniesque sight. “I have no idea what he wanted. He had a thick accent,” explained Lee. “But apparently he was a fan. I wanted to talk about him, but there was no way I could communicate with him!”

The moderator asked Lee, “Didn’t you work with famous film directors?’

“Oh, yes,” joked Lee. “They wouldn’t make a movie without me.”

Actually, Lee did work with one famous foreign filmmaker back then: Alain Resnais, a member of the French New Wave, and the director of Hiroshima, Mon Amour (1959) and Last Year at Marienbad (1961). If you’ve seen either film you will find it hard to believe that Lee and Resnais have much in common aesthetically. But, as Lee told us, “Alain Resnais wanted me to write his first English language movie.” Moreover, “He said he had read Spider-Man for years.” Lee explained, “I wasn’t going to say no. It was very flattering.”

So Stan, who was then inexperienced in movies, wrote a screenplay, and, he told us, “it wasn’t very good”: “it was 120 pages filled with dialogue.” Still, a producer was interested, but wanted the dialogue pruned down. Stan said he would have been willing to do it, but “My idiot friend Alain said, “˜Stan will not cut a word of it.'”

And so Lee and Resnais never sold the project. “If that nut had let me cut it, I might be someone famous!” lamented Lee.

Then the moderator inquired how the comics business had changed since the old days. “The most gratifying thing,” Ralph Macchio responded, “is to see it [Marvel] penetrate popular culture.” He explained, “The things we enjoyed when we were kids are now billion-dollar franchises, and that’s due to Stan.”

As he had done at his Friday panel, Lee again shared credit with the artists he worked with. “Believe me, Marvel is not a one-man show.” Then he added, “Oh, maybe I was the greatest.”

In that sweet voice Joe Sinnott had so commended, Flo Steinberg quietly observed, “Stan was always very modest.”

Then Lee praised two of those 1960s artists who were right there with him, Colan and Sinnott. “They have style,” Lee said. “That’s not easy to achieve. You may not like it when you see it, but you recognize it.”

Lee continued, “Flo, on the other hand, doesn’t write, doesn’t draw. What is it you’re doing here?” But soon thereafter, with a touch of hyperbole, Stan acknowledged Flo’s secretarial prowess: “She practically ran the company!”

Flo, who is indeed a modest, self-deprecating person, said she felt “humble.”

“A quality I will never understand,” commented Stan.

Called upon to reminisce, Flo said she would “try to think of a funny story.”

“You’ve never thought of one all these years,” Stan replied. “Why start now?”

So Ralph told a story that demonstrated what Flo meant to comics fans in the 1960s. He recalled that as a kid he was puzzled over Thor’s inability to smash a goblet with his hammer in a Tales of Asgard story. “I was determined to find the answer. So I called up Marvel and talked to Flo, who told me that in Asgard, everything was enchanted,” so that’s why Thor’s enchanted hammer couldn’t smash the enchanted goblet. “I was totally satisfied,” declared Ralph, who was easily pleased back then.

Having listened to all this, Stan the Man pronounced his judgment: “Ralph is obviously a survivor. The thing is, nobody knows what he does.” On these two points, Stan Lee, Marvel’s All-Knowing All-Father, is absolutely correct.

On numerous occasions other comics pros have asked me about just these subjects. What does Ralph do? I have no idea. Why is Ralph still at Marvel? Beats the heck out of me. And yet he survives and prospers, invulnerable to all the upheavals and downsizings that claimed so many of his contemporaries. It’s like the way that Inspector Clouseau escapes all those assassination attempts through seeming strokes of sheer luck. Maybe it’s because he and Stan share the same birthday.

Years ago Ralph used to be nicknamed “K. D.” for “Kiss of Death,” inasmuch as during his long, seemingly interminable apprenticeship as an assistant editor, every one of the editors he worked for got canned. Then Ralph finally got promoted to editor, and since then, virtually everyone of his generation at Marvel got canned. It’s as if he’s safe at the eye of the hurricane, which wipes out everyone around him. It reminds me of I, Claudius. (I don’t have time or space to explain the reference to those of you whose idea of serious literature extends no further than The Dark Tower; look it up.) All we have to do to end the war on terror is to get Ralph a job with Osama bin Laden, maybe as editor of Ultimate Jihad. Within a few years, Ralph would be the only person left in Al Qaeda.

Inspired by Ralph’s anecdote about Thor’s hammer, Stan commenced a brief lecture. “People don’t realize how scientific Marvel is,” he began.

“Superman has no visible means of propulsion,” Stan pointed out. “Even a bird flaps his wings.” So how does Superman manage to fly?

In contrast, Stan continued, at Marvel “we want to be scientifically accurate.” He wanted Thor to be able to fly, so “We gave him the enchanted hammer Mjolnir,” Stan said, pronouncing the name carefully.

Stan instructed us to observe how “authentic and scientific” Marvel was in explaining how Thor could fly. Thor’s hammer, he pointed out, has a strap that fits around the thunder god’s wrist. So “Thor whips the hammer” around above his head, building up momentum, and then hurls it into the air. And because the strap is attached to Thor’s wrist, the hammer pulls Thor up into the air as well.

“Nobody can say that isn’t scientifically sound,” proclaimed Mr. Lee. And then, quietly, he added, “That’s just a small example of the difference between DC and Marvel.”

This was Stan the Showman with the audience in the palm of his hand. Of course Stan’ explanation of how Thor can actually fly is utter nonsense. We know it, but Stan also knows it, he knows we know it, and we know he knows we know it! As he said on Friday, part of Marvel’s appeal was that it was like an inside joke that we all shared. And Stan’s explanation, scientifically unsound though it may be, still has more surface credibility than Superman just going “Up, up and away!”

And Stan basically won the war with DC Comics decades ago, and DC adopted the innovations Stan had pioneered at Marvel. But the good-humored pleasure that Stan takes in poking fun at DC the way he used to back in the Sixties is infectious, and the audience just ate it up.

When the moderator asked for questions from the audience, the first questioner surely spoke for everyone there. Referring to another groundbreaking team of the 1960s, he said, “We’re not going to get a chance to meet the Beatles”–not all of them, anyway–“or thank them.” So then he thanked the people on stage for their contributions to comics.

There was a little boy in the question line who asked that classic fan question, “Who’s stronger–Thor or the Hulk?” I suspect this lad had been prompted by an adult Marvel fan.

Stan turned the question over to Gene Colan, “and he’s not going to give you a hastily considered answer.”

Colan responded rather philosophically, “Whoever thinks he’s stronger is stronger.”

Impressed, Stan commented, “You know, Sophocles couldn’t have given a better answer.” I think Stan meant Socrates, but at least here’s proof that Frank Miller isn’t the only comics pro who knows classic Greek literature. (Oh, all right, there’s Roy Thomas and Eric Shanower, too.)

Nonetheless, Stan delivered his own judgment in favor of Thor, because “Thor’s a god.”

Then the small boy asked if he could have Stan autograph his T-shirt. The Man assented, and the boy went up on stage. “And he’ll remember this moment for at least another hour,” Stan noted.

Signing away, Stan worried aloud that “I’ll ruin your short, your mother’s going to kill me, and I’ll give you my lawyer’s address.” There you have it: the Master had turned the signing of a T-shirt into a three-act drama, with suspense, symbolic death and rebirth, and a happy ending.

The tyke’s less than fifteen minutes of stardom completed, Stan sent the lad on his way, bidding him, “Don’t let the fame go to your head!”

And the panel turned to another question, about how to “revitalize characters.”

Stan passed the buck to Joe Sinnott: “Joe is so desperate to answer that question.”

“I wasn’t even listening,” replied Sinnott.

“That’s what he used to say when I gave him instructions,” commented Stan. And so the Bullpen panel memorably went.

SATURDAY, FEB. 23, 5:30 PM

Originally I was supposed to do a signing for Marvel Encyclopedia and X-Men: The Ultimate Guide at the DK Publishing booth at mid-afternoon on Saturday, and moderate a Golden and Silver Age panel at 5 PM. Then, on Friday, I was asked to moderate the “80s Superhero Renaissance” panel at 2 PM instead. So, with the blessings of the good people at DK, I rearranged my schedule. And if you’ve been reading my con reports you know that I ended up being the only panel member on stage for a half hour because the organizers forgot to tell the other panelists to show up!

So now I was doing my DK signing at an off-peak time, from 5:30 to 7 PM Saturday evening, when presumably people are heading out to dinner. Not only that, but the convention had assigned DK a space towards the back of the hall, away from the main routes of customer traffic. Still, I was kept busy enough when I started this signing session.

I’ve found I quite enjoy doing signings: not only do I get to feel like a minor celebrity for a little while, but it’s also relaxing in comparison to moderating panels, reporting or them, or just trying to get through a crowded convention floor.

I also enjoy the company at the DK booths, which, apart from a gent or two, are invariably entirely staffed by friendly, charming and attractive ladies. It’s sort of like John Byrne’s LexCorp in his Superman books, but benign.

When you’re sitting at a booth, the rest of the convention tends to pass by before you. So, for example, former Marvelites Glenn Herdling (see “Comics in Context” #150) and Steve Geiger stopped by, and we got to chat about that perennial topic, Marvel Then and Marvel Now.

Despite the wintry temperatures outdoors, the convention floor had been so crowded all afternoon that it was getting downright hot. This, however, was a perfect temperature for Princess Leia, who walked past wearing her slave girl costume from Return of the Jedi, brightening my day. Soon afterwards a spectacular Dark Phoenix wandered past in the opposite direction. It’s as if I was seated at the crossroads of the multiverse.

Speaking of the Princess, you may recall that last summer at the DK booth in San Diego, I discovered that I was sitting right behind Carrie Fisher, who was in the next booth. This time in New York when I turned around, it was animator Bill Plympton who was sitting in the booth behind me.

When my allotted time at the DK booth ended at 7 PM, I stopped by Artist’s Aerie (so dubbed by the Beat due to its lofty location) once more, but not getting enough sleep the last few nights was catching up with me, so I decided against trying to enlist any dinner companions. After all, I had one more day of the convention to go.

SUNDAY, FEB. 25, 11 AM

And there I was, back at the DK booth on Sunday morning for another scheduled signing. It was another off-peak time, and the convention floor was relatively and rewardingly uncrowded. Nonetheless I signed and sold the last remaining copy of Marvel Encyclopedia at the DK booth during this morning session. I also got to see a resplendently costumed Darth Vader stride menacingly by: it’s a good thing he showed up on a different day than Princess Leia.

By the way, when I’m signing books I try to make sure that the ink has sufficiently dried before I close the book. I wouldn’t want the recipient to get the book home and discover the signature has smudged.

SUNDAY FEB. 25, 12 PM

Ascending the escalator on my way up to Artists’ Aerie, I look around myself at the interior architecture of the Jacob Javits Convention Center. Just being in the San Diego Convention Center lifts my spirits: it is a marvel of postmodern architecture, designed by Canadian architect Arthur Erickson to evoke the ships in the nearby harbor, with the building’s triangular fiberglass “sails,” and enormous circular windows resembling portholes. Even on the main convention floor, despite the lack of windows, the hall somehow seems open and bright. In sharp contrast, the Javits Center’s network of crisscrossing steel beams seems to me grim, dark, unlovely and oppressive.

Last year the New York Comic-Con took place during the controversy over the Danish cartoonists who had drawn cartoons about the prophet Muhammed. A vocal supporter of the embattled Danish cartoonists, writer and artist Colleen Doran, who was attending the Con, offered to give one of her sketches to anyone who brought her something having to do with Denmark, and to donate a dollar per person to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. So I brought her a Danish pastry (see “Comics in Context” #123). This year when I stopped by her table in Artists’ Aerie, she offered me some delicious Danish cookies. I had the feeling of a circle being completed.

I also went over to say hello to artist Amanda Conner and Claypool Comics editor Richard Howell. Amanda drew all the covers for the Claypool series Soulsearchers and Company (see “Comics in Context” #38), but she and Richard had not seen each other for many years, corresponding instead by telephone. But now, just before the final issue of Soulsearchers was to come out, Amanda and Richard found themselves sitting alongside each other in Artist’s Aerie. I picked up a copy of Amanda Conner’s Book of $#!* You May Have Never Seen! #1, a showcase of the wit, sexiness, and visual charm of Amanda’s art.

She also inscribed something on the cover of the copy she gave me, but once I had transported it home in an enormous Dark Horse bag I had found, it had smudged so much as to be indecipherable. Damn! I fell into the very trap I usually try to avoid!

Towards 2 PM I ventured back to the lower level with the meeting rooms to attend my final panel of the convention, a tribute to the recently deceased comics artist Dave Cockrum.

Exactly a month after the convention weekend, another major comics artist who first made his mark in the 1970s, Marshall Rogers, passed away on Saturday, March 24.

If I were asked to select my favorite run of issues from the entire comic book history of Batman, it would be the six issues of Detective Comics, #471-476, from 1977 and 1978, written by Steve Englehart, drawn by Rogers, and inked by Terry Austin (see “Comics in Context” #84). Although they were recognized as instant classics by discerning comics aficionados of the time, it was not until nearly thirty years later that DC Comics commissioned Englehart, Rogers and Austin to create a sequel. I hoped that their new stories would live up to the high standards set by their original run on Detective, but was that hoping too much? No: the 2005 Batman: Dark Detective miniseries was another triumph (see “Comics in Context” #84, 87-88, 90, 93, 104). Englehart and Rogers already had a further sequel in mind, and I was enthusiastically looking forward to it. And now it won’t happen.

With the mainstream media’s new, more welcoming attitude towards comics as an artform, obituaries for Rogers have been appearing in numerous newspapers, including the March 29 New York Times. I am becoming annoyed by the fact that there have been so many important figures in American comic book history–not just Cockrum and Rogers, but even Jack Kirby, Gil Kane and Alex Toth–of whom the Times took no notice until after they were dead. The Times, the “newspaper of record,” has a great deal to catch up on in covering the comics artform and its history.

I did not know Marshall Rogers well, but I spoke with him in person or by telephone several times over the decades, including conducting an interview with him, Englehart and Austin at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art two years ago. Marshall was always friendly, and always a pleasure to speak to.

It has often been said that Marshall’s Joker was something of a self-portrait, but in person Marshall’s smile was always warm and benevolent.

You should all read Fred Hembeck’s affecting tribute to Marshall in the March 27 entry on his blog, and listen to Englehart, Austin, writer Roger Stern and inker Joe Rubinstein reminisce about Rogers on the March 28 “Comic Zone” Internet radio show. Then write to Marvel Comics to ask them to collect the Roger Stern/Marshall Rogers run on Doctor Strange, long overdue for reprinting, into a new trade paperback.

It is sad when any person dies at a relatively young age. But when a creative artist dies, all of the potential work that he or she could have created perishes as well. I will return to this subject next week, when I wind up my convention coverage with my report on “Dave Cockrum Remembered.”

ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF

I shouldn’t do a column about Stan Lee’s appearance at the New York Comic-Con without again recommending that you all go see the survey of his career which I co-curated, “Stan Lee: A Retrospective,” now running at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art in Manhattan’s SoHo.

As I’ve mentioned in the past (see “Comics in Context” #58), comics–and even the graphic novel–were invented not in America but by a Swiss scholar, artist and satirist named Rodolphe Topffer in the early 18th century. You can read my article about the first English language compilation of his work, Rodolphe Topffer: The Complete Comic Strips, in the latest edition of Publishers Weekly‘s online newsletter Comics Week.

–Copyright 2007 Peter Sanderson