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OUTRAGEOUS TOYS
TV’S Captain Kangaroo,

BOB inKEESHAN,
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JACK KIRBY’S
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21
The Crazy Cool Culture

We Grew Up With
Issue #27 July 2023
Columns and Departments

3 Special Features
2
3 Retrotorial
Retro Interview
Captain Kangaroo’s 10
Bob Keeshan Too Much TV Quiz
TV teachers
13
35 Voger’s Vault of
Vintage Varieties
46
RetroFad
Teenage Monster Movies
Kung fu
21
Andy Mangels’ Retro 62
Saturday Morning Retro Television
Challenge of the SuperFriends Don Drysdale’s TV drop-ins
35 76
Will Murray’s RetroFanmail
20th Century Panopticon
The Rockford Files 80
ReJECTED
67 53
Scott Saavedra’s
53 Secret Sanctum
Danger in Happy Toyland
13
67
Oddball World of
Scott Shaw!
Jack Kirby,
Oddball Cartoonist
46
RetroFan™ issue 27, July 2023 (ISSN 2576-7224) is published bi-monthly by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. Phone: (919) 449-
0344. Periodicals postage paid at Raleigh, NC. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to RetroFan, c/o TwoMorrows, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614.
Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: RetroFan, c/o Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief, 112 Fairmount Way, New Bern, NC 28562. Email:
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office. Captain Kangaroo © Creative Artists Agency. Not Brand Echh and Deadly Hands of Kung Fu © Marvel. I Was a Teenage Frankenstein © American International
Pictures. All Rights Reserved. All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter
© 2023 Michael Eury and TwoMorrows. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING.
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
BY
Michael Eury
MICHAEL
EURY
PUBLISHER
John Morrow
RetroFan’s demographic may be Baby Boomers and Gen Xers, but the crazy, cool stuff we (of those
CONTRIBUTORS generations) grew up with has multigenerational appeal.
Since we launched back in the summer of 2018, I have received a handful of messages from
Michael Eury
readers in their teens and twenties who were raised by parents who were RetroFans. These wise
L. Wayne Hicks moms and dads instilled in their kids a passion for the joys of their own childhoods, keeping every-
David Krell thing from Action Jackson to Zardoz alive.
But what about the folks from the Greatest Generation, whose number sadly dwindles each
Andy Mangels day? Those honored citizens survived the Great Depression, the attack on Pearl Harbor, World War
Will Murray II, and the polio epidemic. Plus every other hardship that followed. One might think that those
hearty souls may regard The Beatles, Pet Rocks, and Slurpees as “folderol.”
Scott Saavedra
Think again. Shown here is loyal RetroFan reader Robert L.
Scott Shaw! Rummel, my father-in-law, who—at age 95!—may be this mag-
Mark Voger azine’s oldest reader. I would happily give the dad of my beloved
wife free copies of the magazine, but he subscribes! He’s enjoying
learning about my generation’s pop culture. Coolest father-in-
DESIGNER law ever!
Scott Saavedra
Born three-quarters of a century after Robert Rummel is
Kit Frascella, one of RetroFan’s younger readers—and one of the
most dedicated fans of The Monkees you’ll ever find. You may
PROOFREADER remember Kit’s byline from issue #25, where her Super Collector
guest column, “Listen to the Band! Why I Love The Monkees,”
David Baldy
appeared. Kit has met members of the band and even draws
cartoons about them.
SPECIAL THANKS And to Kit Frascella I must offer RetroFan’s sincerest
apologies for a production error that appeared in her
Hake’s Auctions article in issue #25, on page 76. In column one/paragraph
Heritage Auctions two, the first line and the beginning of the second line
were missing from the print editions, with a line space
Marvel Comics
appearing where there should have been text. The files
Marc Tyler Nobleman we sent to the printer were accurate, but a technical
glitch led to the missing copy during printing.
In case you’re thumbing through your copy of #25
VERY SPECIAL THANKS
now, Kit’s second paragraph on page 76 should have
Bob Keeshan, gone but opened with: “Music was a major staple in their [Kit’s
not forgotten parents’] childhoods. My mother has been a record col-
lector since her youth and often played the sounds of her generation, most particularly artists from
the Sixties era, to me when I was young.” (Page 76’s other goof, the caption’s naming of “Micksy”—
rather than “Micky”—Dolenz, was ye ed’s typo, which slipped past four sets of eyes. Sigh.)
Don’t STEAL our
Even though occasional errors and shipping delays might ruffle a few feathers, RetroFan remains
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C’mon citizen,
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THING! A Mom
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me at euryman@gmail.com, and we’ll make you famous (among our readership, at least) by running
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so many of us growing up—what an honor it is to remember his legacy in our pages.
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So get ready for another groovy grab-bag of the crazy, cool culture we grew up with!
producing great publications like this one!
2 RETROFAN July 2023

RETRO INTERVIEW
Good Morning, Captain!

Bob Keeshan, Television’s Captain Kangaroo
BY L. WAYNE HICKS
Years before he died, Robert “Bob” Keeshan said he would like to

be remembered this way: “Oh, just that I made children feel a little
better about themselves, in general. I certainly didn’t do it with entertained. Mr. Green Jeans (Hugh “Lumpy” Brannum) provided
every child, but that was my intent.” running lessons about flora and fauna. The puppets Bunny Rabbit
There’s little doubt Keeshan made the world a better place and Mr. Moose (both performed by Cosmo “Gus” Allegretti) served
for children. The veteran entertainer, who died in 2004 at age 76, as mischievous counterpoints to the Captain.
provided a lifetime of memories during the 29 years he spent as “The best teacher in the world, whether it be a kindergarten
television’s Captain Kangaroo. teacher or a college professor, is one who entertains, one who
Upon Keeshan’s passing, the New York Times noted the “round- engages the mind of the student,” Keeshan said to me during a
faced, pleasant, mustachioed man possessed of an unshakable
calm” who served as “one of the most enduring characters
television ever produced.” (ABOVE) Children’s television host Bob Keeshan originally
donned make-up to become the grandfatherly Captain
CLOWNING AROUND Kangaroo, but over the decades matured into the role.
Captain Kangaroo debuted on CBS in October 1955. Make-up and a Captain Kangaroo’s colorful cast, including Mr. Green
gray wig transformed a 28-year-old Keeshan into the grandfatherly Jeans, Dancing Bear, Mr. Moose, and Grandfather Clock,
Captain. Over the next several decades, Keeshan would age into became as beloved as the Captain himself. © Creative Artists
the role. For nearly 10,000 episodes, the program educated and Agency. Photos courtesy of the Captain Kangaroo Facebook page.
RETROFAN July 2023 3

retro interview
(LEFT) Keeshan
as Howdy Doody’s
Clarabell the Clown
in a publicity photo.
(RIGHT) From the
Time for Fun program,
Keeshan as Corny
the Clown. (BELOW)
Keeshan, the young
broadcaster. All courtesy of
L. Wayne Hicks.
series of interviews I conducted with him in the late Nineties. interpreters because that was all over with. They sent me to signal
“You’ve got to entertain.” school, and they decided they didn’t need that anymore. I spent a
For his success in doing just that, Keeshan collected a shelf year or so after boot camp closing down schools that had been very
full of accolades, including Emmy Awards, Peabody Awards, and active.”
honorary degrees, as well as the adoration of millions of children. Discharged, Keeshan returned to New York and his old job at
He worked without a studio audience and instead spoke directly to NBC. He studied at Fordham University at night with the goal of
the child watching at home. becoming a lawyer. Gradually, though, the pull of broadcasting
Keeshan grew up in Queens, New York, in an era when broad- became too strong to ignore. Keeshan was asked to research and
cast entertainment came from a bulky radio. During his senior supply historical factoids to a writer working for a radio personality
year in high school, he made the trip to Manhattan each afternoon known as Buffalo Bob Smith. Keeshan would provide these random
where he worked as a page at NBC Studios, pulling down $13.50 facts for a twice-weekly feature, such as how much a loaf of bread
a week. The job wasn’t complicated; he cost in 1918 or what a men’s suit would go
showed members of the audience for the for then. From there, he helped Buffalo
network’s radio shows to their seats. Upon Bob hand out prizes on a Saturday morning
graduating, he followed his brothers into radio quiz show for children. When NBC
the military and enlisted in the Marines offered Buffalo Bob a TV show in 1947, he
to fight World War II. Despite persistent brought Keeshan along to help with what
rumors about Keeshan’s combat service, he became Howdy Doody. [Editor’s note: Say,
never left the United States. kids, it’ll be Howdy Doody time in our pages
“They dropped the bomb when I was next year in RetroFan #31!]
in boot camp, so that ended any threat to At first, Keeshan merely wore a sports
me,” he said. “I then spent my life running coat. Buffalo Bob dressed as a ringmaster
around closing schools, literally. They would to go along with the circus setting. To fit in,
send me to Japanese language school, and Keeshan became a clown named Clarabell.
I’d be there for six weeks, and it occurred He didn’t have any lines, but was armed
to somebody they no longer needed with a horn to honk and a seltzer bottle
to squirt. Keeshan spent five years in the
make-up and costume.
Keeshan as a kindly toymaker on Keeshan said he learned “almost every-
Tinker’s Workshop shortly before thing I know” about television from Buffalo
becoming Captain Kangaroo. Courtesy of Bob. “Now, don’t confuse the live television
L. Wayne Hicks. and the technical aspects of it—all of which

retro interview
I learned from Bob Smith—with the philosophy. I mean, there so when I came on with Tinker and was doing well on WABC, our
couldn’t be two philosophies as different as Bob’s philosophy and local ABC station, at 8 o’clock in the morning, somebody said, ‘Hey,
mine. We looked at children in a totally different way. But as far as there’s an audience there.’”
learning the craft of television and the timing and comedy, all of CBS invited Keeshan and four other producers to put together
that sort of thing, Bob taught me everything. He was an absolute pilots. After watching all of them, the network chose Captain
master at it.” Kangaroo.
Buffalo Bob’s show was loud, fast-paced, and seldom concerned The pieces and the characters were assembled slowly. The
with teaching. “Bob’s idea of education was to sit at Captain Kangaroo name was chosen for its alliteration,
the piano and say, ‘You cross the street although Keeshan did wear a navy blue coat with
with your eyes, not with your feet,’ and massive deep pockets like a kangaroo’s pouch. Bunny
that was fine. There’s nothing wrong Rabbit was there from the beginning. So was Mr. Green
with that. But he certainly wasn’t pro-ed- Jeans. Mr. Moose and Dancing Bear made their debuts
ucation as far as it was concerned. He later.
just felt that he was there to entertain, Keeshan said he thought the show would be a
which is a fine philosophy. Except I felt success from the start.
education and entertainment combined “I thought it was great from the first minute of the
could be of a greater service to young first day. I was prejudiced. I thought we had a very
people.” different and new approach to programming for
young people, and if we remained faithful to our prin-
BECOMING THE CAPTAIN ciples of catering to the intelligence and potentially
Keeshan and a few other Howdy Doody good taste of the child, then we had an opportunity
actors were fired in a dispute over wanting to do some very, very good programming. I was
to take outside jobs. By then married probably one of the few that thought it would really
and a young father, Keeshan make it because it was nonconventional.
struggled to find a job. It did break a lot of rules. It wasn’t the
“I went nine months looking commercial venture that most program-
for work. I was about ready to ming was then.”
go into the insurance business Keeshan appeared on an episode of The
or whatever because I had a Carol Burnett Show once, playing himself.
young son and my daughter Burnett played a network executive
was on the way,” said Keeshan,
who eventually became the
father of three and grandfather
of six. “We were destitute. We
were in dire straits. I just kept
making the rounds and making
the rounds.”
Luckily, a program manager
at WABC in New York wanted to
copy a Chicago television program for a lunchtime show featuring
a clown. This time, as Corny the Clown on Time for Fun, Keeshan got
to speak. He spoke to the children about a variety of topics, using
the same gentle manner he would as the Captain. The station
gave Keeshan a second daily show, this time in the morning, called
Tinker’s Workshop. On this one, he played a kindly toymaker. Time for
Fun lasted about 18 months. Keeshan remained on Tinker’s Work-
shop for six months before he had the opportunity to move over to
CBS, which was looking to launch a morning children’s program.
“There was a show in Cincinnati, Ohio, called Uncle Al,” Keeshan
said. “Uncle Al was very brash and loud—everything that I
wasn’t—but he had an enormous audience at 8 o’clock in the
morning. The research department at CBS was aware of this, and
(TOP AND CENTER) CBS’ Captain Kangaroo promotional

material includes a quote from Variety, “a gem of a
kidoodler.” And it was! (RIGHT) Early still of the Captain
with Bunny Rabbit. © Creative Artists Agency. Courtesy of L. Wayne
Hicks.

retro interview
listening to Keeshan pitch his idea for Captain Kangaroo. “She was
wonderful, of course, as she is. She said, ‘Let me understand this.
You’re a captain, but not necessarily a captain of anything, and you
have a bunny rabbit that actually communicates with you, and
you have this moose who talks.’ She went down the characters: ‘A
grandfather clock that speaks poetry.’ And she was getting herself
more hysterical as she enumerated all the elements of the show,
which sound ludicrous when approached from that direction, of
course. But that’s probably pretty much the reception we would get
today from a network executive.”
FROM COAST TO COAST

In announcing Captain Kangaroo, a CBS press release trumpeted the
program would feature “beautiful music, lovely dancing, unusual
games and toys, live animals, simple studies of nature and many
other delights of childhood.”
In those early years, ratings reports would regularly list Captain
Kangaroo as the second most popular program for children, behind
The Mickey Mouse Club on ABC. But the two shows, which made their
debut on the same day, didn’t compete. The Disney program aired
in the afternoons.
Watch out for falling ping-pong balls, Captain! © Creative Artists

Agency. Courtesy of L. Wayne Hicks.
Initially, Keeshan had to do each program twice a day, Monday

through Friday. After wrapping up the 8 a.m. broadcast for the East
Coast audience, Keeshan and crew had 40 seconds before 9 a.m.
to reset the stage and launch into the show for Midwest viewers.
The audience on the West Coast saw a kinescope of the program.
The success of Captain Kangaroo prompted CBS to add a Saturday
episode.
Keeshan’s Captain character served as a comic foil to Bunny
Rabbit, who was perpetually tricking him out of carrots; and Mr.
Moose, who lived to dump ping-pong balls on his head. Initially,
though, the writer who came up with the idea suggested using golf
balls. Keeshan nixed that.
“Mr. Moose enjoyed it so thoroughly,” Keeshan said, “as did
every child and every parent at home enjoy it. They were laughing
with the moose. They weren’t really laughing at me. I liked being in
that position, of being outwitted by Bunny Rabbit and Mr. Moose,
because there’s a vulnerability to us as adults. We’re not perfect,
and it’s important for a child to understand a parent is not perfect.
That it is possible to be smarter than a parent once in a while.”
As the show evolved, new characters joined the cast. Dancing
Bear was originally intended as a one-off, but attracted so much
The grandfatherly Captain Kangaroo was a popular mail the character was brought back again and again. An animated
subject for children’s books. (ABOVE) Original cover segment featuring the heroic Tom Terrific and Mighty Manfred
artwork by Mel Crawford for Whitman’s 1959 book, the Wonder Dog was added to give the cast a chance to step
Captain Kangaroo’s Picnic. Courtesy of Heritage. (INSET) Two off-camera and take a break.
Little Golden Books starring the morning TV host. “It gave us three and a half or four minutes to regroup
© Creative Artists Agency. ourselves,” Keeshan said. “Animation, as we had envisioned it
originally, would have been about a third of the program material.

retro interview
As it actually turned out, it was probably less than a tenth of the No longer tethered to the demands of live television, Captain
program material. But it gave us physical relief in doing the show.” Kangaroo saw an increase in its production values. “Ultimately
Technological advancements changed the show tremendously. we were doing the show more like they do motion pictures and
The advent of videotape eliminated the need to perform the same television because we would do three minutes here and a minute
program twice each morning. Captain Kangaroo was able to be and a half there, and we could always do a 20-second segue. All of
produced using taped segments, and Keeshan could get back to this came together in the editing suite. We could mix and match
clowning around. He suited up as the Town Clown. shows. For example, we could do a story—a fairy tale of some kind,
“It literally was almost an hour of make-up and costume and of or our interpretation of a fairy tale—which would require large
course that couldn’t be done on live television,” he said. “But once sets maybe and guests and so on, expenditures which we could
we started to tape the program, then we were able to take an after- never have afforded it when it was done just for the one live show.
noon of production and get me into make-up and costume and do But now, because we were able to tape it and edit it and perfect it,
maybe five or six two-, three-, four-minute sequences, which were it went into the library. That might then be amortized over 12 runs
then edited into the program.” over three years or something of that sort.”
(TOP LEFT) The big

stuffed pockets of Captain
Kangaroo. (CENTER) Bob
Keeshan on set circa 1970.
(RIGHT) The Captain and (TOP TO
Mr. Green Jeans with Bunny BOTTOM)
Rabbit and Mr. Moose (noted The Dancing
ping-pong ball dropper). Bear, Captain
(LEFT) Captain Kangaroo Kangaroo,
and an unidentified rabbit. and Mr. Green
© Creative Artists Agency. Jeans.
Captain
Kangaroo
waiting to
go live in the
early days of
the show. The
word “yawn” is
spelled out in
small blocks on
the shelf.

retro interview
The roster of celebrities invited to visit Captain Kangaroo’s Trea-

sure House constituted an epic collection of talent. Pearl Bailey,
Dolly Parton, Carrie Fisher, Pete Seeger, Alan Arkin, Eli Wallach,
and Walter Cronkite all made guest appearances. In turn, Keeshan
guest-starred as himself on various other programs, including on
variety shows hosted by Parton, Tony Orlando, and Sonny and Cher.
During the turbulence of the Sixties, Captain Kangaroo served as
a stabilizing force in the lives of children.
“I think that’s a good way to put it,” Keeshan said. “That’s what
we thought of ourselves as. There was no way in the world that
we could deal with those very complex issues in terms that a
four-year-old would appreciate and understand, without risking
all kinds of insecurities being given to the child. This is a dreadful
world that we live in, and what is important to a young child is
stability.”
The Sixties saw Captain Kangaroo switch to color, although it
would take until 1971 before the character began wearing that
bright-red jacket with the deep pockets. By then, Sesame Street,
with its colorful cast of Muppets, had taken to the air and quickly
became must-see TV for the young. Airing on public television
stations beginning in 1969, Sesame Street owes a certain debt to the
Captain. Many of the key figures behind the new show had learned
from Keeshan—just as he had from Buffalo Bob Smith.
Keeshan said Sesame Street improved over time, but he thought
the early years of the program concentrated too much on trying to
get four- and five-year-olds interested in counting and reading.
“Fred Rogers and I both have a philosophy,” Keeshan said. “At
this age, you’re not dealing so much with the cognitive needs of the
child, which are important. Don’t downgrade them in any way. But
the emotional development of the child is critical at this age. This
emotional development to both of us is far more important. That’s
what the Captain was. The relationship between Mr. Green Jeans
and the Captain and the Dancing Bear and Bunny Rabbit and Mr.
Moose were all demonstrations of how we get along and how we
develop in the world.”
HOPPING AROUND
The relationship between CBS and Keeshan wasn’t nearly as
cordial. By the early Eighties, the network had cut the hour-long
program in half and moved it to the wee hours of the morning.
CBS then gave Keeshan a whole hour in 1982, but moved him to
Saturdays. Two years later, the network reduced Captain Kangaroo
to a half-hour again. That was enough for Keeshan. Toward the end
of 1984, after nearly 30 years on the air, he called it quits—at least
temporarily. After a brief hiatus, Keeshan brought back Captain
Kangaroo, this time on PBS. Because of a lack of funding, only about
a third of the content of the new programs was new; the rest came
from the archives.
“In the last three years on public television, I have had a very
difficult time,” Keeshan told a congressional subcommittee looking
into children’s television in 1989. “I thought that in coming to the
public sector I would be afforded more time to meet creatively the
needs of the nation’s children. To the contrary, I cannot afford to
spend much time in meeting the needs of children. I’m spending
my time looking for underwriters for the program, looking for
money.” Captain Kangaroo merchandising included records,
As an elder statesmen of children’s television, Keeshan made comic books, coloring books, and View-Master reels.
© Creative Artists Agency.
frequent trips to Capitol Hill in the Eighties. He testified before
committees investigating violence on television, the effect video

retro interview
Bob Keeshan,
approximately
five years before
his 2004 passing.
Photo by and courtesy of
L. Wayne Hicks.
games were having on children, and (as a former smoker himself)

keeping cigarettes out of the hands of young people.
Keeshan never dreamed of taking on big acting challenges. He
was content to play himself, happy to entertain children. Even after
moving Captain Kangaroo to PBS, Keeshan hosted a half-hour show
(as himself, not the Captain) called CBS Storytime for 26 episodes.
Keeping up with his long-standing tradition of exposing his viewers
to good stories, Keeshan presented animated adaptations of
children’s books.
Keeshan and Captain Kangaroo left PBS after six years. An
attempt to bring the program back with a different actor in the
Captain’s coat didn’t work. Saban Entertainment, which had
brought the show Mighty Morphin Power Rangers to American
television, trotted out The New Captain Kangaroo in 1997.
“I was not involved with that at all,” Keeshan said. “I offered
my services as a consultant, but they didn’t want me. There’s a
tremendous audacity in this business.”
Keeshan’s Captain Kangaroo ran for almost 10,000 episodes. The
reboot? Just 40 episodes.
Captain Kangaroo continues to resonate with the people who
(TOP) Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt helps grew up watching the program. When an auction house offered
Captain Kangaroo promote a UNICEF fundraising drive up the Dancing Bear costume in 2013, the successful bidder paid
during Halloween. (ABOVE) Two giants of children’s $207,019 for that piece of television history. Later that same year,
programming: (LEFT) Mr. Rogers and (RIGHT) Captain the Bunny Rabbit and Mr. Moose puppets were auctioned off for
Kangaroo. $224,579.
Today, Captain Kangaroo lives on in memories and the occasional
episode posted on YouTube. Jason Merrick, who grew up watching
Keeshan and company in the Seventies, formed a private Facebook
group in tribute to the program. The group, Captain Kangaroo’s
(RIGHT) Keeshan’s Treasure House Memories, has attracted more than 2,800
Captain Kangaroo members since founding in 2010. “I was fascinated by the entire
costume changed production,” Merrick said. “The many characters, situations, and
in 1971 as he music made the series my favorite childhood television memory.”
adopted this red That sentiment would have pleased Keeshan.
jacket, which he
wore in over 6,000 L. WAYNE HICKS is a Denver-based writer
episodes. Courtesy of who previously worked for newspapers in
Heritage. Florida and Colorado. He has written about
such figures in pop culture as Fess Parker,
Mr.Bill, Encyclopedia Brown, Dick Tracy,
and KISS. He is finishing a book about the
Romper Room television program.

If your old man used to gripe that
Too
you’d never learn anything with your
nose glued to the boob tube, here’s
Much
your chance to prove him wrong.
(Father doesn’t always know best.)
The class subject or school
TV
position in Column One corresponds
to a TV teacher in Column Two. Match
’em up, then see how you rate!
COLUMN ONE
1) English
2) Science
3) History
4) Guidance counselor
5) Remedial Education
6) Basketball coach
7) Girls’ academy
housemother
8) Second grade
9) Voice
10) Dance
The Andy Griffith Show, Our Miss Brooks ©

CBS Television Distribution. The Facts of Life;
Welcome Back, Kotter © Shout! Factory. Fame ©
MGM Television. Leave It to Beaver, Mr. Peepers
© NBC Universal Television. Room 222, The
White Shadow © 20th Century Television. The
Secrets of Isis © Universal Television. All Rights
Reserved.

RetroFan Ratings
10 correct: Fine-Tuned RetroFan
Sock it to me, baby! I bet you know theme
song lyrics too!
Keep your
7–9 correct: Rabbit-Eared RetroFan
peepers Dy-no-mite! You wasted your childhood with
the rest of us!
on your own
4–6 correct: Fuzzy-Receptioned RetroFan
papers, Up your nose with a rubber hose ’til you spend
more tube time!
students.
0–3 correct: Tuned-Out RetroFan
Ya big dummy! Put down that book and go
watch some classic TV!
COLUMN TWO
A) Liz McIntyre, Room 222
B) Andrea Thomas, The

Secrets of Isis
C) Ken Reeves, The White

Shadow
D) Connie Brooks, Our Miss

Brooks
E) Miss Canfield, Leave It to

Beaver
F) Pete Dixon, Room 222
G) Eleanora Poultice, The Andy

Griffith Show
H) Edna Garrett, The Facts of

Life
I) Lydia Grant, Fame
J) Gabe Kotter, Welcome

ANSWERS: 1–D, 2–B, 3–F, 4–A, 5–J, 6–C, 7–H, 8–E, 9–G, 10–I
Back, Kotter
TwoMorrows 2023
www.twomorrows.com • store@twomorrows.com
THE BEST OF SIMON & KIRBY’S
MAINLINE COMICS by JOE SIMON & JACK KIRBY

Introduction by JOHN MORROW
In 1954, industry legends JOE SIMON and JACK KIRBY founded MAINLINE PUBLICATIONS to publish their own comics during
that turbulent era in comics history. The four titles—BULLSEYE, FOXHOLE, POLICE TRAP, and IN LOVE—looked to build off
their reputation as hit makers in the Western, War, Crime, and Romance genres, but the 1950s backlash against comics killed
any chance at success, and Mainline closed its doors just two years later. For the first time, TwoMorrows Publishing is compiling
the best of Simon & Kirby’s Mainline comics work, including all of the stories with S&K art, as well as key tales with contributions
by MORT MESKIN and others. After the company’s dissolution, their partnership ended with Simon leaving comics for advertis-
ing, and Kirby taking unused Mainline concepts to both DC and Marvel. This collection bridges the gap between Simon & Kirby’s
peak with their 1950s romance comics, and the lows that led to Kirby’s resurgence with CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN
and the early MARVEL UNIVERSE. With loving art restoration by CHRIS FAMA, and an historical overview by JOHN MORROW
to put it all into perspective, the BEST OF SIMON & KIRBY’S MAINLINE COMICS presents some of the final, and finest, work
Joe and Jack ever produced. SHIPS AUGUST 2023!
(256-page COLOR HARDCOVER) $49.95 • (Digital Edition) $15.99 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-118-9
DESTROYER DUCK by JACK KIRBY & STEVE GERBER
GRAPHITE EDITION
Introduction by MARK EVANIER
In the 1980s, writer STEVE GERBER was embroiled in a lawsuit against MARVEL COMICS over ownership of his cre-
ation HOWARD THE DUCK. To raise funds for legal fees, Gerber asked JACK KIRBY to contribute to a benefit comic titled
DESTROYER DUCK. Without hesitation, Kirby (who was in his own dispute with Marvel at the time) donated his services for
the first issue, and the duo took aim at their former employer in
an outrageous five-issue run. With biting satire and guns blazing,
Duke “Destroyer” Duck battled the thinly veiled Godcorp (whose
infamous credo was “Grab it all! Own it all! Drain it all!”), its evil
All characters TM & © their respective owners.
leader Ned Packer and the (literally) spineless Booster Cogburn,

Medea (a parody of Daredevil’s Elektra), and more! Now, all five
Gerber/Kirby issues are collected—but relettered and reproduced
from JACK’S UNBRIDLED, UNINKED PENCIL ART! Also included
are select examples of ALFREDO ALCALA’s unique inking style
over Kirby on the original issues, Gerber’s script pages, an historical
Introduction by MARK EVANIER (co-editor of the original 1980s
issues), and an Afterword by BUZZ DIXON (who continued the
series after Gerber)! Discover all the hidden jabs you missed when
DESTROYER DUCK was first published, and experience page after
page of Kirby’s raw pencil art! NOW SHIPPING!
(128-page COLOR HARDCOVER) $31.95 • (Digital Edition) $13.99
ISBN: 978-1-60549-117-2
ALTER EGO
COLLECTORS’ ITEM CLASSICS
By overwhelming demand, editor ROY THOMAS has compiled all the material on the founders of the Marvel Bullpen from
three SOLD-OUT ALTER EGO ISSUES—plus OVER 30 NEW PAGES OF CONTENT! There’s the STEVE DITKO ISSUE (#160
with a rare ’60s Ditko interview by RICHARD HOWELL, biographical notes by NICK CAPUTO, and Ditko tributes)! The STAN
LEE ISSUE (#161 with ROY THOMAS on his 50+ year relationship with Stan, art by KIRBY, DITKO, MANEELY, EVERETT,
SEVERIN, ROMITA, plus tributes from pros and fans)! And the JACK KIRBY ISSUE (#170 with WILL MURRAY on Kirby’s
contributions to Iron Man’s creation, Jack’s Captain Marvel/Mr. Scarlet Fawcett work, Kirby in 1960s fanzines, plus STAN
LEE and ROY THOMAS on Jack)! Whether you missed these issues, or can’t live without the extensive NEW MATERIAL
on DITKO, LEE, and KIRBY, it’s sure to be an AMAZING, ASTONISHING, FANTASTIC tribute to the main men who made
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(256-page COLOR SOFTCOVER) $35.95 • (Digital Edition) $15.99 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-116-5
CLIFFHANGER! CINEMATIC SUPERHEROES OF THE

SERIALS: 1941–1952 by CHRISTOPHER IRVING
Hold on tight as historian CHRISTOPHER IRVING explores the origins of the first on-screen superheroes and the comic cre-
ators and film-makers who brought them to life. CLIFFHANGER! touches on the early days of the film serial, to its explosion
as a juvenile medium of the 1930s and ‘40s. See how the creation of characters like SUPERMAN, CAPTAIN AMERICA, SPY
SMASHER, and CAPTAIN MARVEL dovetailed with the early film adaptations. Along the way, you’ll meet the stuntmen,
directors (SPENCER BENNETT, WILLIAM WITNEY, producer SAM KATZMAN), comic book creators (SIEGEL & SHUSTER,
SIMON & KIRBY, BOB KANE, C.C. BECK, FRANK FRAZETTA, WILL EISNER), and actors (BUSTER CRABBE, GEORGE
REEVES, LORNA GRAY, KANE RICHMOND, KIRK ALYN, DAVE O’BRIEN) who brought them to the silver screen—and how
that resonates with today’s cinematic superhero universe. NOW SHIPPING!
VOGER’S VAULT OF VINTAGE VARIETIES
TEENAGE
One recent evening, the trailer for Rebel Without
a Cause (1955) came on. There was James
Dean, his face scrunched into an expression
of emotional anguish, bellowing at his
MONSTERS
parents, “You’re tearing me apart!” Dean
looked like a human powder keg ready
to blow.
I thought: That’s just like
Michael Landon in I Was a Teenage
Werewolf (1957).
Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a
Cause was a big-studio Hollywood
motion picture in CinemaScope and
WarnerColor. Gene Fowler, Jr.’s I Was
a Teenage Werewolf (IWATW) was a
non-widescreen, black-and-white
cheapie that nonetheless raked in a surprising
$2 million at the box office.
Rebel preceded IWATW by two years. The
earlier film spawned many imitators. Landon’s
earnest, intense performance in IWATW is as
much about teen angst as, you know, fangs ’n’ fur.
The two films have significant plot parallels. (ABOVE) James
Both protagonists are high school outcasts Dean inspired
with anger issues. Both are counseled rebellion among
by understanding cops (Edward teens ... not
Platt in Rebel, Barney Phillips to mention
in IWATW). Both have ineffectual werewolfery!
father figures (Jim Backus © Warner Bros. Pictures.
in Rebel, Malcolm Atterby (LEFT) Michael
in IWATW). Landon rocks
And, not for nuthin’, both that letter
protagonists rocked iconic jacket in I Was a
outerwear. Dean wore that Teenage Werewolf
cool, red nylon windbreaker (1957). © American
which became “the” look International Pictures.
of the middle Fifties. And
Landon was the first
werewolf in horror movie
history to wear a letter
jacket.
When
horror
met
hepcats
and
hot-rodders
BY MARK VOGER
RETROFAN
RETROFAN July
July 2023
2023 13
Voger’s vault of vintage varieties
Dawn Richard isn’t

in the movie much,
but she’s in a lot of the
photos and posters.
What’s that about?
© American International
Pictures
Okay, I’ve tortured the comparison enough. Let’s talk about (TOP) Mad doctor Whit Bissell interrogates Landon
the fun, frightful—albeit, fleeting—teenage monster genre. in I Was a Teenage Werewolf. (ABOVE LEFT) Is Landon
Aw-woooo! becoming a werewolf — or going through puberty?
(ABOVE RIGHT) Landon puts the I in I Was a Teenage
MOVIE HARBINGERS Werewolf (1957). © American International Pictures.
There’s a consensus that the term “teenager” wasn’t really in
popular use prior to World War II. When the term entered the
vernacular, it was initially used as an advertising demographic. In the running are the East Side Kids films Spooks Run Wild (1941)
(Yay, capitalism!) and Ghosts on the Loose (1943), both starring Bela Lugosi, no
A film series like MGM’s Andy Hardy movies of the Thirties and less, and the Bowery Boys films Spook Busters (1946), Master
Forties, which starred Mickey Rooney as a pint-sized Casanova, are Minds (1949, with three-time Frankenstein monster Glenn Strange
teen movies, kind of, with an important caveat: they are pre-rock ’n’ as a werewolf), Ghost Chasers (1951), and The Bowery Boys Meet the
roll teen movies. Many cliches about teens in Fifties movies were Monsters (1954). Of course, by the Fifties, the “boys” were all pushing
inherited from Andy: the malt shop, the jalopies, the Jughead hats, 40, still milking the juvenile delinquent thing.
the girl-craziness. (Well, girl-craziness goes back to Adam and Eve.)
The only thing missing was rock ’n’ roll… and rebellion. Andy BIRTH OF A GENRE
would never dream of sassing his sage papa, Judge Hardy (Lewis Three years later, the surprise hit I Was a Teenage Werewolf kicked off
Stone), during one of the old man’s many lectures on proper the teenage monster genre proper, as it altered the fortunes of the
behavior in that stuffy, book-lined study of his. indie machine American International Pictures (AIP). Produced and
The Dead End Kids, later the East Side Kids, later the Bowery co-written by Herman Cohen, IWATW provided future Bonanza star
Boys, came close to teen film status. And the ensemble—often led Landon his first starring role as Tony Rivers, a Rockdale High
by Leo Gorcey (bossy) and Huntz Hall (goofy)—certainly oozed student who is obstinate, violent, and somehow likable. Maybe it’s
rebellion. In the course of their many permutations between 1937 his fantastic hair?
and 1958, these films began as dramatic thrillers (Angels With Dirty Tony plays dirty during a fistfight, swinging a shovel and
Faces, Crime School) and ended as cookie-cutter comedies (Dig That throwing dirt in his opponent’s eyes. After tough-but-fair Detective
Uranium, Crashing Las Vegas). Donovan (Phillips) breaks up the fight, he recommends that Tony
But some of the films qualify as early harbingers of the teenage see Dr. Alfred Bradford (Whit Bissell, an actor born to play roles like
monster genre, especially if you (like me) stretch the definition to this). “He’s modern. He uses hypnosis,” Donovan says of the doc.
include movies about teen protagonists who encounter monsters, “No headshrinker for me, thank you,” Tony shoots back. “You
whether or not they become monsters themselves. Still with me? keep the man in the white coat for the goofs.”

Tony takes his sweetheart Arlene

(Yvonne Lime) to a Halloween party,
where Vic (Ken Miller)—clearly the
Jughead Jones of the gang—sings
the Jerry Blaine-penned rocker “Eeny
Meeny Miney Mo.” This being a
Halloween party and all, the kids play
good-natured tricks on each other.
When Vic plays one on Tony, he is
repeatedly punched for his effort. This
party is over.
Even Tony recognizes that this
outburst was the last straw, and he Ken Miller
agrees to see Dr. Bradford. Says the
doc with feverish glee to an assistant: “Through hypnosis, I’m going
to regress this boy back, back into the primitive past that lurks
within him. I’m going to transform him, and unleash the savage
instincts that lie hidden within.” Didn’t Lugosi say the same thing in,
like, 1943?
The doc has a beauty of a rationale for this view, related to
Fifties paranoia wrought by the atomic bomb: “Mankind is on the
verge of destroying itself. The only hope for the human race is to
hurl it back into its primitive dawn, to start all over again.” The
science is hazy, but whaddaya want? It’s a monster movie.
Dr. Bradford juices up Tony with unpronounceable chemicals
and interviews him in his altered state, encouraging him to regress.
As time passes, doctor and patient continue these treatments. (In
the olden days, you had to get bitten to become a werewolf. By
1957, you just needed medication and therapy.)
A mangled corpse is found in the woods. Back at Rockdale
High, shapely gymnast Theresa (Dawn Richard) asks permission
to continue practicing past her allotted time. We immediately
recognize her as Victim #2. Our first view of Phillip Scheer’s The provocative movie poster for I Was a Teenage
gnarly werewolf make-up is upside-down—a POV shot from the Werewolf (1957). © American International Pictures.
perspective of Theresa, who is hanging by her legs from parallel
bars. Perhaps in keeping with the Fifties milieu, this werewolf has a
pompadour. werewolf couldn’t get along with his parents, his teachers, his male
Now investigating two killings, police question Dr. Bradford friends, his female friends. He was vulnerable, like a lot of young
about the werewolf rumor. The doc plays the part of the pragmatic people are. That factor came across when I looked at him and I
scientist to perfection: “This is America, modern America, not a talked to him.”
hamlet in the Carpathian Mountains.” Arkoff also recalled that AIP paid Landon a total of $666.
Will Dr. Bradford get his comeuppance? Will Tony be cured or “It was the first time that they had ever done a teenage
killed? Will Vic score a hit single with “Eeny Meeny Miney Mo”? horror film, and it was the beginning of a whole new era of those
types of films,” said Miller, who played Vic, when we spoke in 2002.
BEHIND THE SCENES (Miller died in 2017.)
The co-executive producer “I believe I Was a Teenage Werewolf had a budget of $125,000.
Samuel Z. Arkoff
of IWATW was Samuel Z. Arkoff, They shot it in two weeks. It was a great strain, but we were always
co-founder of American International. there. There was no such thing as being ‘on call.’ You went to the
“I first saw Michael Landon in what studio in the morning; you got made up; and you stayed until the
was the equivalent of a casting call at last shot at night, in case they could add a scene that maybe wasn’t
that time in Los Angeles,” said Arkoff in the schedule. It was very good experience as far as growing, as
when we spoke in 1991. (The producer far as becoming an actor.
died in 2001.) “The part of Vic was great fun for me. It was Michael Landon’s
“The thing that appealed to me first film. It was tremendous working with him because he was
about him, when we were looking very uptight, trying to do the best he could. He did a wonderful job
for the teenage werewolf, was that in it.
he had a look of vulnerability, which “The film itself turned out to be one of the most phenomenal
was very important. After all, the films because we had Gene Fowler for the first time as a director.

He had been a film editor. He gave our characters a little bit more
than how they were written originally.”
If the gymnast played by Richard seemed a bit sexy and grown
up for a high school student, it may be because the actress, then
22, was a centerfold model for Playboy around that time. Not
surprisingly, her image was used prominently in the movie poster
and stills, despite her brief time on screen.
MORE TEENAGE MONSTERS

With a hit on their hands, AIP commissioned Cohen to produce
two quickie follow-ups, both directed by Herbert L. Strock, and
both with Scheer doing the make-up. One was I Was a Teenage
Frankenstein (1957), which had another important connection to its
predecessor: Bissell as the monster-whisperer. This time, Bissell
played Professor Frankenstein,
who aims to—you’ll never
guess—make a new creation out
of dead body parts. In his film
debut, Gary Conway wore the
gloppy make-up as the titular
monster.
“It was a film I did when I was
in college,” recalled Conway when
we spoke in 2002. “It really came
out of the blue for me. I was a
serious art student at the time.
My name was Gary Carmody.
I thought, well, this is kind of
an odd film—Teenage Franken-
stein and so on. Maybe I’d better
change my name, so nobody will Gary Conway
connect it with the more
serious art student in (TOP) The monster (Gary Conway) menaces a damsel
college. (Angela Austin) in I Was a Teenage Frankenstein. (ABOVE)
“But it became a huge Teenage Frankenstein lobby card. (LEFT) Sandra Harrison is
hit. There were people lookin’ weird in a lobby card for Blood of Dracula (1957).
around the block in (BELOW) Harrison wears the Eddie Munster mullet.
Westwood. So that little © American International Pictures.
plan fell apart,” he added
with a laugh. “Because
I became known right Make a Monster (1958), Landon did
then and there as Gary not reprise his role. Instead, Gary
Conway because of that Clarke did the growling alongside
film. returning IWATF star Conway.
“Actually, right after the Army, Teenage Frankenstein steered me AIP was also behind Edward
toward getting into television and films. And there my life remains L. Cahn’s Invasion of the Saucer
in one form or another. So I have a lot to thank it for, really, even Men (1957), in which canoodling
though I tried to escape even knowing about it. All these years later, teens on Lovers Lane vanquish
it comes back again. People still find it fun and identify with it.” veiny, bubble-brained aliens
Completing the Cohen trilogy was Blood of Dracula (1957). In created by Paul Blaisdell.
it, weird Miss Branding (Louise Lewis), the chemistry teacher at
Sherwood School for Girls, hypnotizes troubled transfer student OLD WORLD CHARM
Nancy (Sandra Harrison) with a glittery amulet, turning her into In a plot device vaguely
a toothy vampire with an Eddie Munster mullet. But why wasn’t it reminiscent of Alfred Hitch-
titled I Was a Teenage Dracula? And why wasn’t Bissell cast in drag as cock’s Shadow of a Doubt
Miss Branding? (1943), Paul Landres’ The
When AIP brought back the teenage werewolf and the teenage Return of Dracula (1958)
Frankenstein for Strock’s “meta” backstage horror film How to has the bloodthirsty

the lines. “Every morning, he’d come into make-up and he’d take my
hand and he’d kiss my hand,” she said. “He had a little Minox—you
know, those tiny, little cameras—which were new in those days. He
must have taken 200 pictures of me. He was always shooting, no
matter what. We became very, very close.”
Dracula’s secret lair was hidden in the caves in Griffith Park,
where many a Western, serial, and horror movie was filmed.
Recalled Eberhardt: “When we were in one of those caves, they
had a coffin all lined in satin. I got in it one day with a mirror, and I
was combing my hair, and they took my picture. I wish I had a copy
of it now. It was so funny. It’s just a funny thing to see me with all
this blond hair, combing my hair in a coffin in a cave. I did it just for
the fun of it, to make Francis laugh.”
And what did Lederer think of Return of Dracula? Eberhardt had
the scoop: “He said it was the worst movie he ever made.”
MAD DESIRES
(ABOVE) Garys Clarke and Conway How would the grandson of the original Dr. Frankenstein fare in
stand cheek-to-cheek in How to Fifties suburbia, where teenagers are always up to sexual high
Make a Monster (1958). (RIGHT) jinks, and rock ’n’ roll music is played at pool parties? Richard E.
Veiny varmint from Invasion of the Cunha’s Frankenstein’s Daughter has the answer.
Saucer Men (1958). © American International Frankenstein’s descendant (played by Donald Murphy in an
Pictures. (BELOW) Francis Lederer over-the-top performance) goes by the name Oliver Frank, so as
menaces Norma Eberhardt in Return not to attract attention to the once proud, now poisonous, name
of Dracula (1958). (BELOW RIGHT) of Frankenstein. As a screen villain, the arrogant, sociopathic, and,
Eberhardt in lingerie dominates it must be said, dapper Oliver is all over the place. Every word out
the film’s poster. © United Artists. of his mouth is a lie. He has several mad desires: to have sex with
teenage girls; to develop a serum that turns people into monsters;
to create a female monster from scratch; and to
restore the name of Frankenstein to its former
glory.
Oliver is the live-in assistant of Professor
Morton (Felix Locher), who is at work on
nothing less than a cure for all disease. Morton’s
fetching young niece, Trudy (Sandra Knight,
the first and only Mrs. Jack Nicholson), lives
at her uncle’s laboratory- and swimming
pool-equipped home. When not hitting on
Trudy, Oliver plies her with “fruit punch” that
transforms her into a bug-eyed monster.
Whenever Trudy wakes up after a night of
monstering, she has a bad hangover and can’t
remember what she did, kind of like Otis on The
Andy Griffith Show.
Trudy’s boyfriend, Johnny, is played by genre
superstar John Ashley, who looks like Elvis
Presley’s little cousin. Morton’s elderly, limping
count (Francis Lederer) killing and stealing the identity groundskeeper, Elsu (Poland native Wolfe
of a Czech artist who is traveling by train to meet Barsell), is secretly assisting Oliver in his unholy
relatives in a small-town America. Norma Eberhardt mission to create a female monster. It turns
played Rachel, a teenager who becomes infatuated out that Elsu used to work for Oliver’s father,
with the vampiric imposter, though the actress was age and he remembers Oliver’s grandfather. “A
28 at the time. female? That’s never been done!” Elsu exclaims
“I was supposed to be in high school. I know; I’ve read the critics. when he lays eyes on Oliver’s new creation. (Obviously, this is a
‘She’s no teenager,’” Eberhardt told me with a chuckle in 2006. (The different Frankenstein Universe than the one in which the Bride of
actress died in 2011.) Frankenstein dwelled, if ever so briefly.)
Dashing Prague native Lederer was 30 years Eberhardt’s senior. The monster make-ups for Frankenstein’s Daughter were
She admitted that Lederer’s Old World charm made it easier to say created by Harry Thomas, who I can’t resist calling the poor man’s

Jack Pierce. “That was bad (TOP LEFT) Sandra Knight

directing—extremely bad—and and John Ashley go “parking”
confusion,” said Thomas of the in Frankenstein’s Daughter
production when we spoke in (1958). (TOP CENTER) Harry
1994. (The make-up artist died Wilson plays the (female)
in 1996.) title monster in film. (TOP
“I thought Sandra Knight RIGHT) Knight needs
would be Frankenstein’s eyebrow maintenence.
daughter, but they brought (LEFT) Um, if that’s supposed
this huge man in named Harry to be Frankenstein’s
Wilson. They laid him on the daughter, why is she topless
table, and I made his face with chest hair? A lobby card
up. I took some cotton, some for Frankenstein’s Daughter
chromium, just wrinkled it up (1958). © Astor Pictures Corporation.
and sprayed it with the paint.
Took me about ten minutes.
“Then I wanted to put a wig
on him; he was supposed to be a woman. I had a blond wig there effort. He mumbled something about having just completed
ready to go. But the producer said, ‘Oh, just leave it to me. We’ll filming a screenplay called Prehistoric World, ‘an allegory.’ I said, ‘You
bandage his head up.’ I thought, ‘Hol-ee smokes! I should walk off mean, Teenage Caveman?’ ‘That was regrettable,’ he said. Bob is a
of this thing.’” very serious fellow, you know. So I said, ‘I know, Bob. I wrote it.’”
But, Campbell added, the title change “wasn’t the most serious
TEENAGE WHAT? injury done me on that film.”
You might assume that a movie titled Teenage Caveman (1958) would He recalled: “The whole thing was an allegory about the
have a Cro-Magnon who is discovered in ice; thawed; revived; destruction of the world by atomic power. And here is mankind
and eventually dances the Jitterbug in a malt shop while still in a trying to struggle out of it, building all the myths, the taboos, doing
leopard tunic carrying his club.
You’d be wrong.
“Well, the script that was sent to me was called Prehistoric Robert Vaughn
World,” Robert Vaughn, who starred in Roger Corman’s film, told invents the bow and
me in 2003. (Vaughn died in 2016.) arrow in Teenage
“It was actually written in kind of a blank verse. It was a plea for Caveman (1958).
disarmament. So that was one of the reasons I did it. Of course, © American International
Pictures.
the whole thing changed dramatically, including the title. It went
from Prehistoric World to Teenage Caveman.
“It became kind of a Jerry Lewis-like hit in France. It’s still
considered a classic picture over there. It’s given me a lot of laughs
over the years.”
Another person surprised over the title change was Oscar-nom-
inated screenwriter Robert W. Campbell, who wrote the script. “I
was in London at the time when they called me about the name
change,” Campbell told my friend and colleague, novelist Wallace
Stroby, in 1987. (Campbell died in 2000.)
“I just laughed because right from the very beginning, I grew
a very thick skin. Later, I met Robert Vaughn in a coffee shop on
the Sunset Strip and we were talking. I asked him about his latest

all the things that were supposed to preserve the remnants of the That “lizard man” did double-duty the same year in the
race long enough for it to survive. And when Vaughn’s character Corman-produced Night of the Blood Beast.
goes stumbling off into the lush forest, when he goes daringly out Another creature feature that shoe-horned the word “teenage”
there—which is also allegorical, that somebody sooner or later into its title is Jacques R. Marquette’s Teenage Monster (1958). Rather
is going to turn their back on the teaching of the elders and find than meet hep cats and hot-rodders, the title being faced sheriffs
out that what was said was not true—he was supposed to come and shootouts. Teenage Monster is a Western—even if the heroine
upon this spaceman in what I envisioned as a marvelous, elaborate is House of Frankenstein ingenue Ann Gwynn.
spacesuit, you know, Victorian, sort of like the kind of stuff Disney 1959 saw the grand finale of the movement with Tom Graeff’s
did in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954). thoroughly entertaining Teenagers From Outer Space, which out-Ed
“Well, instead of this, he (Corman) came up with this lizard Woods Ed Wood, and views like it was written and directed by
man suit he’d found. Here, this was supposed to be this elaborate schlock satirist Larry Blamire; Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow, which
spaceman, and he’d come up with this lizard man suit. I think he features a female hot-rodder (Jody Fair) and a bunch of Topstone
said it cost $65.” rubber masks; Teenage Zombies, Jerry Warren tripe about zombies
controlled by a Morticia-like femme fatale (Katherine
Victor); and The Giant Gila Monster, about a misunderstood
(TOP) Teenage teen mechanic (Don Simpson) who wants to be the next
cave people Darah Elvis.
Marshall and
Robert Vaughn cozy GOLDEN YEARS
up. (ABOVE) The The teen monster genre was short-lived, straddling just
Teenage Caveman those three golden years from 1957 to 1959. Its demise coin-
poster promised cided with the petering out of a related genre, the juvenile
“prehistoric rebels” delinquent film. If you wish to, you could award Honorable
(1958). © American Mention status to four Sixties comedies with monster-adja-
International Pictures. cent teens: The Horror of Party Beach (1964), The Beach Girls and
the Monster (1965), Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1966), and Ray
Dennis Steckler’s
hodgepodge The
Lemon Grove
Kids Meet the
Monsters (1968).
Barring a time
warp, a full-fledged
revival of the genre
seems an impos-
sibility, though
there have been
glimmers. Michael
J. Fox starred in Teen
Wolf (1985), while
Justin Bateman
took over in Teen
Wolf Too (1987). I
hope to go to my
grave never having
seen either film.
It’s no wonder
the star of the
movie that started
it all, I Was a Teenage
Movie poster Werewolf, moved on to bigger and better
for the things. Landon’s breakthrough came
thoroughly the following year, when he was cast
entertaining as Little Joe in the 1959–1973 television
Teenagers From institution Bonanza. After Landon died
Outer Space from cancer at age 54 in 1991, most obit-
(1959). © Tom Graeff uaries focused on the actor’s work in the
Productions. better-known Bonanza, Little House on the

(LEFT) The sheriff

keeps an eye on
the kids in a lobby
card for The Giant
Gila Monster (1959).
© McLendon Radio Pictures.
(BELOW) Michael
Landon once
again donned
werewolf makeup
for a 1987 episode
of Highway to
Heaven titled —
wait for it — “I
Was a Middle
Aged Werewolf.”
©NBCUniversal.
(ABOVE) The gang attends
a house party in a lobby
card for Ghost of Dragstrip
Hollow (1959). © American night. “I’m not a
International Pictures. (RIGHT) werewolf, I’m an
“Cash Flagg,” a.k.a. Ray angel,” he assures the
Dennis Steckler (kneeling), dumbstruck little trick-
says his prayers in The or-treater he rescues.
Lemon Grove Kids Meet the The episode ends with
Monsters (1968). © Morgan- Landon, again in werewolf mode, addressing the camera with a
Steckler Productions. wink, wishing viewers a happy Halloween.
When Arkoff and I spoke in 1991, Landon had died earlier in the
year. “He’d never had any kind of a role before,” Arkoff recalled of
Prairie, and Highway to Heaven. But we monster nerds never forgot Landon’s star turn in IWATW. “He was 19 years old at the time. Poor
the werewolf in Landon’s closet. guy is dead now. Wasn’t really a long life for him. He was a very
Nor did Landon. Arkoff recalled that an offhand comment good man, a very talented man.”
he once made during a TV appearance indirectly led to Landon The eighth of Landon’s nine children is actress Jen Landon, who
climbing back into his werewolf get-up. cut her show-biz teeth with regular roles on the TV soaps As the
“I was on the [David] Letterman show, and Letterman was World Turns, The Young and the Restless, and Days of Our Lives. Jen was
talking about this particular picture and Michael Landon,” seven when her father died.
Arkoff recalled. “He said, ‘I’ll bet you’d like Landon to do Teenage “My dad, he loved me tremendously,” she told me in 2004. “Even
Werewolf again.’ And I said, ‘Well, in view of his age, we’d have to though I lost him when I was young, and in life I’ve had plenty of
call it I Was a Middle Aged Werewolf,’ which got a big laugh from the insecurities and dark moments and doubt, that is a gift he gave me
audience and Letterman. that I’ll always have: the love that he gave me.
“Some time later, Michael called me. He said, ‘Sam, I heard “He was such an amazing person. Everybody wanted to be near
you that night.’ He was doing Highway to Heaven at that time. And him and around him. He passed away a long time ago, but even if
for Halloween, he wanted to do an episode in which he, his TV it’s not cognitive or conscious, I won’t ever lose that sensation of
character, was searching for a werewolf. So he wanted to use the having that father’s love for the time that I did.”
footage of himself as a young man, to be the werewolf he was And what did Jen think of I Was a Teenage Werewolf? Said the
seeking. There would be no reference to the fact that it was him as actress: “I love it.”
a youth, although everybody would know it, of course.”
Landon produced, wrote, and directed the episode, indeed MARK VOGER is the author and designer
titled I Was a Middle Aged Werewolf, which aired on October 18, of six books for TwoMorrows Publishing,
1987. In it, Landon’s trusty sidekick Mark (Victor French) views a including Britmania, Monster Mash (a
TV broadcast of IWATW. Landon’s character, Jonathan, walks in as Rondo Award winner), Groovy, and Holly
Mark watches a scene in which the 19-year-old Landon transforms Jolly. Voger worked in the newspaper field
into a werewolf. Says Mark: “You know, the guy in this movie for 40 years as a graphic artist and entertain-
reminds me a lot of you… I mean when he’s a regular guy, not when ment reporter, and lives at the Jersey Shore.
he’s got the fuzz all over his face.” He recently completed his collection of Marx
Later, Landon gamely dons werewolf make-up in a scene in Sixties presidential figures (although, to be honest, the stand is a
which Jonathan scares away two costumed bullies on Halloween replica). Please visit him at MarkVoger.com.

ANDY MANGELS’ RETRO SATURDAY MORNING
PART
2
BY
ANDY
MANGELS
Which narration opened the third incarnation of ABC’s gathering universe! Only one group dares to challenge this intergalactic
of DC comic-book heroes, titled Challenge of the SuperFriends? Was threat… the SuperFriends! The Justice League of America versus the
it William Woodson announcing, “Gathered together from the Legion of Doom! This is the Challenge of the SuperFriends!”
cosmic reaches of the universe, here in this great Hall of Justice
are the most powerful forces of good ever assembled: Superman…
Batman and Robin… Wonder Woman… Aquaman… and the Wonder (CLOCKWISE) Super Friends (or SuperFriends, in this
Twins, Zan and Jayna, with their space monkey, Gleek. Dedicated to incarnation) Superman, Hawkman, Wonder Woman,
truth, justice, and peace for all mankind!” Robin, Batman, the Flash, Green Lantern, and the King of
Or was it Stanley Jones intoning, “Banded together from remote the Seas, Aquaman, who has somehow gained the power of
galaxies are 13 of the most sinister villains of all-time. The Legion flight (maybe he just leapt like a flying fish out of the Hall
of Doom! Dedicated to a single objective… the conquest of the of Justice’s fountain in the background…). TM & © DC Comics.

andy mangels’ retro saturday morning
It was both, in the oddest version yet of ABC’s 13-year Saturday mation studio Hanna-Barbera. With 16 more hours to produce for
morning hit which had nine different incarnations and as many 1978–1979, Hanna-Barbera planned something old and something
titles. Last issue, we examined the first two versions of Super new (and borrowed): They would have half-hour stories that would
Friends, and now we’ll look at the most popular and historic season. continue the All-New Super Friends Hour line-up of characters, and a
And watch the next two issues of RetroFan as Andy Mangels’ Retro second half-hour that would feature DC’s heroes fighting 13 of DC’s
Saturday Morning is your guide to the longest-running animated villains, with stories and plots that actually reflected content from
super-hero series ever! the comic books themselves!
The first half-hour was almost indistinguishable from the
HANNA-BARBERA’S TWO-IN-ONE previous season’s half-hour segments, even using the exact same
Super Friends had aired on-and-off on ABC from 1973–1977, with Super Friends opening credits, which included a 1977 copyright and a
DC Comics’ super-heroes in The All-New Super Friends Hour airing space between the two words. The only major difference was that
1977–1978. Although Superman, Batman and Robin, Wonder the episodic title cards now featured a dynamic flying pose against
Woman, and Aquaman had been joined by other DC heroes—such a blue background for the DC heroes, rather than the “stand-in-a-
as Flash, Green Arrow, Plastic Man, Hawkgirl, Hawkman, Rima the group” shot on a red-purple-blue background that preceded it. The
Jungle Girl, Green Lantern, the Atom, and the Hanna-Barbera–
created Black Vulcan, Apache Chief, and Samurai, as well as teen
sidekicks Wendy Marvin and Wonder Dog, and Zan, Jayna, and (BELOW) Model sheet turnaround of Batman for the first
Gleek—there was precious little actual comic-book content in the Super Friends animated series. Art by Alex Toth. Toth’s
32 hours of shows that had been produced thus far by famed ani- design was used in all later seasons of the show. TM & © DC Comics.

Wonder Twins were in these stories, but no other outside guest- featured a pack of super-villains—Mirror Master, Poison Ivy,
heroes were. The stories were a bit more “cosmic” than their prede- Penguin, Captain Boomerang, Trickster, Reverse Flash, Pied Piper,
cessors, with episodes that included the Wonder Twins’ planet Heat Wave, Catwoman, Joker, and Captain Cold—with a similar
of Exxor, a subterranean world beneath the Earth’s crust, UFOs, logo. One catch, though: none of those villains had ever appeared
Dracula, space pirates, and a space circus, and visits to Aquaman’s on the show!
Atlantis and Mount Olympus, home of Wonder Woman’s Greek Featuring several Batman villains there—and in the Mego
goddesses and gods. In the final episode, Superman villain Mr. line—was not so odd as the fact that Batman and his villains had
Mxyzptlk appeared, while in another one, three Kryptonian villains been appearing on two different networks since early 1977. Due to a
escaped from the Phantom Zone. This latter was likely timed to deal Filmation had with DC Comics following their 1968 The Batman/
coincide with Superman: The Movie, which was about to debut in Superman Hour, Filmation had been able to continue developing
theaters in December 1978, and which featured the Phantom Zone. projects for Gotham’s Caped Crusader, even while he and Robin
It wasn’t the only bit of tie-ins that Super Friends was making. were appearing on ABC’s Super Friends shows! CBS debuted a half-
Mego action dolls of most of the TV characters were on the hour animated series, The New Adventures of Batman, on February
shelves, desired by children everywhere, and some of the Mego 12th, 1977, from Filmation, and the series utilized live-action actors
boxes even used Super Friends art. Additionally, there were Adam West and Burt Ward to reprise their roles vocally (plans to
Super Friends–themed school supplies and sheets and clothing, have them introduce the shows live, in character, were scrapped).
although most of them did not use the specific name. Ironically, Why didn’t Filmation use Olan Soule and Casey Kasem for voices,
while one set did feature the Super Friends name and logo and as they had in 1968? Because they were on ABC, voicing the same
characters (including Wendy, Marvin, and Wonder Dog), it also characters for Hanna-Barbera’s Super Friends!
(TOP LEFT) Model sheet for Green

Lantern. (TOP RIGHT) The Super Friend
known as Samurai. (LEFT) Classic hero
Hawkman in awesome hero poses.
(BELOW) Superman, Wonder Woman,
and (somehow) Aquaman fly into action.
TM & © DC Comics.

THE CHALLENGE OF THE CHALLENGE

The second half-hour of ABC’s Challenge of the
SuperFriends—this part with its own set of opening
credits and with no space between the name—was
designed to be radically different. The subtitle
was, for a brief time, “Battle of the SuperHeroes,”
but everyone knew that opening word would
never make it past ABC’s Standards & Practices.
Gone for this incarnation were the Wonder Twins,
and the group was now called the Justice League
more often. Members included Flash, Green
Lantern, Hawkman, Black Vulcan (gone too were
his pants!), Apache Chief, and Samurai, but while
Hanna-Barbera had diversified its cast by featuring
the minority heroes more regularly, it short-shrifted
its female viewers, now offering them Wonder
Woman as the token female.
Fighting against the heroes was the Legion
of Doom, whose headquarters in a swamp, the
Hall of Doom, blatantly resembled Darth Vader’s
helmet from the year-old theatrical megahit
Star Wars. The 13 well-known comic-book villains
included Lex Luthor, Brainiac, Cheetah, the
Riddler, the Scarecrow, Toyman, Sinestro, Black
Manta, Captain Cold, Bizarro, Gorilla Grodd,
Solomon Grundy, and Giganta. For those keeping
count, that was two females, and no villains of
color… unless one counted magenta or lime-green
aliens (the African-American Black Manta never
unmasked). But the villains’ line-up was not always
the same 13 bad guys.
Alex Toth was the legendary lead designer and
storyboard artist on the series, and he visually
controlled almost everybody’s look (though
Andre LeBlanc did some for this season). Toth
did design sheets for most of the villains, some
of which never made it into the series, including
The world’s greatest heroes have a meeting in the Hall of Justice. TM & © DC Comics.
(ABOVE) Character designer

Alex Toth, himself a respected
comic-book artist, also worked on
storyboards.

The Hall of Justice at The Darth Vader–inspired Hall of Doom rises

night. (INSET) TV Guide from out of Slaughter Swamp. TM & © DC Comics.
advertisement for Challenge
of the SuperFriends.
TM & © DC Comics.
Catwoman, Riddler, and Scarecrow. Early presentation

art for the “Legion of Evil” (also called “League of Evil” for
a time) showed Dr. Sivana, Sinestro, Captain Cold, Joker,
Beautia Sivana, Penguin, Abra-Kadabra, Poison Ivy, Heat
Wave, King Kull, Gorilla Grodd, Mr. Atom, and Cheetah. In
1978, Hanna-Barbera had picked up the live-action rights
to Captain Marvel (a.k.a. the star of Shazam!) and his
villains, which is why the Sivanas, Kull, and Mr. Atom were
included… as Captain Marvel was also intended to become
a member of the Super Friends! One problem, though:
Filmation held the animated rights to Captain Marvel and
related characters. Out went the hero and his villains, as
well as Joker, Penguin, Poison Ivy, and a proposed
CONTINUED ON PAGE 28.
The Legion of Doom from the

opening credits. TM & © DC Comics.

(ABOVE) Joker awaits entry to an early version of the Hall

of Doom. (COUNTERCLOCK-WISE FROM LEFT) Model
sheets showing turnarounds of the Riddler, unused
Batman villain Catwoman, and Solomon Grundy.
TM & © DC Comics.

(ABOVE) An early concept illustration for the Hall of Doom interior

shows an unused line-up of super-villains ncluding: (CLOCKWISE)
Dr. Sivana, Sinestro, Captain Cold, Joker, Beautia Sivana, Penguin,
Abra-Kadabra, Poison Ivy, Heat Wave, King Kull, Gorilla Grodd,
Mr. Atom, and Cheetah. Of these 13, only four would make it into
the revised Legion of Doom. (INSET) The Scarecrow looking almost
like a Scooby-Doo villain. Model sheet art for (RIGHT) Black Manta,
(BELOW LEFT) Giganta, and (BELOW RIGHT) Bizarro. TM & © DC Comics.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 25. The most prolific local one was Love, Hutten, & Love [LHL], headed
Mr. Freeze, which had been—or possibly might be—used in by veteran animators Bill Hutten, Ed Love, and son Tony Love… they
future The New Adventures of Batman episodes! Hanna-Barbera was would always get to lay out/animate the series Hanna-Barbera’s
allowed to keep Batman villains Riddler and Scarecrow, though. in-house least wanted to do. The show LHL was assigned that
Working closely with Toth was his friend, Darrell McNeil, who, at season was Challenge of the SuperFriends. A fellow Filmation layout
18, had previously been the youngest animator at Hanna-Barbera person who had worked on Challenge of the SuperFriends for a
[which you can read about in BACK ISSUE #30—ed.]. Since McNeil week found the show too daunting (read: number of characters),
was a lifelong fan of DC Comics, he often functioned in the office wanted to switch to another Hanna-Barbera show LHL was doing,
as a “character consultant,” stopping the production team from and offered to recommend that I take his SuperFriends slot. Now,
making egregious errors such as painting costume colors the wrong because I was a union employee and the union frowned upon
color, or having Green Lantern fly a yellow plane (yellow is his union ’toonists doing freelance, non-union work, I’d get no screen
weakness). But by the time of Challenge, McNeil was working as a credit, but to work again on my favorite DC super-heroes plus their
layout artist at Filmation on Tarzan and the Super 7 and The Fabulous greatest villains… well, no freakin’ duh!” McNeil was soon back at
Funnies. Because he had the job he wanted at Filmation, McNeil had work in his “off hours” from Filmation, assigned by Bill Hutten to lay
to find some way to work on Challenge. out episodes with Alex Toth.
In an interview with Marc Tyler Nobleman, McNeil wrote, “I In his book, Alex Toth by Design, Darrell McNeil wrote about a
discovered that union studio Hanna-Barbera used a number of humorous error in the Challenge episode called “The Time Trap.”
non-union subcontractors in town to facilitate show production. “Alex storyboarded, and I laid out the first act of that episode,
(CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT) Evil super-

villains included: Lex Luthor, Captain Cold,
Sinestro, and Toyman, sitting next to the
Riddler. (OPPOSITE PAGE TOP) Bizarro looks
on as Solomon Grundy smashes a Hall of
Doom table. (OPPOSITE PAGE CENTER) The
Cheetah slashes the table as Brainiac looks on.
(OPPOSITE PAGE BOTTOM) Giganta and the
Scarecrow look concerned. TM & © DC Comics.

which included the scene below of Green Lantern confronting an

off-screen Sinestro. Alex’s board panel and my layout drawing
show GL pointing his ring arm down to the ground, with my clearly
numbered indications of the Lantern doing his ring-thing. The
animator, however, just erased the numbers and sent the drawing
through… and no one else caught it, so when you see the scene
on TV, the reason that GL actually has three arms in it will now be
readily apparent.”
After Challenge, Alex Toth decided he was done with Hanna-
Barbera, and he jumped ship to rival company Ruby-Spears in 1980.
He wasn’t the only one who had difficulties on the series. In an
interview with Marc Tyler Nobleman, animator Bob Hathcock said,
“Bill Keil, who was the head of animation, had a small argument
with me over whether Wonder Woman would throw her lasso
The notorious
three-armed Green
Lantern, from
storyboard by Alex
Toth to original
layout by Darrell
McNeil to finished
mistaken animation.
TM & © DC Comics.

Wonder Woman shows off underhand-thrown magic

FAST FACTS lasso technique, a surprisingly controversial topic.
TM & © DC Comics.
underhanded (the bad guys were going to step into the loop). He
didn’t like that I animated her throwing underhand, so I asked Bill
Hanna if he minded me leaving to work on Captain Caveman with
Ron Campbell, and he said that was fine. By the way, they ended up
CHALLENGE OF THE SUPERFRIENDS using that [underhanded lasso] scene in the main title of Challenge
f No. of seasons: One (new) of the SuperFriends.”
f No. of episodes: 16 hours (two episodes each hour)
f Original run: September 9, 1978 –September 15, 1979 PRODUCTION CHALLENGES
f Studio: Hanna-Barbera As with many of the All-New Super Friends stories, the tales for both
f Network: ABC parts of this season were often generated by Joe Ruby and Ken
Spears, then their outlines were given to story editor Jeffrey Scott
PRIMARY VOICE PERFORMER CAST to script. Scott would, in turn, get help from Norman Maurer or
f William Woodson: Narrator, Perry White his wife Joan, brother Michael Scott, and Mark Jones. According
f Stanley Jones: Narrator “Challenge,” Lex Luthor, to Jones, who scripted about a dozen stories, Hanna-Barbera
Jonathan Kent, Jor-El paid $750 for a half-hour outline and $1,750 for a script. At Darrell
f Danny Dark: Superman, Superboy, Commissioner McNeil’s suggestion, Jeffrey Scott took one unused episode from
Gordon The All-New Super Friends Hour titled “The Energeon Creature” and
f Olan Soule: Batman rewrote it slightly to become the new show’s episode “The Anti-
f Casey Kasem: Robin, Computer Matter Monster.” And for a real writer’s twist, look for a meta joke
f Bill Callaway: Aquaman, the Flash, Bizarro in “The Rise and Fall of the Super Friends,” wherein Wonder Woman
f Shannon Farnon: Wonder Woman, Hippolyta, Lois reads a page of the actual script for the show, here representing
Lane Mxyzptlk’s magical script!
f Louise Williams: Jayna
f Michael Bell: Zan, Gleek, the Riddler
f Jack Angel: The Flash, Samurai, Hawkman
f Buster Jones: Black Vulcan
f Michael Rye: Apache Chief, Green Lantern, Solovar
f Marlene Aragon: Cheetah
f Ted Cassidy: Brainiac, Black Manta
f Ruth Forman: Giganta
f Don Messick: Scarecrow, Sinestro (later episodes)
f Vic Perrin: Sinestro
f Stanley Ralph Ross: Gorilla Grodd
f Dick Ryal: Captain Cold, Hall of Doom Computer,
Abin Sur
f Jimmy Weldon: Solomon Grundy
f Frank Welker: Toyman, Mister Mxyzptlk
f Also featuring Lewis Bailey, Melanie Chartoff,
Henry Corden, Al Fann, Bob Hastings, Bob Holt,
Renny Roker Wonder Woman examines the script for the episode she’s
in, “The Rise and Fall of the Super Friends.” TM & © DC Comics.

(LEFT) This promotional cel for

Challenge of the SuperFriends all but
promised massive conflict, a worrisome
matter for the network’s Standards
& Practices department. (BELOW)
Storyboard art by Alex Toth showing
Lex Luthor discovering Wonder
Woman’s beginnings in the “Secret
Origins of the Super Friends” episode.
Also from the “Secret Origins” episode,
screen captures that show (BOTTOM
LEFT) the kindly Kents finding the
baby Kal-El, who would grow up to
be Superman, and (BOTTOM RIGHT)
Hal Jordan finding a dying Abin Sur,
who passes on the power of the Green
Lantern. TM & © DC Comics.
ABC’s Standards & Practices censorial department

was nervous about Challenge because it would contain
actual conflict between heroes and villains. After all,
even the opening credits ended with the McNeil-
designed shot of the heroes and villains charging
towards each other about to fight. So the stories were
often softened just a bit. The villains could still have
plans to conquer the world, or destroy things, but
they had to be caught by the heroes for punishment.
Hanna-Barbera’s team didn’t always follow that rule,
and even if the villains were caught at the end of one
episode—instead of escaping at the last moment—the
next episode would find them back plotting villainy
in their swampy Hall of Doom, with no mention of
incarceration of punishment.
One planned episode in particular caught Standards
& Practice’s notes: “History of Doom,” the season’s
final episode produced, in which the villains wanted
to destroy the world. S&P wrote that “destroying the
world” was an imitable act, which was bad for young
viewers who might want to copy it. When Hanna-
Barbera pushed back that nobody watching the show
could actually single-handedly destroy the world, ABC
relented.
Several of the Challenge episodes dove deep into
DC Comics lore. In “Trial of the Super Friends,” the
villains stole Wonder Woman’s lasso, Green Lantern’s
power ring, and Batman and Robin’s utility belts
before putting the heroes on trial and making them fight robot including the demise of Wonder Woman and Superman! The
doubles. In “Secret Origins of the Super Friends,” Lex Luthor and the aforementioned “History of Doom” included the origins of Lex
Legion of Doom members travel back in time to stop Superman, Luthor and Giganta. All of them were remarkably true to their
Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern from ever existing! Although comic-book roots, and “Super Friends: Rest in Peace” even featured
Superman’s origin had been seen before, this was the first time for Wonder Woman doing a kind of “Wonder Spin,” which was clearly a
animation that either Wonder Woman or Green Lantern’s stories nod to the popular ABC-then-CBS live-action Wonder Woman series
had been featured. starring the luminous Lynda Carter.
Another episode, “Super Friends: Rest in Peace,” opened with The voice cast for Challenge remained mostly the same as the
the death of Batman, and continued with more shocking deaths, previous casts, although several new voice actors came onboard.

(LEFT) The super-heroes

and super-villains of
Legends of the Superheroes
include the return of
Frank Gorshin as the
Riddler, Burt Ward as
Robin, and Adam West as
Batman. (BELOW) Alex
Toth–drawn casting ad
looking for people with
“natural comedy ability.”
TM & © DC Comics.
Ted Cassidy, the actor famous as Lurch from The Addams Family,
gave voice not to Solomon Grundy—an obvious choice—but to
super-intelligent Brainiac and Black Manta. Stan Jones, who would
later play villains on Transformers and Spider-Man shows—and
narrate the 1986 Little Shop of Horrors film—was the imposing Lex
Luthor. Don Messick, a Hanna-Barbera mainstay who was most
famous as Dr. Benton Quest on Jonny Quest and a certain mystery-
solving dog named Scooby-Doo, was both Scarecrow and Sinestro.
Marlene Aragon, another Hanna-Barbera cast member, would
voice Cheetah years before becoming a fan favorite on Jem. Vic
Perrin, the Control Voice on The Outer Limits, also played Sinestro
in some episodes. And Stanley Ralph Ross lent his gravelly deep
tones to Gorilla Grodd. Ross had a deeper connection to comics
in Hollywood. He wrote 18 episodes of the 1966–1968 live-action
Batman series, and the script for an unaired Wonder Woman pilot for
the same production company. He later developed and created the
live-action Wonder Woman show with Douglas S. Cramer, writing
the part of Steve Trevor specifically for Lyle Waggoner to play.
CHALLENGE GOES LIVE?

On Friday, September 1, 1978, ABC aired a preview show with the
unwieldy title of Kristy and Jimmy McNichol Present The ABC All-Star
Saturday Preview Special [see RetroFan #10], hosted by the popular
pre-teen brother and sister television stars. In the special, viewers did animated versions. Unfortunately, ABC wasn’t interested. So
got to see a clip from the following weekend’s Challenge of the the company took the concept to NBC, which approved two hour-
SuperFriends. long Legends of the Superheroes specials. Alex Toth produced artwork
Challenge of the SuperFriends debuted on September 9, 1978, to for a casting ad for the specials, but he had to swap out Superman
excellent ratings. The one-hour show proved so popular that it was and Wonder Woman for Captain Marvel and Black Canary when
expanded to 90 minutes (replacing Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?) rights issues stood in the way of their usage.
from November 4, 1978 to September 15, 1979, with older episode Casting for the shows reunited Batman stars Adam West, Burt
reruns added in to fill the time. Ward, and Frank Gorshin, in costume as Batman, Robin, and
Hanna-Barbera was gambling that the Saturday morning audi- Riddler. It also added Garrett Craig as Captain Marvel with Howard
ence would love live-action versions of the show as much as they Morris as Dr. Sivana, Howard Murphy as Green Lantern with Charlie

Callas as Sinestro, and Rod Haase as the Flash with Jeff Altman as comic-book mythos, and have been used in the animated Justice
Weather Wizard. Other heroes included Danuta Wesley as Black League Unlimited, Krypto the Superdog, Batman: The Brave and the
Canary, Bill Nuckols as Hawkman, Barbara Joyce as Huntress, Bold, and Teen Titans Go! series, as well as the live-action Legends of
Alfie Wise as the Atom, William Schallert as new hero Retired Tomorrow show, several direct-to-DVD DC animated films, and the
Man/Scarlet Cyclone, and Brad Sanders as new creation Ghetto DC Universe Online game. Most recently, it appeared in the HBO Max
Man. Other villains included Mickey Morton as Solomon Grundy, series, Harley Quinn. Action figures, dolls, and other collectibles
transgender actress Aleshia Brevard as Giganta, and Gabriel Dell as have been created using the Challenge characters. The Legion of
Mordru. Famed announcer Gary Owens served as Narrator, and Ed Doom has been referenced on Robot Chicken, South Park, Family Guy,
McMahon appeared as himself, hosting one of the shows. Duck Dodgers, and Aqua Teen Hunger Force. 50 Cent, Snoop Dogg, and
Legends of the Superheroes debuted its first special, The Chal- other rappers spoofed it in a music video for “P.I.M.P.” The Seattle
lenge, on January 18, 1979. The second special, The Roast, aired on Seahawks called their defense squad the “Legion of Boom” for quite
January 25, 1979. The tongue-in-cheek comedy was not quite what a while. The term has even been used as of late in politics.
audiences wanted, especially as Superman: The Movie was still Challenge of the SuperFriends is by far most of fandom’s favorite
amazing crowds in theaters. [Editor’s note: For a lot more about version of the long-running series, for good reason: the stories hew
Legends of the Superheroes, see Andy Mangels’ article in our sister most closely to their comic-book origins. Hanna-Barbera learned
magazine BACK ISSUE #25, available at the TwoMorrows site, some lessons from this, and as Super Friends evolved, changes were
www.twomorrows.com.] made… but that’s a story for our next two issues!
Fans have a few options to see these shows. After decades in
A CHALLENGING LEGACY chopped-up form in syndication and cable TV packages, on June
Over the years, Challenge of the SuperFriends, especially the Challenge 1, 2004, the uncut as-aired versions of Challenge of the SuperFriends
episodes, have become one of the most common touchstones that were released on DVD by Warner Home Video as “Attack of the
the overall series has had. The Legion of Doom—and the Hall of Legion of Doom” (with the villain stories) and “United They Stand,”
Doom—have been successfully integrated into not only the DC but they only contained four each of the 16 shows. Warner released
the complete seasons in two DVD sets: Challenge of the SuperFriends
on July 6, 2004, and Super Friends on May 24, 2005.
The DVD sets are still available through retailers, but in June
2021, Warner released high-definition versions for HBO Max,
digitally restored and looking better than they had when they were
broadcast. Whether these hi-def versions will ever be released on
Blu-ray is unknown, but for now, fans are happy to have choices.
For those who want a real deep dive into the minutia of each
Super Friends episode, I highly recommend the thick, two-volume
The Ultimate Super Friends Companion by Will Rogers with Billie Rae
Bates. The pair are available on Amazon.
We’ll see you next issue as we swoop into the next several really
strange seasons of Super Friends!
Unless otherwise credited, artwork and photos are courtesy the collection
of Andy Mangels. Marc Tyler Nobleman’s website, quoted with permission
above, is at www.noblemania.com.
ANDY MANGELS is the USA Today

bestselling author and co-author of 20 books,
including TwoMorrows’ Lou Scheimer:
Creating the Filmation Generation, as well
as Star Trek and Star Wars tomes, Iron Man:
Beneath the Armor, and a lot of comic books.
He wrote the bestselling Wonder Woman
’77 Meets the Bionic Woman series for
Dynamite and DC Comics, and has written six Fractured Fairy Tales
graphic novels for Junior High audiences, released by Abdo Books.
He has written multiple Bookazines (available at any grocery store
checkout) on Ant-Man, Iron Man, The Little Mermaid, and Chadwick
Boseman. He is currently working on a book about the stage produc-
tions of Stephen King, as well as more Bookazines. Additionally, he has
scripted, directed, and produced Special Features and documentaries
Challenge of the Super Friends: The First Season DVD is one for over 40 DVD releases. His moustache is infamous. www.Andy-
viewing option for fans of the series. TM & © DC Comics. Mangels.com and www.WonderWomanMuseum.com

TwoMorrows 2023
www.twomorrows.com • store@twomorrows.com
THE
PACIFIC COMICS

COMPANION by STEPHAN FRIEDT
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THE CHILLINGLY
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MATT FOX (1906–1988) first gained notoriety for his jarring cover paintings
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WILL MURRAY’S 20TH CENTURY PANOPTICON
In college, I had a girlfriend who one night turned on The Rockford

Files starring James Garner. She was a big fan. And after watching
“The No-Cut Contract,” in which private detective Jim Rockford
becomes embroiled in the unscrupulous machinations of semi-pro
quarterback King Sturtevant (played by Rob Reiner), I became a
bigger fan.
This was a third season episode, so I came in late. And while the
girlfriend and I eventually parted company, I’ve been watching The
Rockford Files ever since. True, the series went off the air in 1980, but
it’s endlessly re-watchable. Over the decades, I managed to catch
them all, most several times. It was that kind of a show.
The Rockford Files came along when TV private eyes were dull,
square-jawed bunch. Mannix was the top of the heap.
After watching so many Rockford episodes, I started digging into
the origins of the series.
‘THE JACK BENNY OF PRIVATE EYES’

Before Rockford came along, I liked a one-season wonder called
The Outsider. Forgotten now, it starred Darren McGavin before
starring as Carl Kolchak in The Night Stalker series. [Editor’s note: See
RetroFan #11 for our Night Stalker coverage.]
McGavin played David Ross, an ex-con turned private eye.
Perpetually down on his luck, he stumbled through a seedy Los
Angeles. The show wasn’t quite satire, but McGavin portrayed a
rumpled and sometimes pathetic loser of a character. He was the
anti-Mannix.
Sound familiar? Like a precursor to Jim Rockford? That’s because
he was. Producer-writer Roy Huggins created Ross and later
co-created Rockford. But not all the credit can go to him.
Enter Stephen J. Cannell. He was a young TV writer, a fan of
Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. After catching a few
episodes of The Outsider, he decided to script an episode.
Cannell was impressed that the lead was not your typical hero.
“That was a terrific hardboiled private eye kind of anti-hero guy,”
he later said. “I wrote a spec
script for The Outsider, and I
(LEFT) Screen captures could not get it to Roy Huggins.
from The Rockford Files’ I tried every connection I knew.
introduction, including I thought it was a pretty good
glimpses of Rockford’s script. And it ended up coming
dilapidated trailer and back to me, and I threw it in my
Noah Beery, Jr. as his dad, drawer.”
Rocky. © NBCUniversal.
THE
ROCKFORD
FOLLIES BY WILL MURRAY

Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon
The Outsider soon went the way of all television, and

Cannell moved on.
Years later, he found himself associated with Roy
Huggins as a producer of Toma, a crime show starring Tony
Musante. Cannell scripted several episodes. Early in the first
season, the show hit a snag, The fifth episode wasn’t going to
be ready by broadcast time.
Cannell and Huggins huddled. ABC executives insisted
they had to deliver. But it was impossible. So they came up
with a radical solution. They’d script an emergency show to
fill the slot.
ABC agreed and didn’t care much about what they did so
long as they made it compatible with Toma.
Cannell explained, “The idea that Roy and I came up with
was that Toma had a case he wanted to work on. Simon
Oakland, his partner, would say, ‘That’s no case, I’m closing
the file.’ Then Toma, who believed it was a case, would take it
to his friend Jim Rockford, who only handled closed cases. Jim (TOP) Before Jim Rockford,
would spend the hour working on it. Then at the tag they would David Ross (Darren
have a beer together. That way we would keep Tony in the show.” McGavin) was TV’s ex-con-
But Musante declined to participate. So they killed the framing turned-gumshoe in the
sequence and went ahead with a solo Rockford script. short-lived drama, The
“I remember the day I went to work to write the thing,” recalled Outsider. (RIGHT) Roy
Cannell. “We never had a story approved by the network. Nobody Huggins and
gave a sh*t what it was; it was just better than a test pattern. So I (BELOW) Stephen
thought I could do literally anything I wanted. I started to really J. Cannell,
have fun. I had this plot and this guy named Rockford. I decided to creators of The
give him a father. I named him after my dad, Joseph. I figured I’d Rockford Files.
make his father a guy who thought he was a total bimbo for doing
this work.”
The more Cannell brainstormed, the more screwball the idea
became.
“Then I thought, where is he going to live? Every time I got to
the point where I said Rockford goes to the office and gets his
messages, I didn’t want him going to an office. I thought I’m going
to make this guy the Jack Benny of private eyes. I had him running
credit checks on clients, tallying up everything: gas mileage,
rubber. Then I thought every time he gets threatened, he’s going
to quit. This guy’s no dummy. So I had him pulling off the case six
times in the pilot—literally quitting. He’d say, ‘Look, I can’t go any
further. But here’s what I’ve done. I won’t charge you for the trip
to Vegas, the time, but it’s seven cents a mile, the rubber is three
cents.’ Lindsay Wagner is saying, ‘What is it with this guy and these
lists?’ I made a whole thing of the fact that he was cheap.”
Cannell got so carried away the 60-minute script became a rugged-sounding name for a character who was anything but
90-minute episode. Reading it, Roy Huggins said, “We’re not going rugged,” he explained.
to cut a word of this. Not a word.” When Huggins brought the idea to Tony Musante for Toma,
But ABC balked at the length and objected to Jim Rockford’s his wife suggested that it might work better as a private detective
unheroic personality. Cannell refused to change anything. The story. “I thought about it, and I agreed with her. So I laid that story
network ended up re-running the first episode of Toma instead. aside….”
“So we decided to try NBC with it,” related Cannell. “It didn’t When he heard that Jim Garner wanted to return to television,
take us half an hour to come up with Jim Garner because I had Huggins went back to that treatment. “I wanted to develop the
inadvertently done with Rockford what Maverick had been to story as a pilot for Jim, and then I decided that I ought to do
Westerns. I had just tried to take every cliché and step all over Maverick as a private-eye series.”
them. We submitted the script to Jim, he read it and flipped. We Garner related, “I was negotiating with MGM to do a television
sold it to NBC.” series based on my character in Support Your Local Sheriff. When I got
Huggins remembered it differently. In 1972, he conceived the the Rockford script, I read it, loved it, agreed to do it the same day. I
idea of a private investigator that handles only cases the police asked for one change of my own: the character was originally named
have closed. He called his protagonist Tom Rockford. “It was a ‘Tom’ Rockford. I said, ‘I’m not a Tom.’ They changed it to Jim.”

(TOP LEFT) James Garner as Bret Maverick in a publicity

still for the quirky TV Western, Maverick (1957–1962).
© Warner Bros. (TOP RIGHT) Garner came close to reprising
his Support Your Local Sheriff role in a weekly television
series when The Rockford Files came his way. © United Artists.
Both, courtesy of Heritage. (LEFT) TV Guide ad for the September
12, 1974 premiere of The Rockford Files.
kidding me? I’ve got expenses!’ That locked me into the whole idea
of how Rockford was this kind of guy never did anything for free,
because he had to pay his bills.”
Huggins originally thought that Rockford would be a former
cop, but changed that to an ex-con, borrowing from The Outsider. An
exonerated Rockford had been paroled from San Quentin, which
provided him with an eclectic group of ex-con associates.
Then NBC objected to a hero who kept chickening out every
The timing could not have been more serendipitous. “I figured time the going got too dangerous.
that if I did a private-eye series in which Jim played Maverick, it “But by this time, we had Jim and had his weight behind this,”
would be a tremendous success,” recalled Huggins. Huggins said. “He said, ‘That’s the show I’m going to do.’ It went on
Cannell started writing a fresh script from Huggins’ treatment. the air and it was a smash.”
Cannell had seen an episode of Mannix in which a little girl comes to
the detective for help finding her missing mother. When the issue MEET JIM ROCKFORD
of Mannix’s fee came up, the little girl offered some lollipops and NBC aired it as a Movie of the Week on March 27, 1974, but it all went
quarters. Mannix says, “That’s just the right amount.” back to that orphaned Outsider script.
“As soon as I saw that,” Cannell noted, “I thought, bingo! If “In that script,” remembered Cannell, “I had a place where
that same little girl went up to Rockford, he’d say, ‘What, are you David Ross was being followed by this guy and he led this guy into

a bathroom. It was a big muscle-bound guy who was following following Rockford, and Rockford has to go into the men’s room,
him, and he said, ‘Oh, geez, now I’m going to be trapped here.’ So where he puts the soap on the floor. That scene would go over very
what he does is unscrews the liquid soap and pours it on the floor. well if you had a little guy playing Rockford.”
It was never shot or read by Roy, and so when I ended up doing the Huggins offered Rockford to ABC as a series to rotate with Toma,
Rockford pilot, I pulled that out. I took that old thing from that spec but the network turned it down. They also cancelled Toma, later
script that I couldn’t get him to read and said, ‘You see, you should reviving it as Baretta with Robert Blake in the lead.
have done this.’” That was when Huggins turned to NBC. But the network
Before Jim Garner let it be known that he was open to returning previously had issues with Jim Garner over his short-lived Western
to television, other leads were floated. Huggins first envisioned Nichols. So pitching it as a modern-day Maverick might have
it as a vehicle for Alias Smith and Jones’ Ben Murphy. James Wain- backfired.
wright, who had been in Jigsaw, was another candidate. “So I decided to sell The Rockford Files as a series about a private
“I had discussed casting with Roy,” recalled Universal executive eye who only handles closed cases,” revealed Huggins. “That would
Frank Price, “and one of the things I make it sound ‘different.’ This has happened
had discussed was the idea of Robert time and time again—Mannix, as an example,
Blake playing Rockford as a ‘short’ started as a detective who works in an agency
detective—because you’re always looking that bases its procedures on computers. That
for something that makes your show a little sold the series, but that concept was quickly
different. I had seen Electra Glide in Blue, a forgotten.”
feature starring Robert Blake, and I was In this instance the closed-case angle was
very amused by it because the makers of merely a selling tool. “No homicide case is ever
the film took advantage of the fact that
Blake was short. I particularly thought the
humor that was involved in The Rockford (LEFT) Album featuring the theme to
Files would work if Rockford was a short the Rockford Files and other popular
detective. That’s there’s that scene in the shows. Courtesy of Internet Archive. (BELOW)
pilot, for example, where the big guy is Like watching the detectives?
Original Gray Morrow artwork from
the mid-Seventies for a magazine
article about television’s top cops
and private eyes. Jim Rockford is
there, along with cast members from
Hawaii Five-0, Columbo, Adam-12, The
Rookies, Get Christie Love, Kojak, Police
Woman, and more. Courtesy of Heritage.

Signed publicity photo of James Garner circa his Rockford Files years, and
show scripts. Both, courtesy of Heritage.
closed,” Huggins explained. “The case that Rockford took on in them if pushed to the wall. And a man like Jim Rockford adopts
the pilot was never closed—the police considered it inactive and a ‘no-holds barred’ attitude when it comes to the survival of the
unsolvable, but they never closed it. And I knew that. But I used fittest—and in his book, the fittest is always Jim Rockford!”
it as a gimmick to help sell the series. So, The Rockford Files were Under that steel and willingness to fight dirty was a heart of
‘closed files.’” gold.
Lip service was paid to this premise during the first season, but “Rockford works on his own,” Garner explained. “He’s a man
it soon faded as a motivating device. who cares for people and will quote them a fee of $200 per day
When the series started, Garner explained his unorthodox plus expenses, but will end up working for them whether they can
character. afford it or not.”
“It’s that Raymond Chandler–type of thing, with humor and So much for Cannell’s cheap, no-nonsense detective. Much of
action. There’s a lot of action in the series. There’s a big difference the series’ appeal lay in how often Rockford got tricked, suckered,
between action and violence. Rockford doesn’t carry a gun. Getting or embroiled in the schemes of his unscrupulous clients or unsavory
a permit is too much of a hassle. He has one, though, which he associates. How he got himself out of hot water and kept his PI
keeps hidden in a canister in the trailer. license drove many plots.
“He’d much rather outwit someone. If it is absolutely necessary, Former cellmate Evelyn “Angel” Martin was the chief foil for
he’ll fight. He knows all the tricks, and you’d better believe he’ll usegullible Jim Rockford. He first appeared in the pilot as a throwaway
character.
Producer Meta Rosenberg
Screen captures of Rockford’s Private noticed that there was a small part
Investigator license (LEFT), which he was for an informant who worked in the
always in danger of losing, and (BELOW) records department of a newspaper.
two Yellow Pages ads for his business. She thought of Stuart Margolin,
© NBCUniversal. who had costarred with Garner on
Nichols.
Rosenberg recalled, “Stuart was
so fabulous in this little nothing
scene that I said to Jim, ‘He’s got to
be in the show! We’ve got to keep
him. And so we did.’”
Huggins explained, “I had orig-
inally written a very commonplace
character—a semi-heavy who I had
not considered to be very important.
Steve took that character and came
up with Angel, which I thought was
an absolute stroke of genius.”
NBC didn’t want Margolin in the
series. But Garner kept reusing him

until executives told him point-blank not to use Angel

Martin again. Then Margolin got an Emmy nomination.
End of argument.
Margolin based Angel on a golf hustler he knew. “In my
mind, Angel is a descendent of him. He’s a hustler, a street
character. Angel’s a snitch. He’s like the characters Elisha
Cook played. He’s out of O’Henry and Damon Runyon.”
No one sandbagged poor Rockford as much or more
often than Angel. Yet he kept getting ensnared in Angel’s
schemes.
“Rockford is his scapegoat,” revealed Margolin. “He’s
the most available guy to point the finger at. I think he
trusts Rockford the most, and Rockford trusts Angel to
do certain things. He knows he will sell him out. He’s
consistent.”
Robert Donat played Joseph “Rocky” Rockford in the
pilot, but Noah Beery, Jr. took over the role for the series.
He had been the original choice, but was unavailable for
the pilot.
Cannell modeled the crusty truck-driving character
after his own father. “He could not understand why I
didn’t stay in the furniture business. Rocky Rockford
could not understand why Jim Rockford would risk his life
as a private detective when he could get a solid job as a
trucker.”
Beery was nonchalant about his role. “I don’t know that
I really fit into any category on the show,” he once said.
“Sometimes Jim and I switch places and he takes care of
his stupid father. I guess it’s more of an association. They
could easily do without me, but they keep me around.” Four of The Rockford Files’ supporting characters: (TOP)
Jim Garner saw it differently. “I think Rockford’s Noah Beery, Jr. as Rocky Rockford and Gretchen Corbett as
relationship with his father is the emotional backbone of Beth Davenport. (BOTTOM) Joe Santos as Detective Dennis
the show. Sometimes they get on each other’s nerves, but Becker and Stuart Margolin as Angel Martin. © NBCUniversal.
the affection is there through it all.”
From (LEFT) Lindsay Wagner as Sara Butler in the series pilot to (CENTER) Lauren Bacall as Princess Irene
Rachevsky to (RIGHT) Isaac Hayes as “Gandy” Finch, familiar faces as guest-stars were common in The Rockford Files.
So was Jim Rockford’s jazzy houndstooth sport coat. © NBCUniversal.

The chemistry between

actors Joe Santos and
James Garner was
a crowd-pleasing
aspect of the series.
(INSET) Santos (LEFT)
and Stuart Margolin
(RIGHT) with Garner in
1994, during the era of
Rockford Files reunion
movies. © NBCUniversal.
‘THE ROCKFORD FILES’ KICKS OFF seriousness of the proceedings. Every one opened with a recorded
When The Rockford Files debuted as a weekly series, it was with an telephone message received on Jim’s now-vintage answering
episode called “The Kirkoff Case,” which was an unfilmed Toma idea machine. These humorous tags were usually written by the
Huggins revised. producers and directors, but seldom by the episode’s scripter!
It had a classic scene when Rockford is scared off a case by two “So it was very much a collaborative effort,” remembered
thugs, acting perfectly agreeable to dropping the matter. Just like producer Charles Floyd Johnson, “and we all had fun writing them.”
Bret Maverick in the old days. After Season One, Roy Huggins departed and Stephen Cannell
According to Garner, “That’s the cue for an actor to do one of took over as showrunner. And the series veered into its trademark
two things: play it straight or inject a little ‘Holy cow, I’m gonna get comedic territory. But it also hit its first snags.
killed’ humor into it. That’s me, and that’s Rockford.” During the second season, The Rockford Files came under fire for
Despite the hasty retreat, Rockford later has to prove he’s not a excessive violence.
coward. “First year, we weren’t listed as violent,” Garner observed. “Now
“But he wasn’t, of course,” said Huggins, “any more than we’re violent, and we do less than we did the first year. ’Course, no
Maverick was a coward.” one ever tells you who makes up those lists, who decides what’s
What Rockford was, was his own man. Asked if there wasn’t violent.”
anything he wouldn’t do for money, Rockford replied, “I won’t kill Much to the star’s chagrin, the networks clamped down.
for it, and I won’t marry for it. Other than that, I am open to just “They refused Rockford being knocked down by a judo chop
about anything.” to the neck,” Garner complained. “It was okay to film the blow,
“Rockford is hand-tailored for Jim,” Huggins observed. “It’s but then they wanted us to cut to Rockford falling to the ground
designed to capture that dry sense of humor, the wryness, without the hit being seen.”
double-entendre, his innate sense of comedy timing.” But the network had its way.
Meta Rosenberg agreed. “It’s a rare kind of quality, this ability “I’ve always been conscious of violence,” Garner grudgingly
to convey comedy with the flick of a finger. And Jim’s got it, no admitted. “I don’t like over-violence. We’ve cut down.”
question.” In its place, wild car chases became the show’s signature action
“I’m a reactor, which helps in that type of thing,” allowed Garner. riff.
“It helps to comment on the situation. I like to come at things from “I don’t do all of my own stunt work on Rockford,” allowed
a little more oblique angle, a humorous angle.” Garner, “but I’m behind the wheel often enough to establish that I
The first-season episodes tended to be straight crime dramas do drive in the chase scenes.”
populated by a sly, quirky humor that didn’t quite dispel the

This thrilled Stephen Cannell, who declared, “He was one of the “They decided Rockford should be a straight detective to
best stunt drivers probably in this business, and here he was, the compete with macho man Jack Lord [Hawaii Five-0’s Steve McGar-
star of my show, so I could tie my principal into all of those shots.” rett, for you RetroFans who didn’t watch his “Book ’em, Danno”
The other problem was the opposite. Universal Studios thought adventures from 1968–1980.—ed.], and they wanted us to take the
the show under Cannell’s supervision was drifting off course. It was humor out,” said Garner.
also airing opposite its ratings rival, Hawaii Five-0. Panic set in. Frank Price related, “I told him that I thought that the shows
were headed in the direction of broad farce, which is what I had
seen on Nichols—and that I thought that was wrong for Rockford
Files. You can’t play Rockford for a chump every week. Rockford has
FAST FACTS got to be a sophisticated guy. He is smarter than everybody else, not
dumber.”
THE ROCKFORD FILES This discussion was dominated by Garner’s irate voice punctu-
f No. of seasons: Six ated by a certain amount of furniture smashing. “If you don’t like
f No. of episodes: 123 (plus pilot) the series, cancel it,” Garner told him. He won the argument. The
f Original run: September 12, 1974–January 10, 1980 humor stayed.
f Primary cast: James Garner, Noah Beery, Jr., Gretchen During this season, an Outsider script was recycled and retooled
Corbett, Stuart Margolin, Joe Santos for Rockford. Occasionally, a classic Maverick script was also updated
f Creators: Roy Huggins, Stephen J. Cannell for the show.
f Theme music by: Mike Post, Pete Carpenter “If you look at Maverick and Rockford,” observed Garner, “they’re
f Network: NBC pretty much the same guy. One is a gambler and the other a
detective, but their attitudes are identical.”
SPIN-OFFS AND CONTINUATIONS: Ratings slipped in Season Three, but the show held onto much
f Richie Brockelman, Private Eye (short-lived Rockford of its audience—thanks to Jim Garner’s likable portrayal.
Files spin-off created by Stephen J. Cannell and Steven “We’re not a big flashy hit,” he asserted, “but the show grows on
Bochco and airing on NBC from March 17–April 14, you. It’s easy to watch. Nobody in the family needs to be embar-
1978; starring Dennis Dugan, Robert Hogan, Barbara rassed. I think this is good for longevity.”
Bosson) Garner credited his team of regular writers, which included
Juanita Bartlett and newcomer David Chase, later to create The
Sopranos.
“We’ve got writers we can trust—and that’s what makes it
work,” Garner asserted.
THE ‘ROCKFORD’ UNIVERSE OF CHARACTERS

Despite The Rockford Files being written expressly for him, Garner
usually dismissed his contribution. “I didn’t bring anything to it,”
he insisted. “I just showed up and said the words. When I just said
what was printed, that was much cleverer than anything I could
come up with.”
“One of the joys of The Rockford Files is that we could do anything
from heavy, heavy drama, to spitball, Mad, Mad World kind of
comedy,” Cannell added.
f Gabby & Gandy (the pairing of characters Gandolph Episodes ran the gamut from the grim “So Help Me God”
“Gandy” Fitch, played by Isaac Hayes, and Marcus to a caper called “The Great Blue Lake Land and Development
“Gabby” Hayes, played by Lou Gossett, Jr., in the Feb- Company,” to one of my favorites, the insanely convoluted “Irving
ruary 18, 1977 Season Three Rockford episode “Just the Explainer,” which is a send-up of period Hollywood noir films.
Another Polish Wedding,” was intended as a backdoor As much as the versatile scripts, the eccentric semi-recurring
pilot for a Gabby & Gandy spin-off which never materi- characters made Rockford the success that it was.
alized) Crusty Lieutenant Diel was the first police officer Rockford
f “Just a Coupla Guys” (the pairing of bumbling would-be tangled with. Joe Santos’ Detective Dennis Becker came along soon
wise guys Eugene Conigliaro, played by Greg Antonac- after and became a fixture.
ci, and Mickey Long, played by Gene Davis, in the Oc- Diel was eventually replaced by James Luisi’s Lieutenant
tober 6, 1978 Season Five Rockford episode “The Jersey Chapman, whose antagonism for Rockford resulted in several
Bounce,” was intended as a backdoor pilot for a spin- serious run-ins. Chapman didn’t care for Becker’s growing
off co-starring the duo which never materialized) friendship with the private eye, which created another dimension
f The Rockford Files (eight reunion movies starring James of relationship conflict among the ever-expanding cast.
Garner, broadcast 1994–1999 on CBS; Joe Santos and “Acting doesn’t have much to do with the series,” Garner
Stuart Margolin appeared in each telefilm, and various opined. “It’s an attitude that makes the show. Writing is most of it.
series cast members returned in others) Character. We deal more in humor and real situations and not so

much in bravado as most detective series. I think that’s the reason Season Six opened with a bit of stunt casting. Jim Garner had
it makes it.” been doing highly successful Polaroid television commercials with
Gretchen Corbett played Jim’s lawyer Beth Davenport. She actress Mariette Hartley, who had tried out for Rockford in the past.
appeared in the second episode. But when she wanted out of her “They wouldn’t touch me,” she revealed.
Universal contract during Season Three, the studio mandated that But now their on-screen bantering chemistry mandated a
she’d also have to leave Rockford. Corbett departed. guest-star turn. This was the sixth season opener, “Paradise
Bo Hopkins replaced her as John Cooper, Rockford’s new Cove.” It revolved around the Malibu Beach trailer that doubled as
attorney in Season Four. He appeared in three episodes, beginning Rockford’s home and office.
with “The Jersey Bounce.” “The relationship between Jim and me is the same as in the
Singer Isaac Hayes played another former Rockford cellmate, commercials,” quipped Hartley. “I put him down terribly.”
hulking Gandolph Finch. He soon teamed up with Louis “Lou” In another bit of stunt casting, Lauren Bacall guested on a
Gossett, Jr., as fast-talking parole officer-turned-PI Marcus Hayes. A memorable two-hour episode, “Lions, Tigers, Monkeys and Dogs.”
spin-off series involving the unlikely duo failed to materialize. Sparks flew between them.
Rita Moreno costarred in three episodes revolving around “No love scenes,” Bacall quipped. “We rather like the look of each
ex-hooker Rita Capkovic. She had appeared with Garner in Marlowe, other. Better to leave it to the imagination.”
the 1969 film based on a Raymond Chandler novel. Moreno won But trouble reared its head as the show went into what proved
an Emmy for her portrayal as The Rockford Files’ needy former call to be its final season. The star had grown tired of the show and the
girl. Talk of spinning Rita off into her own series never got past the
discussion stage.
“People loved her so much they forgot
she was a hooker,” quipped Moreno.
This revolving door cast of characters The Rockford Files had nearly completed its NBC run when MAD
—which included the too-perfect-to- magazine spoofed it as “The Crockford Files” in issue #217 (Sept. 1980).
be-true private detective Lance White, This original art page by Angelo Torres (from a Lou Silverstone script)
played by Tom Selleck in his pre-Magnum, also pokes fun at Garner’s Polaroid TV commercials with actress
P.I. days, and Dennis Dugan as the Mariette “I am NOT his wife!!” Hartley. © EC Publications, Inc. Courtesy of Heritage.
unwavering Richie Brokelman, a fellow
private eye who was spun out of the 1978
episode “The House on Willis Avenue”
into his own short-lived series—and
other professional rivals and wannabes
were colorfully off-center and kept the
show from falling into predictable ruts.
“Rockford is an island in a world
where people can be pretty bizarre,”
observed writer-producer Juanita Bart-
lett. “He is a very reasonable, very sane
man who recognizes the insanity—and
you can see that in his eyes, and in his
face and his expression. Rockford recog-
nizes the insanity, and he accepted it,
although he certainly can do without it.”
“An actor like Jim plays better off
characters with vinegar,” noted Meta
Rosenberg.
“I think writers write for me because
I can put my tongue in my cheek and go
with it,” Garner reflected. “What else
can I do? Steely-eyed sheriffs bore me.
Bravery bores me. I don’t take off my
clothes and I don’t use foul language.”
LOVE, ROCKFORD STYLE

Rockford’s love life was as messy as
his professional life. He finally got a
recurring girlfriend in blind psychologist
Megan Dougherty, played by Kathryn
Harrold, in “Black Mirror.”

(ABOVE) James Garner as Jim Rockford on

the June 2–8, 1979 cover of TV Guide (this
copy has seen better days). The art is by
noted illustrator Bernie Fuchs. © TV Guide.
(RIGHT) Stephen J. Cannell talks about the
end of The Rockford Files in the December
1980 Video Action magazine. Note the
cover-teased article about the future of
magazines, books, and information in the
new age of cable television. © Video Action, Inc.
beating he kept taking as the result of injuring his knee in an early grave! They can preempt us and put something else on. That’s their
season. problem.”
Garner began dropping broad hints to the press early in 1979. Matters came to a head when Garner was stricken with a
“To tell you the truth,” he said in March, “I told Freddy Silverman bleeding ulcer in December. His doctor ordered bed rest. Produc-
I really didn’t want to do it after next year. I’m tired of it and tion shut down—and never resumed.
everybody’s made a little fortune off of it. And like I said, it’s such a “By the time I was anywhere near able to go back to work,”
physical drain I’ve got to get away. But they’ve still got me for one Garner explained, “we missed our air date. NBC cancelled The
more year, so I don’t know what will happen.” Rockford Files with ten episodes of the sixth season still unfinished.
A month later, Garner tried a different tack: “Somewhere along, They claimed I was malingering.”
you’d think somebody at the studio would say, ‘All right, Jim, a The final episode aired was “Deadlock in Parma.” But that
job well done. We don’t get too many series to go that long. So was not the last one filmed. I once interviewed Van Williams,
here, take a year.’ But something tells me it’s not going to be that TV’s Green Hornet [see RetroFan #14—ed.], who told me that
easy—although as far as I’m concerned right now, Rockford is over, “Love Is the Word,” in which he played a deputy sheriff—which
finished.” at that time Williams was in real life—was the actual concluding
Garner’s public pronouncements turned dire in June. episode.
“What I need is physical rest,” the actor said. “Three out of five It was a fitting conclusion. Someone is trying to kill Rockford’s
years now I’ve spent my time off in the hospital—leg operations, blind girlfriend Megan, and in the course of events, she comes to
broken ribs from fights, and all kinds of things. The reality is, it’s a a realization she’s in love with another man. The show concludes
tough, tough job. Television is a killer. with Rockford attending her wedding. After the vows are said, he
“I will not work myself into the ground when I told them I didn’t turns away with his hands in his pockets, knowing that he’s lost
want to do it in the first place,” he emphasized, “just to make them something special. It was the perfect freeze-frame ending for the
another couple of million bucks. I’m not going to drive myself to the lovable hard-luck guy.

In the aftermath, years of legal wrangling ensued over Garner’s The final telefilm, If It Bleeds… It Leads, was shot in 1997 but not
profit participation. Eventually, the actor won out. aired until 1999.
One last time, Rockford comes to the rescue of Rita Capkovic. By
ROCKFORD ROCKS ON then, Jim Garner was about 70, and felt that it was time to retire Jim
But that wasn’t the end of The Rockford Files. Despite everything, Rockford.
Garner returned to the character for eight TV movie specials, Reflecting on the show’s impact, Garner gave this assessment:
starting with I Still Love L.A. in 1994, which was set during the “Rockford softened the hard-boiled detective image made popular
tumultuous times of the Rodney King verdict riots, earthquakes, by Humphrey Bogart, Dick Powell, and Robert Mitchum. Every real
and Los Angeles brushfires. private detective I’ve ever talked to said Rockford was much closer
Asked why he returned to the role after his troubled history to the truth than a lot of the tough ones on the screen.”
with Universal, Garner quipped, “I’m at an age that I don’t know if I Tom Selleck pointed to the character as the spark for his light
could do this in three or four years down the line. And I want to do approach to his long-running Magnum, P.I.
it. And if I’m going to do it, I should do it now. And it’s a wonderful Whatever the uniqueness of The Rockford Files, Roy Huggins
character to do; it’s been very successful in my life, and I’d rather always acknowledged its seminal inspiration, which, despite all
give it one more shot.” appearances, was not just Maverick.
As before, the star credited his team. “If I had ever done Rockford without Jim Garner,” he admitted, “I
“I love the character of Rockford. He’s a wonderful, wonderful might not have used the Maverick character. Instead, I might have
anti-hero, mainly because of the consistent writing. The character made Rockford more like the character I used in The Outsider, a
always appealed to me because he’s not your average, run-of-the- loner who was a little put-upon, and somewhat rough around the
mill hero.” edges.”
Stephen J. Cannell returned, along with several original
producers, writers, and cast members, except for Noah Beery, Jr., WILL MURRAY is the writer of the Wild
who had died. Beth Davenport also returned, having written a Adventures (www.adventuresinbronze.
legal bestseller, as did Megan Dougherty and others. Angel Martin com) series of novels, which stars Doc
turned up as a TV evangelist. Savage, The Shadow, King Kong, The Spider,
A new character was introduced, Rockford’s ex-wife, attorney and Tarzan of the Apes. He also created the
“Kit” Kitteredge, played by Joanna Cassidy. She throws him work on Unbeatable Squirrel Girl with legendary
occasion. artist Steve Ditko.
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RETROFAD
‘Bu
exp t the
ert y fo
tim ugh
K ing’ t w
UK h it
C U
CO N
ONNG
NQG
QU F
F
UE UU
ER RS
(ABOVE) Detail
from the poster of
the 1973 film Fists
S of Fury. © National
General Pictures Corp.
T
TH
WHE
W
E
O
OR
RL
LD
D
BY MICHAEL EURY
The kung-fu craze of the Seventies nearly cost me a toe. gonna take this right foot, and I’m gonna whop you on that side of
I was in my teens in 1973 when I thought it was a good idea to your face… and you wanna know something? There’s not a damn
“test” my martial-arts prowess, “honed” from my fascination with thing you’re gonna be able to do about it.” Uncle Hershel dismis-
the movie Billy Jack and the rattler-fast moves of its guardian of a sively blocked my kick with his mammoth arm. I assume his arm
progressive school for indigenous and with-it teens. My “opponent” was as flesh and blood as mine, but it sure felt like I was kicking an
was unwisely picked: my uncle Hershel, a giant of a man who was anvil with my bare foot. My throbbing little piggy turned a horrid
a decorated combat veteran of the Korean and Vietnam Wars. As shade of purple that you’d never find in a box of Crayolas.
I poised to strike, I imitated my new screen hero by quoting a line Martial arts were certainly nothing new by the time kids like
the woefully outnumbered Billy Jack quipped to an antagonist: “I’m me flipped over kung fu. These ancient fighting and self-defense

sports comprise a range of East (LEFT) This mid-Sixties release was one of
Asian cultures’ unarmed and several martial-arts books by Bruce Lee,
armed competitions. Many, if not who would soon rocket to international
most, of us do not understand superstardom. Courtesy of Heritage.
the differences between such
disciplines as kung fu, aikido,
budo, taekwondo, karate, kendo, with Asian and martial-arts backgrounds; their exag-
and savate, tossing them all into gerated ethnic affectations are considered offensive to
a lingual blender and labeling modern audiences.
the whole lot “kung fu.” RetroFan These flashy new (to Americans) forms of combat
respectfully bows to those who were tailor made for comic books. Artist Frank
are serious students and prac- McLaughlin’s Judomaster was one of Charlton Comics’
titioners of the martial arts, but “Action Heroes” line of the mid-Sixties. Marvel’s
in the spirit of the lighthearted karate-chopping Karnak premiered with his allies the
tone of our “RetroFad” column we Inhumans in Fantastic Four #45 in 1965. At DC Comics,
are anchoring this martial-arts teenaged writer Jim Shooter introduced Karate Kid
discussion upon the cultural as a member of the Legion of Super-Heroes in 1966’s
contagion that occurred in the
early Seventies. But first, a little
history…
Sixties TV icons Barney
According to journalist and
Fife (of The Andy Griffith
blogger Terence Towles Canote,
Show) and Emma Peel (of
wushu (martial arts) date back to the third or second century BC,
The Avengers) practiced
and in later centuries were chronicled in Chinese literature in a
martial arts, as did CBS’
subgenre called wuxia. Other East Asian nations, including Japan
cartoon star Hashimoto-
and Korea, had their own forms of physical warfare and self-
San, who was also seen in
defense that permeated their lore.
various Gold Key comic
In the early 20th Century, these disciplines began their stretch
books. The Andy Griffith Show
onto a larger global stage. The nascent Chinese film industry © CBS. Emma Peel © Studiocanal S.A.
released 1919’s Robbery on a Train, which Canote suspects is the Hashimoto-San and Deputy Dawg © CBS.
earliest kung-fu movie. Karate, judo, and jujutsu (jiu-jitsu) made
their way into the U.S.A., and many American soldiers in World
War II were exposed to martial arts during their Far Eastern
journeys. Once a karate dojo (studio) opened in the States in
1945, more followed. Canote writes, “By the Fifties and Sixties,
karate dojos were scattered across the country.” As part of this
burgeoning trend, athletes and wannabes alike attempted to
smash through wooden planks and bricks using barehanded
karate chops. Judo even became an Olympic sport beginning in
1964.
According to Canote, one of the earliest examples of a martial
art appearing in an American television series was “Karate,” a Gene Adventure Comics #346. Two
Roddenberry–penned episode of The Detectives originally aired years later, Diana Prince, the
on January 8, 1960; following on March 19, 1960 was “Black Belt,” erstwhile, now-powerless
an episode of Wanted Dead or Alive, the TV Western starring Steve Wonder Woman, became DC’s
McQueen. alternative to the martial artist
Then the success of the first theatrical James Bond movie, 1962’s Emma Peel, with a blind sensei
Dr. No, triggered the spy craze (see RetroFan #6). Television and embarrassingly named I Ching as her mentor and companion.
movie secret agents including 007, The Avengers’ Cathy Gale and (Historically, comic books had previously flirted with martial arts,
Emma Peel, Honey West, our man Derek Flint, and the wild, wild from the judo skills of Harvey Comics’ Black Cat in the Forties to the
James West fought foes using some type of martial arts—usually Jay-Jay Corp.’s Judo Joe comic in the Fifties.)
judo flips and karate chops. Deputy Barney Fife, the shakiest gun in But no one in live action, animation, or illustration could
Mayberry, and Jethro Bodine, as a would-be “double-naught spy,” out-kick, out-block, or out-move Bruce Lee, who electrified TV
tried their hand at it, too. audiences in his star-making turn as the living weapon Kato on
Martial arts were also seen in Sixties animated cartoons. Bob The Green Hornet (1966–1967). Born in San Francisco in 1940 but
Kuwahara, a native of Japan, created for America’s Terrytoons the reared in British Hong Kong, Lee opened martial-arts schools in
animated character Hashimoto-San, a mouse that was a Japanese the Sixties in Washington State and California, teaching his hybrid
judo instructor. Joe Jitsu (Dick Tracy), Karate (Batfink), and Mr. Muto brand of self-defense called Jeet Kune Do. The handsome, likable
the Karate Ant (Atom Ant) were among other cartoon characters warrior was soon guest starring on television episodes, bringing his

RetroFad
Sixties comic heroes Judomaster and the Inhumans’

Karnak helped pave the way for the next decade’s
kung-fu craze. Judomaster TM & © DC Comics. Karnak TM & © Marvel.
office. “They spoke to young, marginalized kids who felt

left behind, exploited, and ripped off,” opine authors Grady
Hendrix and Chris Poggiali in their book These Fists Break
Bricks: How Kung Fu Movies Swept America and Changed the
World (2021, Mondo Books). The Hollywood trade journal
Variety coined the term “chopsocky” to describe the genre,
and nearly three-dozen kung-fu flicks thundered into
American theaters in the remaining months of the year.
Enter Billy Jack. Actor Tom Laughlin first played the
titular character, a multicultural (white and Navajo mixed
heritage), former Green Beret-turned-social crusader, in
the 1967 indie Born Losers. Laughlin, who also directed the
film, independently released its sequel, Billy Jack, in 1971, to
dazzling disciplines to a wider audience. Lee opened the door for meager success. Once Warner Bros. took on Billy Jack’s distribution
Asian cinema to arrive in American movie houses. and re-released the film in May 1973, it became a surprise hit. Billy
Next came the television drama Kung Fu, from Warner Bros., Jack enjoyed a theatrical return engagement in the late fall of
first seen on ABC as a TV movie on February 22, 1972. David 1973 and dominated the box office for three consecutive weeks.
Carradine rocketed to fame in the role of Kwai Chang Caine, an According to billyjack.com, Laughlin originally made Billy Jack for
introspective Shaolin who wandered the American Wild West. The $360,000; it has since grossed over $98 million.
“grasshopper” pupil of his blind sensei Master Po (Keye Luke), Caine With Kung Fu, the domestic distribution of chopsocky flicks, and
was often forced to use martial arts to defend himself or protect Billy Jack, Warner Bros. unofficially established itself as the U.S.A.’s
the innocent against pistol-packing cowboys and desperados. patron saint for martial-arts cinema. Another success for the studio
Kung Fu premiered as a weekly series that fall and enjoyed a came with its partnership with Hong Kong’s Golden Harvest to
three-season run, with kid-friendly merchandising extending the co-produce the influential Enter the Dragon, directed by Robert
reach of Caine’s fancy footwork outside of the boob tube. Teens and Crouse. Filmed on a budget of $850,000, it grossed over $21 million
young men were particularly entranced by Kung Fu, mimicking the in the U.S. during the first few months of its release and earned
show’s choreographed combat. “Grasshopper” also became part $68 million worldwide. Enter the Dragon cemented star Bruce Lee’s
of the lexicon of the day. (Patience, grasshopper: Kung Fu will be status as a luminary.
profiled at length in a future edition Sadly, the martial artist did not live to see
of RetroFan.) the film’s success.
Meanwhile, inexpensively Bruce Lee died unexpectedly on July 20,
produced martial-arts films had 1973. Enter the Dragon was released in the
become popular among Chinese U.S. on August 19th of that year. Were the
filmmakers. A few wormed their way pop culture’s pulse not already fluttering
into some urban American movie for martial-arts movies, fans became even
theaters in the early Seventies. more rabid about Lee after his
Fanatical young viewers hooted for death. Episodes of the actor’s
their high-kicking heroes, which breakthrough TV series were
included a lethal liberated lady, Miss stitched together as the 1974 theat-
Tien Li-Chun, “mistress of the death
blow,” played by actress Angela Mao
in the 1972 Hong Kong import Lady (TOP LEFT) Viewers got their
Whirlwind (billed in the U.S. as Deep kicks from Bruce Lee as Kato
Thrust in a sleazy grab at the name when ABC’s The Green Hornet
recognition of the recent porno hit premiered in the fall of 1966. The
Deep Throat). Green Hornet © The Green Hornet, Inc. Publicity photo
The kung-fu craze kicked into courtesy of Heritage. (LEFT) “One tin soldier
high gear in 1973 once Warner Bros. rides away…” Lobby card from Billy
picked up U.S. distribution rights Jack. © Warner Bros. Courtesy of Heritage. (INSET)
for the Chinese-produced movies Kung Fu fans could chew on bubble
The Big Boss and Fist of Fury (both gum as well as the show’s philosophical
starring Bruce Lee), as well as Five ponderings thanks to Scanlens’ trading
Fingers of Death. By the spring of ’73, card series based on the popular TV
martial-arts movies topped the box show. © Warner Bros. Courtesy of Heritage.

RetroFad
Number one
super-guy Hong
Kong Phooey in
a production cel
sequence. © Hanna-
Barbera Productions, Inc.
Courtesy of Heritage.
rical release The Green Hornet,

with Bruce Lee billed as its star
over the show’s lead actor, Van
Williams. Lee was the subject
of magazine articles, posters,
T-shirts, and biopics including
1977’s Bruce Lee: The Man, The
Myth.
In Lee’s wake, Jackie Chan,
Gordon Liu, and Bruce Li were
among the new wave of Asian
martial artists-turned-actors
snake-fisting and leaping their
way into international stardom.
Domestic U.S. studios quickly
churned out their own kung-fu flicks. The movie (ABOVE) Get a
genres of martial arts and Blaxploitation intersected grip, Joe! Hasbro
with entries such as Jim “Dragon” Kelly’s Black Belt rebranded its former
Jones and Tamara Dobson’s Cleopatra Jones. military man into an
Many of these films were pretty darn bad, “Adventure Team”
mind you, with wooden acting and repetitive plots format and gave
featuring fight-to-the-death championships in each action figure
ancient temples, or quests to avenge the murders kung-fu grip! © Hasbro.
of martial-arts masters. Chopsocky imports Courtesy of Hake’s.
notoriously were poorly dubbed into English, which
became part of the fun of watching them. Bad guys
didn’t carry guns, but black belts instead. These
fist-fighters’ shirtless, sinewy bodies were ripped
and glistening. The actors grimaced menacingly as The REAL master of kung fu: Bruce
they smacked their opponents. Their chi-curdling Lee! (LEFT) Publicity photo from
screams and a cacophony of sound effects (with Enter the Dragon. © Warner Bros. (RIGHT)
more snaps, crackles, and pops than a vat of Rice In 1974, Lee upstaged Green Hornet
Krispies) made these flicks as noisy as they were star Van Williams on this poster
frenetic. Kung-fu movies were, in essence, the video promoting theatrically released
games of the Seventies, with high-speed visuals and episodes of the 1966 TV show. © The
over-the-top violence. Most of these movies earned Green Hornet, Inc. Both, courtesy of Heritage.
“R” ratings due to their bloodshed.
Such savagery didn’t dissuade entrepreneurs
from grabbing hold of this trend. First and foremost, the fad “Everybody was kung fu fighting,
received its own anthem: singer Carl Douglas’ “Kung Fu Fighting,” “Those kicks were fast as lightning.
a catchy novelty song that will no doubt be stuck in your head for “In fact, it was a little bit frightening,
hours now that I’ve put it there. Co-written by Douglas and his “But they fought with expert timing.”
record producer, Biddu Appaiah, “Kung Fu Fighting” was recorded Kung fu–crazed consumers crowded
in a mere ten minutes, in only two takes. The record initially not only the movie theaters and record
sputtered to find an audience, but soon caught on. It went on to sell stores, but the youngest among them
11 million copies worldwide, reaching the Number One spot on the hustled to the toy stores. GI Joe, Hasbro’s
charts in the U.S. and elsewhere. Given the zeitgeist of the moment, soldier action figure introduced in 1964 (see RetroFan #20), was
how could it be anything but a hit with a refrain like this…? updated with fuzzy, life-like hair and “Kung Fu Grip.” Toymaker

RetroFad
Mattel’s sports action figure, the biceps-bulging Big Jim, added Durham’s Yung Kung Fu were churned out by cheapie toy compa-
a martial-arts outfit to its range, as did Mego’s Action Jackson. nies and racked onto discount stores’ pegboards and shelves. And
Aurora, best known for its model kits, introduced in 1975 its if your household’s grade-school martial artist wasn’t satisfied with
Kar-A-A-Ate (Karate) Men fighting game, a variation on Rock-’em playing “kung fu,” he or she could watch Hanna-Barbera’s animated
Sock-’em Robots. Plastic kung-fu fighters such as manufacturer Hong Kong Phooey, which debuted as part of ABC-TV’s Saturday
morning line-up in the fall of 1974. Gravelly voiced Scatman
Crothers brought to life the cartoon’s title star, a canine janitor
named Penrod Pooch who became an inept martial artist that
relied upon his Hong Kong Book of Kung Fu for guidance.
A blitz of publications about martial arts appeared on news-
stands and in bookstores. Hard-hitting heroes named Sloan, K’ing
Kung-Fu, Ninja Master, and Jason Striker, Master of Martial Arts
starred in series of hastily produced paperback novels. Magazines
were cranked out that shared “secrets” of martial arts and promised
to teach how to “break a brick in 100 days.” Photo-heavy how-to
books with titles like The Complete Book of Karate and The Manual of
Martial Arts attracted would-be warriors.
Comic books, whose advertising pages were often the home of
product pitches for bodybuilding programs, printed no dearth of
kung-fu ads in the Seventies. Some of their guarantees were pretty
darn scary, such as the pledge from Count Danté, the Supreme
Grand Master of the Black Dragon Fighting Society, to teach “the
world’s deadliest fighting secrets.” By comparison, Universal
Self Defense’s full-page ad was less threatening, simply assuring
the kids that with their training “your hands and feet could have
fantastic new power!!”
Martial arts not only invaded comic books’ advertising pages,
they influenced the creation of new characters as well. Premiering
on September 1, 1973 was Charlton Comics’ Yang, an obvious nod to
television’s Kung Fu. Writer Joe Gill and artist Warren Sattler were
responsible for Yang, and the title performed well enough to spawn
a spin-off, House of Yang.
Television’s Kung Fu also inspired a Marvel Comics character.
Writer Steve Englehart related to Tom Stewart in Back Issue #13 of
his and artist Jim Starlin’s love of the Kung Fu show. Since Warner
Bros. and DC Comics were in the same corporate family, it was
unlikely that Marvel, where Steve and Jim were ensconced at
the time, could license Kung Fu for the House of Ideas. “Jim and I
created our own version of what we liked,” Englehart said, the end
result being Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu, who was first seen in
Special Marvel Edition #15 (cover-dated Dec. 1973). (According to
Mike’s Amazing World of Comics, Shang-Chi’s first appearance
went on sale September 4, 1973, meaning that Yang predated Master
of Kung Fu’s premiere by three days.)
Marvel’s other big kung-fu character could also thank Holly-
wood for his conception. Marvel Comics writer and former editor-
in-chief Roy Thomas told Franck Martini in Back Issue #108, “When
I saw my first kung-fu movie, which had an ‘iron fist’ ceremony in
it, I decided that would be a good name for a more super-hero (i.e.
Marvel) approach to a kung-fu hero”—and thus Iron Fist was born.
Other Marvel martial-arts characters introduced during the Seven-
ties include White Tiger, the Sons of the Tiger, the Daughters of the
Dragon, and The Avengers’ Mantis. Eyeing an older readership than
what the traditional color comics provided, Marvel also released its
black-and-white magazine The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, featuring its
pantheon of kung-fu heroes as well as behind-the-scenes articles
Kung-fu comics of the mid-Seventies. Master of Kung Fu and Iron about some of Hollywood’s most popular martial artists.
Fist TM & © Marvel. Richard Dragon, Kung-Fu Fighter and Karate Kid TM & © Rival DC Comics also stepped into the kung-fu arena. Writer
DC Comics. Denny O’Neil was the company’s martial-arts mover-and-shaker.

RetroFad
Following his introduction of judo and karate into the revamped Neal Adams’
Wonder Woman, in 1970 he brought the global menace of the League photorealistic
of Assassins into the various Batman titles. After the martial-arts artwork brought
craze exploded, in early 1975 DC premiered O’Neil’s series Richard Bruce Lee to
Dragon, Kung-Fu Fighter, expanding upon the adventures of a life on the cover
character that had recently appeared in a 1974 dime-store novel, of Marvel’s
Kung Fu Master, Richard Dragon: Dragon’s Fists, co-written by O’Neil black-and-white
and partner James R. Berry using the penname “Jim Dennis.” magazine, The
Kung-Fu Fighter ran 18 issues, introducing the fast-fighting Bronze Deadly Hands of
Kung Fu #17 (Oct.
1975), with the
BOX OFFICE NUMBER ONES OF 1973 martial artist still
Amid the theatrical releases of capturing readers’
1973 that have since become film imaginations two
classics (including The Poseidon years after his
Adventure, Cabaret, Soylent Green, death. TM & © Marvel.
Live and Let Die, High Plains Drifter,
and The Way We Were), these kung-
fu flicks (mostly Chinese imports)
fought their way to Variety’s top Tiger and Lady Shiva, both of whom played continuing roles in the
spot of the U.S. box office (dates in DC Universe for decades to follow. Arriving in late 1975 was Karate
parentheses are the “week ending” Kid, a spin-off of DC’s Legion of Super-Heroes title, solo-starring the
dates for each film): teen martial artist.
f Five Fingers of Death (March By the time DC’s books premiered, the kung-fu craze was
28) already on the decline, prompting a famous quip by former DC
f Fists of Fury (May 9) Comics publisher and Legion of Super-Heroes writer Paul Levitz
f The Chinese Connection (June 13) that “the standing joke about DC was, when we started putting
f The Hammer of God (June 20) something out, you could be absolutely sure the trend was over.”
f Karado: The Kung Fu Flash (August 1) And over, it was. Well, almost.
f Enter the Dragon (two consecutive weeks at No. 1: By 1975, martial-arts movies were fading from the box office,
August 29, September 5) and ABC aired its last new episode of Kung Fu on April 26th of that
f Lady Kung Fu (September 12) year. Martial-arts toys were on the wane, and most of the related
f The Shanghai Killers (September 19) comic books—including Hands of the Dragon #1 (and only), from
f Deadly China Doll (October 3) flash-in-the-pan publisher Atlas (Seaboard) Comics—trickled
f Billy Jack (re-release) (three consecutive weeks at away. The success among the lot was Shang-Chi, as Marvel’s Master
No. 1: October 31, November 7, November 11) of Kung Fu continued until 1983, distinguished by a notable run from
Chopsocky movies continued to be released in writer Doug Moench and artist Paul Gulacy. By the late Seventies,
1974, but their box-office kung fu was yesterday’s fad, with 1977’s Star Wars making science
dominance faltered. Strong fiction the Next Big Thing.
competition from major new But like the movies’ fearless, solitary fighters encircled by
releases (including Papillon, bloodthirsty assassins or shadowy ninjas, kung fu did not make its
The Exorcist, The Sting, Blazing final bow. It fought on, and instead became a perennial genre. The
Saddles, Chinatown, and The Karate Kid film franchise—not based upon the DC Comics hero, as
Longest Yard) and the public’s RetroFans are no doubt aware, but instead featuring original charac-
loss of interest in the sameness ters—followed. Martial arts became common in movies, TV shows,
of most martial-arts movies’ cartoons, comic books, and videogames, spawning characters like
plots allowed only two kung-fu Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and influencing fight scenes. Jackie
flicks to reach the Number Chan and other movie combatants graduated from chopsocky
One spot in 1974: flicks to mainstream action films. Martial-arts schools proliferated,
f Return of the Dragon (se- teaching self-defense. Kickboxing and other martial arts pack
quel to Enter the Dragon) sports venues. Asians and Asian-Americans continue to thrive as
(August 14) filmmakers and in television programs. Oldies like TV’s Kung Fu
f The Trial of Billy Jack (se- have been updated for a contemporary audience. Marvel’s Iron Fist
quel to Billy Jack) (three starred in his own Netflix show, and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the
consecutive weeks at No. Ten Rings was released into theaters in 2021. If you thought Hong
1: November 20, Novem- Kong Phooey was a trip, try watching Kung Fu Panda. And fifty years
ber 27, December 4) after his death, Bruce Lee continues to mesmerize us.
From where I sit, it looks like everybody is still kung-fu
fighting!

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SCOTT SAAVEDRA’S SECRET SANCTUM
You’ll Put Your Eye Out, Kid

Danger in Happy Toyland
Beloved toy favorite Mr.

Potato Head was, in its early
days, made with hard plastic
pieces strong enough to
plunge into actual fruit and
vegetables. Mr. Potato Head ®
BY SCOTT SAAVEDRA Hasbro, Inc.
“We’d like to show you another one of Mr. Mainway’s products… been poorly made or poorly thought-out playthings for kids sent
it’s called Bag O’ Glass. Mr. Mainway, this is simply a bag of jagged, into the marketplace. Absolutely, there have been. And some
dangerous, glass bits.” have been completely bonkers. But even relatively well-designed
– Consumer Reporter toys can have unintended consequences as anyone who has ever
stepped—barefooted—on a sturdy, brilliantly designed Lego piece
“Yeah, well, look—you know, the average kid, he picks up, you know, in the dark can confirm.
broken glass anywhere, you know? We’re just packaging what the kids Weirdly, I became worried about potential hazards of toys
want! I mean, it’s a creative toy, you know? If you hold this up, you know, as a kid. At first, it was just Mr. Potato Head parts with pointy
you see colors, every color of the rainbow!” shafts made to plunge into a plastic (or real) potato that worried
– Irwin Mainway me. Distinctly I recall wondering why a toy company, in this case
Hasbro, would make something so obviously able to inflict pain
Mr. Irwin Mainway, maker of General Tron’s Secret Police Confes- and injury. And I say this as someone who really, deeply wanted to
sion Kit, Johnny Switchblade: Adventure Punk, and the above-ref- have a Mr. Potato Head (which I did eventually get from the local
erenced Bag O’ Glass, is not, of course, a real toymaker, but rather Dime Store). Still, the little potato eyeballs with plastic shivs coming
a character played by Dan Aykroyd. Mainway made his first out the back particularly unnerved young me.
appearance in an NBC’s Saturday Night skit (Season 2, Episode 10, If that was all we had to worry about in terms of unsafe toys
in 1977, before it became Saturday Night Live or just SNL). Mainway during the Retro Years, then we could end the story here, but we
returned in a few later episodes selling Halloween costumes (a all know that is not the case. Not then and not in the years before
plastic bag with a rubber band was a space helmet) and as a school then. In fact, we Retronauts had it pretty safe compared to our
lunch provider serving “dog’s milk” to schoolchildren (obtaining forefathers (or actual fathers). So before we look at how dangerous
such milk was apparently “a very interesting process”). The morally our playtime could be for us, let’s take a quick look at how
outraged reporter was played by the show’s host for the week, completely hazardous it was before many of us were born.
Candice Bergen, and later by Aykroyd’s fellow Not Ready for
Primetime Player, Jane Curtain. SUBSTANCE ABUSE AND BLOWGUNS
Few toymakers have been as predatory as the fictional Irwin The A. C. Gilbert Company was once one of the largest toy compa-
Mainway (is what I hope). That’s not to say that there haven’t nies in the known world. It was founded by a part-time magician

scott saavedra’s secret sanctum
and Olympic Gold Medalist in Pole Vaulting, Alfred The Man Who Saved Christmas (2002) was
Carlton Gilbert, who originally made magic sets. the fictionalized story of the real effort by
Gilbert was best known for his steel construction A. C. Gilbert to keep toy production active
toy, Gilbert Erector sets, which appeared in 1913 during the First World War. Seinfeld’s Jason
following a 1911 version known by the catchy name Alexander played Gilbert. © Alliance Atlantis
Mysto Erector Structural Steel Builder, and as “the Communications/Orly Adelson Productions.
man who saved Christmas.” The later was the result
of convincing the Council of National Defense
to drop its plans for an end to toy production as One of the experiments contains instructions on
America was entering World War I. how to make a blowgun. Using a dangerous toy to
Gilbert thought that inventing was vital for create another dangerous toy out of glass is certainly
America and wanted to promote the benefits of a bold move.
science. Despite noble intentions, he produced some Speaking of blowguns: Zulu Blowguns were
notorious non-Erector kits. The classic example is the No. U-238 offered up to young boys in the Twenties. The sets came with eight
Atomic Energy Lab (1951) with actual radioactive uranium ores. The arrows and some paper targets for use indoors (yep), but we can
rumor is that the U.S. government quietly suggested the need for safely guess that it was pets and little brothers that were most
such a kit to Gilbert; while interesting, this has yet to be proved. But in danger. The narrow arrows had blunt tips, but any kid with a
I do want to press the point: this child’s plaything was radioactive. pocketknife could sharpen things up right quick. Fun Fact: Zulu
And it wasn’t the only one. Gilbert included radioactive uranium in warriors did not use blowguns.
some of its chemistry sets during the Fifties. Lead. The dangers of this metal have been known since before
Experimental Glass Blowing (for Boys) was another Gilbert the 20th Century. It is toxic. Children, the future of our species,
kit (M512-C) to provide a sense of wonder, experimentation, and are extremely vulnerable. Lead used to be a component of paint,
possible injury. Glass blowing is very cool. But as a home activity which was often used to make toys more colorful and exciting and
for kids, the combination of glass and open flame from an alcohol poisonous (not on purpose, but still). Toy soldiers were made of
burner is a problematic mix. It’s notable that none of the illustra- lead, and with a casting set you could make your own. There were
tions in the kit’s instruction booklet show just how close the child’s other manufacturers of lead-casting sets, but I’m picking on the
face needs to get to the heat source to do the various experiments. A. C. Gilbert Company right now. They had a number of casting
(LEFT) A well-dressed
lad and his blow gun in
this detail from a 1928
ad. (BELOW LEFT) The
Dutch Boy’s Lead Party
booklet (1923). Booklet courtesy
of Worthpoint. (BELOW) A
Gilbert Kaster Kit from a
1941 Gilbert catalog. From the
collection of the author.
(ABOVE) Radioactive uranium ore and an asbestos heat

shield, and (BELOW) an easy-to-make flame-thrower, you
know, for kids. Both courtesy of Windell Oskay via Flickr.

sets, but it was their top-of-the-line Kaster Kit Furnace that looks (LEFT) Porter Chemcraft got into the Atomic Energy game
a bit too industrial and not home-friendly at all. Oh, and two more also in the Fifties. (RIGHT) The Lionel Corporation, best
things: Molten. Metal. known for its trains, teamed with Porter to produce this
Surprisingly, lead-casting sets were around at least into the biocraft Biology Lab (1961) about the “science of living
Sixties, a lot longer than its glass-blowing and atomic-energy toy things.” It comes with dead things and sharp objects. Courtesy
store buddies lasted. of the Science History Institute.

CHEMICAL ROMANCE
Chemistry sets may conjure images of mad science experiments, chemistry sets and soon, limited by the Federal Hazardous
but they weren’t really designed for mayhem, but education. I very Substances Labeling Act of 1960 and the Toxic Substances Control
much wanted a chemistry set way back when, but it was a no-go Act of 1976 among other legislation, began to lose their luster
with the folks since I had very young brothers at the time, and it and some of their most interesting chemicals. Lest you think that
was deemed unsafe. I was very interested in science, the space the government is always about being a buzz-kill, a 1939 press
program, and inventing during the late Sixties (I wanted to be the release from the United States Department of Agriculture about
Wright Brothers). I did get a very nice microscope, perhaps as a dangerous toys is fascinating. It warned parents that they were
consolation prize, which I really liked. It came with dozens of glass responsible for making sure that chemistry sets with chemicals
slides full of bug parts and stuff. Stupidly, I kept bringing the lens labeled “poison” could be used by their child “with safety.” (Yes, but
in too close to each slide and eventually broke every single one of still, what?)
them. Kids and glass, right? Chemistry sets had been marketed to boys, but sets for girls
The Fifties were an especially ripe time for chemistry sets as emerged. One encouraged young ladies to become lab assistants
the Cold War and Space Race brought out a need for scientists and (seriously, had none of these guys ever heard of physicist and
educated people to bolster Our Side. It was common for chemistry chemist Marie Curie, who died due to, ahem, long-term exposure
sets to try to assure parents that it was all safe and harmless and
the patriotic thing to have: “Prepares Young America for World
Leadership.” That said, chemistry sets have included elements
that have raised concerns; mainly about caustic, explosive, and
poisonous materials.
The earliest chemistry sets included tools and chemicals
contained in simple wooden boxes with scientists and students as
the intended market. In 1914, the Porter brothers, John and Harold,
created and produced Chemcraft Kits. These toy chemistry sets
were inspired by the earlier English versions and A. C. Gilbert’s
Erector Set, which had been introduced the year before.
The easiest elements to worry about in these sets were the
chemicals. Some sets contained potassium nitrate, a component
of gunpowder that can be used to make smoke bombs (or just
buy a pre-made one via a Johnson Smith catalog); iodine solution,
poisonous if ingested; and calcium hypochlorite, which can be used
to make chlorine gas (see World War I). Chemistry sets also had
lots of glass parts: pipettes, beakers, thermometers, test tubes, and (LEFT) The Lionel Chemistry Magic comic book (1946) offers
more (like the previously mentioned: uranium). Not to mention instructions to change water to wine (sure), make a lot of
alcohol burners that, with the right adapter, could be turned into a smoke, make trick matches, and—this is absolutely true—
simple blowtorch (not making this up). make a hydrogen explosion. (RIGHT) Meanwhile, girls get
The biggest problem for chemistry set manufacturers moving to watch and make notes with the Gilbert Lab Technician
into the Sixties was the customers. Parents had concerns about Set for Girls (1958). Courtesy of the Science History Institute.

the Porter Chemical Company had declared

bankruptcy. A. C. Gilbert was done by 1967,
following the 1961 death of its founder.
Interesting chemical interactions weren’t
just for chemistry sets. The Austin Magic Pistol
(circa late Forties), a name that surely conjures
up promises of mystery and projectiles, looks
like the kind of gun a robot in a Buck Rogers
serial might wave around shooting electric bolts
scratched into the film stock. The projectiles
A screen capture of the Austin Magic were basically ping-pong balls (pretty harmless)
Pistol in extreme action thanks to a and the mystery was provided by “Magic
YouTube user known only as Z pushing Crystals.” The gun was described as “harmless.”
this delightful plaything to its limits. Turns out, not exactly. The crystals were actually
calcium carbide. To use the gun you needed to
add a bit of moisture to the crystals (spit works)
in a chamber the combination of which makes volatile acetylene
gas that a trigger/flint device sets off with a satisfying blast that
launches the ball from said gun. Add too much water (or too much
spit) and a flame shoots out when you fire it (I have witnessed
this via YouTube). Miners used this tech to power their lamps
until the Fifties when they were finally discontinued for being too
dangerous. (The Austin Magic Pistol: “The Toy Miners Won’t Use.”)
HOT TOYS
Some very cool toys had heating-element issues. I’m not talking
about the Kenner Easy-Bake Oven, which debuted in 1963. This toy
oven used a pair of common light bulbs as a heat source so that a
child, usually a girl child (in the old days!), could bake goodies. It’s
practically a miracle toy. No, the only problem with the Easy-Bake
(ABOVE) Detail from the 1960 Sears Christmas Book Oven was not enough ingredients and too small portions. However,
catalog. The smaller of the two ovens is the notorious modern, updated versions of the still-made-but-redesigned (now
Empire Little Lady Electric Range. The selling point of the by Hasbro) toy have caused heating-related injuries.
larger electric range is that the child may stand at the stove The Empire Little Lady Electric Range, on the other hand, was
“as Mom does.” Courtesy of christmas.musetechnical.com. (BELOW) The one of ten toys targeted by consumer protection groups for reme-
initial versions of the Little Lady Electric Range killer, dial action under emergency provisions of the then-new Toy Safety
the Easy-Bake Oven came in very groovy Sixties and early Act of 1970. They claimed that the toy stove reached temperatures
Seventies colors. There were concerns about the heat from of 600 degrees, which, being hotter than an actual stove, was very
the two 100 watt light bulbs needed to cook the cookies bad. The pre-war Little Lady Range did get fiercely hot (the ther-
and whatnot, but the early Easy-Bake Ovens were largely a mostat turned up to 500 degrees, but some sources say it did get
problem-free toy. Courtesy of Bradross03/Wikipedia. to 600). Modern auctions and sales for these vintage stoves often
include the words “gets hot fast” and “DANGEROUS.” The post-war
versions were less hot (yet hot enough to bake cookies). They were
also insulated with fiberglass, a suspected carcinogen. However,
due to the popularity of the Easy-Bake Oven, Little Lady Electric
Ranges were essentially gone from the market by the end of the
Sixties. If you really want to singe your hair, some of the earliest toy
stoves were heated by… coal.
The consumer groups were spot on about another toy on their
Top Ten Recall list: Lawn Darts (Jarts). Some years later a child did
die, and over 6,000 people ended up in emergency rooms as a
result of play gone wrong.
A number of the (literally) hottest cool toys around came from
to radiation?). Skil-Craft produced a biology lab that included Mattel. The company is internationally known as the home of
an actual dead frog and crayfish, among other creatures, for Barbie dolls and Hot Wheels toy cars. But it came from modest
dissection and observation. I imagine the assembly factory for this beginnings in a Los Angeles garage in 1945, first selling picture
product was quite the horror show. frames and then dollhouse furniture. Before Barbie wowed
Legal actions and complaints helped to dumb down the young girls in 1959, the company had a hit with the Uke-A-Doodle,
chemistry sets to the point where kids simply lost interest. By 1984, a ukulele-shaped music box. But it’s the Sixties and early

Seventies-era Mattel toys with heating elements that are of most

interest here.
Vac-U-Form, a toy-making toy (the only thing better than a
cookie-making toy), featured an exposed heating surface. The
heat softened a thin plastic sheet that would then be placed over a
mold. Then pumping action would create a vacuum that sucked the
plastic down over the mold, and soon you had a small toy. This was
unspeakably fantastic. And useful. The instruction booklet tells
how to use modeling clay to modify existing molds, or you could
use it to make all-new ones. The Famous Monsters of Filmland Monster
Make-Up Handbook (1965) suggested creating bugged-out monster
eyes using the Vac-U-Form despite its high $12 cost (about $115 in
2022 bucks!). Still, that exposed heating plate was a concern for
parents. It sold, but its retail life was short, about a year. Decades
after being discontinued (and a failed revival by ToyMax in the
Nineties), used sets still in working condition are popular with
hobbyists despite the potential for burned fingers.
Another heating platform toy from Mattel were the Thingmaker
sets. The Thingmaker used a standalone heating unit (“Caution,
very warm surfaces”), metal molds, and “Plasti-Goop” to create
a variety of, well, things. The Creepy Crawlers Thingmaker (1964)
is probably the best remembered, but other types exist. The Fun
Flowers set (1966) featured flower and leaf molds (you could get
real flowers and leaves back then, right?) and was marketed to girls.
Other crave-able Thingmakers were the Fighting Men set (1965),
which allowed you to create stand-up soldiers (but they were
Toys that make toys! Two comic-book ads from 1966–1967:

(ABOVE) the still-sought-after Vac-U-Form and (LEFT) the
Fright Factory and Creepy Crawlers Thingmaker. © Mattel.
weirdly soft compared to regular toy soldiers); the Fright Factory

(1966), which made spooky stuff (most of which could be used
as parts of a gruesome rubbery disguise); and Incredible Edibles
(1967), which made ingestible things. The “edible” Gooble-Degoop
was heated like the Plasti-Goop. Fortunately, it didn’t give off toxic
fumes like the Plasti-Goop. It also didn’t really taste very good.
A bit of the departure from the other Thingmakers was the best
of the bunch, 1969’s Hot Wheels Factory. The Factory had a heat
element contained within the device unlike the other Thingmakers.
That doesn’t mean you couldn’t burn yourself on it. You surely
could, and I did. Fans of TV’s Arrested Development may recall the
family’s Cornballer, a fry device that burned everyone who got close
enough to the thing… it was like that.
The Hot Wheels Factory was given to me on my birthday one
year (this is the kind of party gift you get when a friend’s dad is
a V.P. at Mattel). Plastic pellets in different colors were dropped
into the Factory gullet, melted, and extruded into a metal mold
allowing you to create a small variety of plastic Hot Wheels–type
cars. They worked, too. The best part about the set was that the
little cars could be broken apart and re-melted to make new cars.
One of my all-time favorite toys.

(LEFT) The Hot Wheels Factory literally made hot cars. (RIGHT)
The similar Kenner Electric Mold Master made a greater variety
of vehicles, plus guns and bullets! Hot Wheels © Mattel. Mold Master © Kenner.
the Frisbee [which you learned about in RetroFan #13!—ed.], and

then in the early Sixties there was another big, big hit for them
with the Super Ball.
On the surface the Super Ball (sometimes hyphenated,
sometimes a single word) did not appear to be a dangerous toy. It
was, after all, just a ball, albeit one with “50,000 lbs. of compressed
energy,” which certainly sounds like the last thing you want to
But, you know, burns. In fact, I got burned so often I assumed hand a child. And boy, did those balls bounce. That was thanks to
that the toy was some kind of prototype without all the safety
features added in. Nope.
The Kenner Electric Mold Master was similar to the Hot Wheels
Factory. You could make various civilian and military vehicles and
even pistols and bullets. Like the Hot Wheels Factory, it used heat
and you could re-melt the plastic. Even though you could make a
greater variety of objects with the Mold Master, it didn’t seem to
catch on (but then, neither did the Hot Wheels Factory).
DEADLY ORIGINS
If we had a category for playthings that make you feel bad about
yourself, then Wham-O has the top spot for me. I could not
control, operate, or enjoy their flagship toys, the Hula Hoop or the
Frisbee. But some of their other inventions were great, if somewhat
hazardous. For a time, Wham-O was the home of affordable toys
that kids wanted.
Wham-O began in 1948. Their first product was a slingshot for
target shooting and hunting smallish critters, but bagging a deer
was theoretically possible. “Wham-o” was supposed to be the
sound of the lead balls hitting its target. The company followed
their successful slingshots with throwing knives and blowguns
(what is it with blowguns in toyland? Even Fleer sold one). By 1957,
Wham-O hit with their first toy fad, the Hula Hoop, followed by
(RIGHT) Wham-O products from the late Fifties: The

Throwing Dagger is “powerful” and “silent” and the
Blowgun set has steel darts. © Wham-O.

(LEFT) The 1970

package for the
Super Ball promised
high-flying action
and a good way to lose
your ball. (RIGHT)
The Super Elastic
Bubble Plastic
was a safe toy so long
as you didn’t use it.
© Wham-O. Both courtesy of
Worthpoint.
“Zectron” giving it the “oompf” to bounce higher than similar-sized but astonishingly, a television show called Ultimate Slip ’n Slide was
rubber balls. Zectron may sound like something that emerged from in production for 2021. It was to be a family-friendly competition
Area 51, but it was merely the trademarked name for polybutadiene show, but was taken off the schedule due to cases of “explosive
(originally created for industrial use, but when none could be found diarrhea” during production. So adults, stay off the kids’ things.
it was sent Wham-O’s way).
The danger of the Super Ball was that it presented a challenge to TOXINS FOR TOTS
any child who owned one: How high could you get it to go? Sixties-era Wham-O’s Super Elastic Bubble Plastic might fit better in a “Toys
packaging showed the ball bouncing over a single-story house. That Made Me Bad About Myself” category than one devoted to
A fellow kid in my neighborhood took that challenge and tried to toxins. Super Elastic was a substance that came out of a tube. A
launch the Super Ball over his house and into the busy boulevard small amount squeezed out and rolled into a ball and placed on the
on the other side. Fortunately for passing drivers that day, he was end of a provided short straw that was supposed to allow the user
unsuccessful. A more recent package illustration shows the Super
Ball bouncing near a house. Supposedly, there was enough energy
in the little things to go as high as three stories, but I suppose my
neighbor’s technique was weak.
Here’s the stuff of nightmares: There was once a promotional
Super Ball about the size of a bowling ball. This enormous Super
Ball fell or was pushed from the roof or out of the window of the
24th (or 23rd) floor of a hotel in Australia (sources, as they say,
vary). The first bounce reached back up to the 15th floor, and the
second bounce “destroyed” a car. Take a moment to imagine the
terrifying havoc to civilization if the wrong people got ahold of such
an invention. By wrong people, I mean boys, age 8–13.
Not every family in Suburbia had a built-in pool for cooling
off during the heat of summer. Wham-O came to the rescue with
the Slip ’n Slide. The Slip ’n Slide was a slender strip of plastic that
connected to a common water hose. Turn on the hose and a layer
of water allowed overheated kids to cool off as they slid down the
length of yellow plastic. For best results this was done in a yard
with grass because when the plastic stopped, so did the young
slider once she hit the grass. Most of the playthings discussed so far
have presented some kind of risk to children, but the Slip ’n’ Slide
was different. Adults and older teens that tried to use it could hurt
themselves badly because the toy wasn’t designed for their size Retro-style Slip ’n Slide packaging (2016) features a 16-foot
and weight. In some cases, neck and spinal injuries occurred. You’d slide. In 1961 the slide was 40 feet long. © Wham-O. Courtesy of
think that that would be the end of the toy being used by adults, Worthpoint.

to blow out a gigantic three-color bubble. Never could do it. Never,

never, never, not once. I don’t think I know anyone who could make
even a teeny little pimple of a bubble. I kept trying. Blowing into the
straw. Sucking air back out of the straw. Repeat. With each inhale
we kids took in acetone vapors in small amounts. Small. Not zero.
Get enough of the acetone vapors into your system and the
toxin causes dizziness, narcosis (you become barely conscious and
stupified), or you fall into a coma. Granted, you’d have to be alarm-
ingly dedicated to Super Elastic Bubble Plastic to experiece these
side effects, but keep this in mind: Super Elastic Bubble Plastic also
burns! It’s flammable, gang.
You may be surprised to find something as goofy and harmless
as Silly String listed here, but the first version of the product
definitely belongs. It’s not the “string” part that is the problem, it’s
the propellant. Originally, chlorofluorocarbons were used to shoot
the colorful string out all over the place until the damage they (ABOVE AND
caused to the protective ozone layer in our shared atmosphere was LEFT) Transogram
understood and the substance was banned. For you fans of Silly billed its Swing
String, two things: one, you can still get it with safer propellant, Wing as a “fun
and two, you can make your own. If you do decide to make some, thing,” if by
keep a few simple things in mind: do not aim it at furniture, rugs, “fun” they meant
pets, eyes, hair, clothes, or food you expect to eat because the main “ridiculous.”
ingredient is hydrogen peroxide, a bleaching agent. But, you know, Screen captures
have fun. from a 1965
commercial. Courtesy
I’M WITH STUPID the Prelinger Archives.
Imagine a plastic hat with a plastic pole atop it and plastic tassels
attached to the other end. The toy is played with when you
wear the hat and twist your noggin around vigorously to
make the pole spin around, causing the tassels to proudly (LEFT) The flight path
fly. Such a miracle invention did exist. First appearing in of a model rocket
1965, it was called the Swing Wing. Swing Wing was made from the 1969 Estes
by Transogram, a company now gone. They were probably Model Rocket catalog
best known for Ka-Bala (“The Mysterious Game that Tells when things go right.
the Future”), a kind of tarot-esque game with a green plastic They don’t always go
glow-in-the-dark eyeball at the center of the board. They right. © Estes Industries
also made a Monkees board game and Little Orphan Annie LLC. From the collection of
clothespins, which I suspect could pinch quite hard but really the author. (BELOW)
aren’t within the parameters of this article (consider yourself Metal and wood tools:
warned, though). hammers, saws, plyers,
The Swing Wing was likely an attempt to capture screwdrivers and
renewed Hula Hoop energy, but the focus on neck and other things that poke,
head movement probably doomed it. There’s just no good pound, and cut. Catalog
reason to yank your head around for hours at a time. A art, circa 1963.
couple of sources mentioned whiplash injuries due to
Swing Wing swinging, as well as concussions, but there
isn’t any solid proof, so I’m skeptical. Speaking for my much
younger self, this toy would bore and annoy me. Also, it’s
stupid, and I hate it.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG?
A toy doesn’t have to be cheap or badly designed to do harm.
Sometimes things go a bit sideways. Literally. My middle school
had a rocket club and decided to give a demonstration with a
few rocket launches. The rockets used were from Estes, a model
rocket company still in business. When used properly, the rockets
were safe and very cool, with the biggest problem being the
retrieving of the rockets since they didn’t automatically return
to the launch pad. Since the only Estes products that I owned

were a couple of catalogs, I was

really looking forward to the club’s
demonstrations.
The first model rocket went up
fine and high with a very satisfying
“swoosh,” as it disappeared into
the sky. Club members were busy
fussing over the rockets, and a group
of us students and a couple teachers
stood parallel to the line-up of
launch pads at the other end of the
asphalt-covered play yard. The club
members were all very serious and
officious as they pressed the button
to launch the next rocket. There was
a rushing hiss, and the eyes of the
kids nearest the rocket got really big. (LEFT) The infamous yet beloved clackers, maker and date
Slowly—Matrix slowly—the launch unknown. (ABOVE) A proper modern chemistry set.
pad tipped over, sending the rocket © Thames & Kosmos.
headed straight for the audience.
Me, and the others. Things then
sped up and that rocket took a quick like jailed convicts. They have lots of free time on their hands for
slightly corkscrew path toward us. It unexpected mischief.
flew only inches above the asphalt. Oh, and while I’m thinking about it: Anyone else have Hot
Mostly I just remember the running Wheels track “sword” fights? Anyone?
and high-pitched screaming (could have been me, I don’t recall).
Antic chaos. No one was hurt, and that was the end of the rocket PLAYTIME IS NEVER OVER
club, as near as I can tell. I truly loved the old toys we Retronauts grew up with. Of course, I
Human error. It happens. If someone had gotten seriously hurt, survived without too much injury or trauma (though the scar from
well, that’s a different story. Lawsuits and injury tend to take the my pedal car accident is the same size as my scar from an actual
humor out of a situation. And I say this as a father who took his very car accident). And I see things more from a parent’s point of view
young son into the emergency room for stitches one day because now. However, I am happy to report that toys once considered
he wanted to see what it was like to be blind while walking over dangerous have returned, like the previously mentioned clackers.
furniture (he almost got his wish). It could have been a funny story, Real chemistry sets are coming back as well. The Thames &
but then it wasn’t. So, no, I don’t like to see kids get hurt. Kosmos Chem C3000 (v2.0) is a serious set for young folks, and I’m
Speaking of stitches, I was sitting in a Murray Fire Truck in our delighted that it exists. It lists for about $280 (not bad when you
backyard as a kid. I might have been about eight. I swung my consider that a top-of-the-line 1951 Chemcraft Master Laboratory
left arm around and the soft underbelly of my wrist caught on set retailed for $27.50 or the equivalent to $287 in 2021).
a sharpish piece of metal (the fire truck had seen better days). Unsafe toys do still get made. As I started work on this edition
I had to get a few stitches, and I was not brave about it. Murray of the Secret Sanctum there was a recall announced for the Gel
made many fine metal pedal vehicles, but metal and toys can be a Blaster SURGE Model 1.0 toy gun because it could burst into flames
problematic mix (especially when they sit outside and get rusty). (shades of the Austin Magic Pistol). So what can we do about living
Plastic polymers sound safe though, right? How about them in an uncertain toy world? Annual lists of unsafe toys exist for
clackers? Clackers is one name for a simple toy that is basically two buyers who want them. World Against Toys Causing Harm, Inc.
plastic orbs attached to a shared cord with a loop or plastic handle (WATCH) has produced a top ten worst toys list for 50 years. Knowl-
in the center. The object of the toy was to bang the two spheres edge is strength. That never changes. Neither does human nature.
together for a sort of learn-eye-hand-coordination-and-make- Kids will play with anything. I once got in trouble with the law for
annoying-sounds exercise. Clackers go by a multitude of names, playing with some paint I found in an alleyway. At a minimum for
including Click-Clacks, Whackers, Bonkers, and Knockers. Recalls everyone’s sanity, toy rules should be: don’t sniff it, don’t eat it,
due to the balls breaking apart began in 1971. Thanks to science don’t put it where it don’t belong.
creating better polymers, clackers are once again with us. Fun Fact And, for Pete’s sake, keep away from bags of glass.
(You’ve Got to Be Kidding Me Dept.): Clear clackers can function like
a magnifying glass and start fires. Also: an early version of clackers SCOTT SAAVEDRA is a Retro Explorer oper-
circa 1968 used glass spheres which, oh-my-gosh-look-at-that, ating from his Southern California–based
broke into sharp freakin’ pieces. Secret Sanctum. He is a writer (more or less),
Toy tools. This should be kind of obvious. Tools used incorrectly artist (occasionally), and graphic designer
can cause harm whether they are toy versions or the real thing. A (you’re soaking in it). Check out his Instagram
friend of mine as a kid cut the leg off a family chair with a plastic thing, won’t you, at instagram/scottsaav/
saw. Was this an exaggerated story? Perhaps, but kids can be

RETRO TELEVISION
All Hail Don

Drysdale!
Baseball, Hollywood,
and a Legendary Dodger
BY DAVID KRELL
Don Drysdale had a right arm that batters feared and an
on-camera presence that Hollywood producers sought. A very Brady pitching pointer! L.A. Dodger Don Drysdale
On August 11, 1969, the three-time Major League Baseball and Greg Brady (Barry Williams) in a promotional still for
strikeout leader announced what Los Angeles Dodgers fans “The Dropout,” the Season Two opener of The Brady Bunch.
dreaded but knew was inevitable. Retirement. His right shoulder Original airdate: September 25, 1970. © Paramount Television.
no longer had the elasticity necessary to play at an optimum level.
Plus, the risk of injuries was increasingly apparent.
The Dodgers were in third place in the newly formed National leader in innings pitched, a Cy Young Award, and nearly 2,500
League West, one game behind the Atlanta Braves and three- strikeouts.
and-a-half games behind the Cincinnati Reds. “This team has a He also led MLB four times—and the NL five times—in hitting
chance to go all the way,” said the 33-year-old Van Nuys, California, batters with pitches.
native to the San Pedro News-Pilot. “I don’t want to jeopardize their “I was called ‘intimidating,’ and I wasn’t about to dispute that,”
chances.” Drysdale had pitched in 62 innings across 12 games in his wrote Drysdale in his 1990 autobiography (written with Bob Verdi),
final season when he stepped away. His record was 5-4. Once a Bum, Always a Dodger: My Life in Baseball from Brooklyn to Los
Then in their 12th year in Los Angeles after moving from Angeles (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990). “I never talked about
Brooklyn, the Dodgers had added three World Series titles to their my reputation, but I was very much at peace having others talk
roster of achievements—1959, 1963, and 1965—since settling in about it. Baseball then was a game of intimidation, and if opposing
Southern California. Sandy Koufax retired after the Baltimore batters figured you were going to throw the ball inside at 94 miles
Orioles swept the Dodgers in the 1966 World Series. The southpaw’s an hour on a day when you didn’t feel like you could break a pane of
phenomenal power resulted in winning three Cy Young Awards; glass, fine. Let ’em think that way. Perfect.”
leading Major League Baseball in strikeouts four times; and Fearsomeness was a sharp arrow in Drysdale’s quiver. Endur-
throwing four no-hitters—including a perfect game. ance, another. He led both leagues in games started from 1962 to
With Drysdale now gone, the void on L.A.’s pitching staff was 1965.
even starker. “I have immensely enjoyed my relationship with the Moreover, Drysdale had dominated the opposition just one year
Dodgers,” said the righthander to the Hollywood Citizen-News. “I before retiring, when he broke the record for consecutive scoreless
owe quite a bit to baseball—just about everything. It’s been great. I innings. Carl Hubbell had held the National League record with 45
wouldn’t trade it for anything.” in 1933; Walter Johnson’s 56 in 1913 topped the majors. Drysdale
Drysdale’s first major-league appearance ended with nine blanked the opposition for 58. In the midst of Drysdale’s streak,
strikeouts in a complete game, 6-1 victory against the Philadelphia Robert F. Kennedy won the 1968 California Democratic Presidential
Phillies at Connie Mack Stadium on April 23, 1956. It was the begin- Primary and used his victory speech to praise the pitcher: “I want to
ning of a formidable career: a 209-166 win-loss record, two-time first express my high regard to Don Drysdale, who pitched his sixth

Superstar Drysdale seen in baseball trading cards, Lucille Ball and Johnny Carson have prominent roles in the special,
ranging from 1957–1967, from Topps and Bazooka. © Topps. © which features music and dance numbers, plus appearances by Ben
Bazooka. Courtesy of Heritage. Blue, Paul Revere & the Raiders, George Burns, Danny Thomas, Bob
Hope, Dean Martin, and the Smothers Brothers.
Drysdale also played himself in four episodes of The Donna Reed
straight shutout tonight, and I hope that we have as good fortune Show.
in our campaign.” Reed’s character, Donna Stone, is a suburban matriarch
Tragedy struck. Two hours after the speech at the Ambassador running her household with her husband, Dr. Alex Stone, and two
Hotel, Sirhan Sirhan assassinated Kennedy and wounded five kids—Jeff and Mary. In the 1962 episode “The Man in the Mask,”
others. high school student Jeff is excited to meet Don Drysdale and
Drysdale’s scoreless-innings record stood until Orel Hershiser, interview him for the school paper. Drysdale misses the appoint-
another Dodger hurler, broke it in 1988 with 59, which is presently ment because a meeting with sports writers lasted longer than
the record. “At least it stays in the family,” said Drysdale to Bill anticipated, so he goes to the Stone house to apologize.
Plaschke in “Drysdale Takes Hershiser’s Best Pitch and Keeps Not knowing that his interviewee is outside talking to his father,
Smiling,” published in the September 29, 1988 Los Angeles Times. Jeff loudly voices frustration in the kitchen. Drysdale overhears him
But his impact on popular culture extended beyond the pitching and compares him to Leo Durocher, the Dodgers’ feisty coach.
mound to TV studios and eventually the broadcast booth. All is settled. Drysdale tells Jeff that a good fastball is like life
During his ballplaying career, Drysdale had guest roles in the insurance for a pitcher. He also mentions that it’s the first year for
shows Lawman, The Millionaire, and The Rifleman. But he’s better Dodger Stadium and he hopes to win the National League pennant.
known among classic television buffs for playing himself on the The Dodgers came close. They tied the Giants in 1962, forcing a
small screen; his credits include Leave It to Beaver and Our Man three-game playoff. The Giants won the NL flag, then lost the
Higgins. World Series to the Yankees in seven games.
In Jack Benny’s 1968 carnival-themed special Carnival Nights, When Jeff is persuaded by two competing girlfriends to umpire
Drysdale’s cameo consists of introducing himself as he steps up their softball game, Drysdale warns him against the endeavor.
to a game—throwing a baseball at a target with Benny’s head as Disaster happens. Every call that Jeff makes is met with anger
the bull’s-eye. Benny gets paid five dollars an hour for the gig. In from the girls. Drysdale stops by the field, sees Jeff’s quandary,
keeping with his onstage persona of being cheap, the Waukegan, and offers wisdom. “Just go out there and act like an umpire,”
Illinois, native Benny says, “Well, for five dollars, I’ll take a chance.” instructs the veteran ballplayer. “You don’t have to get tough, just

retro television
be firm. Call every pitch, every play the way you see it. And after
you’ve made your decision, stick with it. You know, Jeff, in baseball,
nobody ever wins an argument with an umpire.”
He continues, “It’s the same in baseball as in life. The surest
way to get clobbered is to be indecisive. Remember this. A wrong
decision is better than no decision at all.”
Fair, but firm. Jeff’s new approach gets him respect and
continued affection from the two girls on opposing sides—Angie
and Marcia. Later, Angie comes to the Stone house to ask Jeff to
the Sadie Hawkins Dance. Marcia stops by a few minutes later
with the same invitation, but Jeff agrees to go with Angie since she
asked him first. Then, he quotes his hero’s “wrong decision” line.
It’s misinterpreted by Angie as a degrading declaration, so she
dumps him.
Set in a fictional suburb named Hilldale, The Donna Reed
Show aired for eight seasons on ABC. Although a state was never
mentioned, it’s presumably located in the Midwest because
Drysdale says that the next time the Dodgers are in Chicago, he’ll
get tickets for the family.
In the episode “All Those Dreams,” Jeff takes him up on that
generosity as he accompanies his parents to the Bismarck Hotel
in Chicago; Dr. Stone is there for a medical conference. But Jeff
figured that he could just call Wrigley Field and ask for Drysdale
rather than give him advance notice before the trip. Drysdale never
(ABOVE AND OPPOSITE PAGE) Whether acting in

episodes of Lawman and The Rifleman, or playing himself
as he did on The Brady Bunch, Don Drysdale was a popular
face in Sixties television. Lawman © Warner Bros. Television. The Rifleman
© Levy-Gardner-Laven Productions. The Brady Bunch © Paramount Television.
gets the messages, but winds up meeting Jeff anyway through a

coincidence when the hotel manager asks Dr. Stone to examine
the sick child of a couple (the Drysdales) staying at the Bismarck. It
turns out to be nothing serious, thankfully.
In an ironic turn, “All Those Dreams” aired on April 18, 1963. The
Dodgers played the Cubs in a night game on that date and Drysdale
was the starting pitcher! But it was at Dodger Stadium, not Wrigley
Field. The Cubs won 5-1. Drysdale’s other appearances on The Donna
Reed Show happened in the episodes “My Son, the Catcher” and
“Play Ball.”
Drysdale also guest starred as himself on The Brady Bunch. In
the 1970 episode “The Dropout,” he’s a client of Mike Brady, an
architect who often works out of his den in the family abode. After
going over the latest plans for a new house that Drysdale wants to
build, the two go to the backyard where Drysdale meets three loyal
Who knew that Donna Reed, second only to June Cleaver as Dodger fans, the Brady Boys—Greg, Peter, and Bobby. Greg pitches
the perfect Nuclear Family mom, was a swinger? Publicity in the Pony League and wants a career as a major leaguer; Drysdale
photo with guest-star Don Drysdale for 1962’s “The Man shows him the grip for a slider.
in the Mask” episode of The Donna Reed Show. © Warner Bros. Delusions of greatness worry Mike and his wife, Carol, who want
Television. Greg to go to college. They call upon the Dodgers legend to talk to

retro television
But the performing bug did not bite the six-foot-six baseball
star with everlasting effects. He had his sights set on broadcasting,
which he intimated in a 1959 episode of the game show You Bet Your
Life, starring Groucho Marx. In 1970, Drysdale began a successful
broadcasting career announcing for the Montreal Expos, California
Angels, Chicago White Sox, and his old team, the Dodgers, in
addition to NBC and ABC.
A 1981 episode of The Greatest American Hero featured his
broadcasting talents. In “The Two-Hundred-Mile-An-Hour Fast
Ball,” California Stars manager Shorty Robinson is working with
gunrunners to fix games; huge bets are subsequently placed.
Robinson’s cohorts have run the Stars’ two best hitters off the
road and assaulted their best pitcher. Enter Whitney High School
teacher Ralph Hinkley. Aliens had given Ralph a super-hero suit
that gives him super-powers, including the ability to throw a
baseball at 200 miles an hour. [Editor’s note: Learn more about The
him about the harsh realities of baseball. Unfortunately, the grue- Greatest American Hero in our interview with star William Katt in
some details of packing your arm in ice and possibly staying in the RetroFan #5.]
minor leagues with subpar amenities have no effect on Drysdale’s Ralph, through his FBI handler, Bill Maxwell, gets a tryout and
idolater, who thinks he will skip college and go right to the majors. contract with the Stars to find out why the team’s standouts are
When Greg gets pounded in the
first inning of a game, he gets his
comeuppance.
There is a contradiction in Drysdale’s Drysdale was one of an elite
appearance. Mike says that the pitcher group of late-Fifties/early-Sixties
went to college. This is untrue. Drysdale all-stars immortalized as a plastic
signed with the Dodgers organization figurine by Hartland Creations.
right out of Van Nuys High School. Courtesy of Heritage.
Barry Williams, who played Greg,
recounted the show’s genesis and spin-
offs, plus behind-the-scenes stories, in
his autobiography Growing Up Brady: I
Was a Teenage Greg (New York: Harper-
Perennial, 1992, by Barry Williams with
Chris Kreski). The athletes who guest-
starred were unsurprisingly popular
with Williams and his co-stars Chris-
topher Knight and Mike Lookinland.
“Whenever a sports star would appear
on the show, Chris, Mike, and I would
make a beeline toward them and start
hounding them until they’d consent to
playing ball with us or at least offer up a
coupla training tips,” revealed Williams.
“Wes Parker, Don Drysdale, and Deacon
Jones all went home exhausted from
our triple-teaming.” Joe Namath also
guest-starred.
Drysdale could sing, too. Matching
the excitement of sports with the glamour of television, Drysdale getting attacked and sidelined from playing. Drysdale provides
joined teammates Frank Howard, Tommy Davis, Willie Davis, the play-by-play for sequences in two games between the fictional
Moose Skowron, and Ron Perranoski on The Joey Bishop Show before Stars and Oakland Mets.
the 1964 season for a version of “High Hopes.” Sammy Cahn, the Don Drysdale died from a heart attack in his Montreal hotel
song’s scribe, wrote new lyrics summarizing the Dodgers’ 1963 room during an Expos-Dodgers series on July 3, 1993. He was about
travails against the St. Louis Cardinals and sweep of the New York three weeks shy of his 57th birthday.
Yankees in the World Series.
Clad in a tuxedo, Drysdale sang the lead while his Dodgers DAVID KRELL is the author of 1962: Baseball and America in the
brethren wore their home uniforms and backed him up with a Time of JFK and Do You Believe in Magic? Baseball and America in
chorus. the Groundbreaking Year of 1966. www.davidkrell.com

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THE ODDBALL WORLD OF SCOTT SHAW!
‘Don’t
Ask—Just
BUY It!’
The Comics
of Jack Kirby,
Oddball
Cartoonist
BY SCOTT SHAW!
The first time I met Jack Kirby was when he was a special guest at possible that you have no idea who Jack Kirby was. From the
the first official San Diego Comic-Con (at the time a.k.a. Golden Forties into the Eighties, Jack was comics’ most prolific creator.
State Comic Con) on August 1–3 in 1970, and I was so excited I could Whether he was working with Joe Simon, Stan Lee, or by himself,
barely speak. Jack’s concepts and characters were exciting, unique, and popular.
The second time I met Jack was at his home in SoCal’s Thousand He worked in every comic-book genre, but is best known for
Oaks, along with my other teenage San Diego Comic-Con co-creating such super-heroes as Captain America, the X-Men, the
co-originator pals in 1971. I blurted out, Avengers, and the Fantastic Four. If it wasn’t
“Jack Kirby!?! You’re my favorite cartoonist!” for Jack, there would be no Marvel Universe
Surprisingly, Jack seemed quite pleased to in comics or films. But Jack’s work went far
be described by that simple term, usually beyond Marvel. Not only did he do work for
applied to those of us who write and draw almost every publisher of comics, but his style
nothing but the funny stuff. After all, comics of storytelling and character designs educated
aficionados have dubbed him “King” Kirby the entire funnybook industry in how to make
(a title he wore with some discomfort), comics that people will eagerly purchase.
and have compared his work to that of Da
Vinci, Rembrandt, and Rockwell, among
other artistic greats. I suppose that’s (ABOVE) You may know Jack Kirby for
because Jack probably saw himself as a his work on Captain America, Fantastic
cartoonist, partially because he wrote the Four, The Mighty Thor, and so many
stories he drew. A few weeks later, he sent other super-hero series, but the King of
me a penciled caricature of myself getting Comics was no stranger to humor and
strangled by King Kong (see inset). other oddball work, such as cartooning
If you are a loyal reader of RetroFan’s for Charlton’s MAD knock-off From Here
non-comics-related material, it’s very to Insanity #11 (Aug. 1955). Courtesy of Heritage.

The oddball world of scott shaw!
Most people tend to think of Jack Kirby in melodramatic

superlatives. He’s been described as the ultimate comic-book artist, Jack “King” Kirby
a master’s master of graphic fiction, and an incredibly talented in 1993. Susan Skaar.
creator of dynamic heroes, dramatic action, and cosmic conflicts.
He was, without a doubt, the single most imaginative individual
ever to work in the field of comic books. He was equally comfort-
able working in any of the familiar comic-book genres of super-
heroics, romance, Westerns, science fiction, and war, among other
dramatic themes. But Jack Kirby was also very funny as a writer, as
an artist, and as a person, and left behind a surprisingly large body
of work to prove it. I first noticed his very unique sense of humor
in 1965 when I received the first issue of the Merry Marvel Marching
Society Messenger newsletter. In it was a short autobiography by the
former Jacob Kurtzberg, in which he described a soldier he knew as
“The Human Roadblock.”
One of the strangest paradoxes in comics is that most “straight”
comic books (in such “realistic” genres as super-heroes, Westerns,
romance, war, etc.) are drawn in styles that actually bear almost no
resemblance to truly realistic illustration! Yet, many fans (and even
editors) of these comics turn up their noses at anything resembling
the kind of humorous cartooning sometimes referred to within
the business as “big-foot drawing.” In my estimation, Jack Kirby’s
artwork somehow bridges this aesthetic gulf.
Judging from life drawings that he had done as a young man,
Jack had always possessed a natural ability to work in a much
more realistic style than that
with which he is now usually
associated. It appears that
the exaggerated and dynamic
anatomy, poses, design,
composition, and foreshortening
that have become such a Kirby
trademark may have been the
result of a conscious aesthetic
decision on Jack’s part. One
thing is certain, however: once
he began his professional career (under a variety of pen names), He yam what he yam, and he yam inspired by Popeye. Still,
no matter what the character or genre, whether the subject was Kirby’s early strip Socko the Seadog, produced under the pen
serious or lighthearted, Jack Kirby could only draw like Jack Kirby, name of “Teddy,” is fun to behold. © The Jack Kirby Estate. Scan courtesy
and if humorous illustration could be described as an exaggeration of Scott Shaw!
of realistic art, then Jack Kirby’s humor work is nothing less than an
even greater exaggeration of his normally exaggerated style!
Therefore, this column will focus on the material that was Jacob was not only interested in drawing, he also liked to read
unusual even for someone with Jack’s incredibly wide range of work pulp magazines and watch films in movie houses. Those media
in print—most really cool, some kinda ridiculous, but all somewhat educated him in how to write stories and how to portray them.
amusing, obscure, and oddball. That was his self-schooling, unlike the Pratt Institute art class he
skipped out of after one week. While briefly working as a news-
YOU DON’T KNOW JACK paper cartoonist’s office boy, he realized that his boss’ profession
In 1917, Jack Kirby was born and raised as Jacob Kurtzberg in New was what he wanted and soon needed. When his father lost his job,
York City’s Lower East Side, two square miles that were, at the time, Jacob dropped out of school to earn money for his family, first as a
considered to be the most densely populated neighborhood on newsboy.
Earth. Life wasn’t easy for kids during Jack’s youth, but by banding Soon, Jacob was hired by Fleischer Studios—run by brothers
together in block-gangs, they learned how to be tough without Max and Dave Fleischer [see RetroFan #25 for more Fleischer
becoming gangsters like they knew from films and personal info—ed.]—as an “inbetweener” on the outfit’s Popeye and Betty
experience. Whether they be Jewish, Italian, African-American, Boop cartoons. (An inbetweener is an essential animation artist that
Latino, or Irish, the older the kids grew, the more they realized that creates the transitional drawings between the assistant animator’s
escaping from the ghetto was necessary if they were ever going to poses.) A fast drawer, Jacob’s income amounted to enough that
achieve their dreams. the Kurtzbergs could afford to relocate to Brooklyn, a slightly nicer

Long before he’d draw talking

animals in DC Comics’ Kamandi,
the Last Boy on Earth, Kirby had
fun with babbling beasts in his
“Earl the Rich Rabbit” and (INSET)
“Lockjaw the Alligator” features
in Hillman Periodicals’ Punch and
Judy Comics. © The Jack Kirby Estate. Scans
courtesy of Scott Shaw!
became a producer at R-S, with a regular

salary and health insurance, perks that
rarely occur in the comic-book industry.
But it’s apparent that his experiences
at Fleischer had some influence on
young Jacob. In 1936, he found work with
Lincoln Features Syndicate, which sold
material to smaller market newspapers,
including ones for the Jewish readership.
He wrote and drew a number of
different strips for Lincoln, mostly
self-created and all bearing made-up
signatures of fictitious cartoonists.
(Eventually, he’d pick one of them for
himself because it sounded the most
like a real cartoonist name, “Jack Kirby.”)
Jacob created his daily comics strips at
home on the kitchen table. The majority
were dramatic stories with quasi-real-
istic, Will Eisner-ish characters.
But there was one exception, because
one of these strips was Socko the Seadog
by “Teddy,” which began as a blatant
Popeye imitation, complete with swipes
from cartoonist E. C. Segar. Although he
would never be known for drawing
funny stuff, the kid who would
soon be known as Jack Kirby was
merely applying what he’d learned
to do at Fleischer’s. The result was,
at best, repetitive slapstick. But
as the strip progressed, Socko’s
neighborhood than the Lower East Side. But outside of swipes and corny gags were
helping his family, Jacob wasn’t enjoying his new job. Not replaced by funny and clever
only did the studio’s vibe remind him of the pressure-filled globe-spanning adventure stories
sweatshops his father had toiled in, but Jacob was depicted with Jacob’s improving
expected to draw the same character over and over in the skills with acting, atmosphere, and
same poses all day long, which to him seemed like the storytelling.
opposite of creativity. Fleischer Studios was also moving to Although there has been no
Florida, which cemented his decision to leave the studio. evidence that it ever saw print,
But it’s likely that this early animation training also Jacob created a second comic strip
had a long-range effect on Jack throughout his six-decade in 1938, Abdul Jones, a fantasy with
career. Not coincidentally, in the Eighties, Jack found broad humor, produced using the
himself back where he started, working in the animation field, name “Ted Grey.” It starred a teenage lad with wanderlust, accom-
doing character designs and concept development for Hanna- panied by a mule that wore eyeglasses. Their exploits included
Barbera and Ruby-Spears Productions, including extremely a number of exotic characters including the 12-foot-tall bandit
cartoony designs for H-B’s Scooby-Doo cartoons. Even better, he Katchaz Katchkhan, Josef Welchmore the Bagdad bookie, and

(LEFT) Yes, that’s Kirby himself, on the wrong side of the law, on the photo cover of Prize Publications’ Headline Comics #37
(Aug.–Sept. 1949). © 1949 Prize Publications. (CENTER) Poison Ivan and Hotsky Trotski don’t stand a chance against Simon & Kirby’s
patriotic, Commie-crushing hero. Fighting American #3 (Aug.–Sept. 1954). (RIGHT) The Fighting American and his sidekick
Speedboy got this one-shot from Harvey Comics in the campy year of 1966. © The Joe Simon & Jack Kirby Estates.
Myrtle, the toast of a Sultan’s harem. Based on the strip’s surviving genre having been created by Simon & Kirby. Fortunately, they had
artwork, Jacob’s work was starting to look more exaggerated, an no problem adjusting to new styles and genres.
important aspect of his later style. Hillman Periodicals published Punch and Judy Comics, a long-run-
Of all the projects that Jacob created for Lincoln Features Syndi- ning (1944–1951) funnybook aimed at a readership that was still
cate, The Romance of Money was a series that wasn’t syndicated. learning how to read: little kids. The series featured lots of puppets,
Instead, it was published as a giveaway sequential panel story talking animals, and fairies. Never fazed by a new challenge, Jack
booklet for savings banks. Some consider it to be Jack Kirby’s very leapt into Punch and Judy’s world of funny animals with gusto in the
first comic book. mid-Forties with “Earl the Rich Rabbit” and “Lockjaw the Alligator.”
As a cartoonist who’s done more than a few funny animals myself,
SIMON & KIRBY’S ODDBALL COMICS I feel I must emphasize that Jack truly excelled at this type of
By the advent of super-heroes in what we now call the Golden material, and that it’s a real shame he rarely ever revisited the
Age of Comics, Jacob Kurtzberg had become Jack Kirby and had genre. Although lightweight in story, these are some of the most
partnered with Joe Simon, another cartoonist with similar abilities, dynamic and powerful pages I’ve ever seen! It’s also noteworthy
goals, and ethics. After co-creating Timely/Marvel’s Captain that “Earl” predated Carl Barks’ Uncle $crooge McDuck, who made
America, Simon & Kirby noticed that many readers identified his first appearance in 1948! The series also featured Jack’s Toby—a
with Cap’s teenage sidekick, Bucky Barnes. It led to teaming the teenage boy in the “Archie” mode—in one of the later issues of
young super-hero with an urban-raised boy, a matrix sparked by Punch and Judy.
the creation of the Golden Age “kid gang” by Simon & Kirby. And Simon & Kirby also worked on all four issues of Hillman’s My
no matter if the team was Timely/Marvel’s Sentinels of Liberty or Date (1947–1948), a pleasantly cartoony series that was intended to
Young Allies, DC’s Newsboy Legion or Boy Commandos, or even exploit the popularity of Archie Comics’ line of humorous comics.
Harvey’s non-super-hero-genre Boys’ Ranch or Boy Explorers, it had Around the same time, Jack and Joe also drew a teen humor
its own comedy relief character. strip in Archie Comics Publications, Inc.’s Laugh Comics #24 (Dec.
Both Joe and Jack would return to the genre in the Seventies, 1947) called “Pipsy.”
each with his own outlandish Oddball concept. Although neither Joe Simon nor Jack Kirby had any of their
After WWII, most super-hero comics disappeared from the material in Prize/Headline Publications’ Headline Comics vol. 5, #1/#37
stands, leaving very few survivors. Established and new genres (Sept.–Oct. 1949), it’s still a major collectable for Jack Kirby fans.
took the place of the costumed characters that were associated Why? This issue’s photo-cover depicts a policeman busting a burglar
with that just-concluded war. Funny-animal comics were big mid-heist... with Joe Simon as the cop and Jack Kirby as the crook.
sellers, as were the new themes of teenage comics, WWII comics, Strange World of Your Dreams (Prize, 1952–1953) was created to
humor comics, horror comics, and romance comics—the latter appeal to the same readership that was reading Simon & Kirby’s

(LEFT) A frantic page of Kirby Kraziness from Crazy, Man,

Crazy #2 (June 1956).
tion of the spectacular success of Harvey Kurtzman’s MAD. Like

its inspiration, this comic (originally titled EH!) featured a movie
parody (“Walt Chisley’s 20,000 Lugs Under the Sea”), a comic-strip
parody (“Rex Mortgage, M.D.?”), and a TV parody (“Line ’Em Up”),
as well as various ad spoofs (“Be a Successful 90-Pound Weakling”).
There’s also a preview for “Comet Feldmeyer, the Ace of Space! And
His Nerve-Wracking Little Companion... Lovable... The Electronic
Nuisance!,” supposedly to appear in the next issue, but actually
never seen in print again. This comic also features something
unusual for Jack, but quite typical of MAD: the usage of duo-shade
art board to add a textured gray shading under the coloring. Jack
Kirby also illustrated two articles for Charlton’s B&W magazine and
MAD rip-off Crazy, Man, Crazy: “Foreign Intrigue” (one page) in vol.
2 #1, and “Bloodshot Alley” (six pages) in vol. 2 #2. It’s not often that
one sees Jack Kirby drawing in his own style while channeling the
vibe of fellow cartoonist Jack Davis.
MARVEL MADNESS
Even Jack’s most enduring co-creation, the Marvel Universe, bears
many marks of his sense of humor. The Fantastic Four’s Thing
started out as a tragic character, but within a dozen issues Ben
Grimm evolved into a lovable behemoth that remains one of the
most popular Marvel characters of all time. His ongoing feud with
the mysterious Yancy Street Gang was a source of gags in many
early Fantastic Four issues. Marvel’s FF #11 (Feb. 1963) introduced
thriving Black Magic series. It featured a host, “Dr. Richard Temple,”

who smoked the same pipes that Jack liked. Supposedly, the
concept for the series came from its editor, Mort Meskin, who had a
reliance on psychotherapy!
Prize’s Fighting American (vol. 1 #1 1954–vol. 2 #7, 1955) started
out as a fairly straightforward reworking of Captain America’s
origin in a Cold War setting, but Simon & Kirby soon had Johnny
Flagg and his sidekick Speedboy facing a host of whacked-out bad
guys. Stories as funny as these come along few and far between,
but considering they were crafted during the humorless era
of the “Red Menace,” they are a testament to Simon & Kirby’s
unique take on even the most somber subject matter. Fighting
American’s Communist villains’ monikers are particularly amusing:
Doubleheader, Round Robin, Square-Hair Malloy, Poison Ivan,
Hotski Trotski, Ginza Goniff, Rhode Island Red, Invisible Irving, and
Super-Khakalovitch. When Joe Simon was hired to edit a line of
new super-hero series for Harvey Comics, he brought back some of
the original Fighting American stories to fill a giant-sized first edition
(Oct. 1966).
Simon & Kirby’s “Uncle Giveaway” was the host of Charlton’s Win
A Prize Comics (1955), a comic book with the gimmick of awarding
500 free prizes of bikes, cameras, and sports equipment to readers
who completed the drawing, stories, and quizzes within. [Editor’s From Marvel’s Fantastic Four #11 (Feb. 1963): (TOP) the
note: See RetroFan #20 for more on contests in comic books.] hot-and-bothered Thing is pranked by the Yancy Street
Considering that the series only lasted for two issues, it’s unlikely Gang, and (BOTTOM) finds the “skinny runt” the
any of the winners received anything. Impossible Man quite a handful. By Jack Kirby, with
Charlton’s From Here to Insanity #11 (Aug. 1955) was merely one of writer Stan Lee and inker Dick Ayers. TM & © Marvel.
many comic books that flooded the newsstands in hopeful imita-

(LEFT) Lee and Kirby

spoof themselves—plus
Roy Thomas and Marvel
at large—in 1967’s FF
Annual #5. (RIGHT) The
nutty “Fantastical Four,”
in a Kirby-penciled splash
page from Not Brand
Echh #1 (Aug. 1967). TM &
© Marvel. (BELOW) There’s
no humor to be found
in the grave topic of the
Kennedy assassination,
but Kirby’s Jack Ruby
comic strip from the May
1967 Esquire magazine is
among the King’s oddest
comics. Sample panels
appear below. Esquire ©
Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. Scan
courtesy of Scott Shaw!
the irrepressible Impossible Man, who echoed the personality of May 1967 edition was produced by Jack. This unusual three-page
the zany alien lead in Gore Vidal’s play and film A Visit to a Small story was about Ruby, the killer of Lee Harvey Oswald, assassin of
Planet. U.S. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Writing, pencil art, and
When the Inhumans were introduced into Fantastic Four, so was coloring by Jack Kirby, inking by Chic Stone, and lettering by Jon
their teleporting pet Lockjaw (and I sincerely doubt if the similarity D’Agostino.
in names between the giant bulldog and Jack’s funny-animal In 1967, Jack was hired to draw and color a spectacularly
alligator of the Forties was a coincidence)! Another humorous MAD-like piece of promotional art for NBC’s Captain Nice prime-
Kirby creation at Marvel is Volstagg the Voluminous (undoubtedly time TV super-hero sitcom (1967). Again, Chic Stone was his inker.
patterned after William Shakespeare’s comic/tragic character [Editor’s note: Check out RetroFan #9 for an interview with the actor
Falstaff), one of the Warriors Three in The Mighty Thor along with who played Captain Nice, William Daniels.]
Fandral the Dashing and Hogun the Grim. And who could forget In 1969, Marvelmania, which released Marvel Comics merchan-
the bizarre image of the Incredible Hulk, dressed in clown make-up dise, arranged for Jack to create a 17x22 promotional poster for the
and costume, juggling live elephants and other circus animals, U.S. Marines’ Toys for Tots campaign.
as depicted in The Avengers #1? And how
about those nutty Marvel sweatshirts
featuring the Thing and the Hulk?
“Is This a Plot?” was a wacky three-
page “behind the scenes” back-up story
in Fantastic Four Annual #5 (Nov. 1967),
written and penciled by Jack and inked by
Frank Giacoia.
Jack even did an outstanding parody
of his own characters in Marvel’s super-
hero spoof comic, Not Brand Echh (NBE),
including: “The Silver Burper,” a parody of
the Fantastic Four, in NBE #1 (Aug. 1967);
“The Origin of Sore, Son of Shmodin!”
in issue #3 (Oct. 1969); and “The Human
Scorch Has to... Meet the Family!” in issue
#6 (Feb. 1968). It was especially fascinating
to see Jack drawing parodies of his own
characters.
Esquire Magazine’s “46 Hours and 36
Minutes in the Life of Jack Ruby” in its

(LEFT) If you thought the Giant Turtle Olsen was the

weirdest thing you’d seen in a Jimmy Olsen comic book…
behold, Don Rickles—and Goody Rickels! Superman’s Pal,
Jimmy Olsen #139 (July 1971). (ABOVE) From Mister Miracle
#6 (Jan.–Feb. 1972), the self-aggrandizing Funky Flashman
and sycophantic Houseroy. (BELOW) Can you identify the
members of the San Diego Five String Mob from this page
from Jimmy Olsen #144? TM & © DC Comics. Scan courtesy of Scott
Shaw!
DC DAFFINESS
When Jack relocated to DC Comics in the early Seventies, he
brought his sense of humor with him. Comedian Don Rickles’
lookalike “Goody Rickels” first appeared in Superman’s Pal, Jimmy
Olsen (hereafter JO) #139 (July 1971), and the second and final
installment of the Goody Rickels saga, JO #141 (Sept. 1971), bore
what possibly remains the greatest comic-book cover blurb of all
time: “Kirby Says: Don’t ask! Just buy it!” [Editor’s note: Issue #140,
published between the Rickels’ story’s two parts, was a giant issue
with Jimmy Olsen reprints.]
JO #144 (Dec. 1971) introduced the San Diego Five String
Mob, a rock band from the planet Apokolips sent to the Earth by
Darkseid to kill Superman. JO #145 (Jan. 1972) was the last time
the San Diego Five String Mob was sighted. Who were those guys,
anyway?
Here’s who... the secret origin of the San Diego Five String
Mob! In 1971, many of us from the original San Diego Comic-Con
committee visited Jack and his wife Roz in their home on a steep
street in Thousand Oaks, California. At one point, we were sitting
around Jack when he said, “I could turn anyone into a comic-book Lund, Yours Truly, and Barry Alfonso as “Barri-Boy” appeared as
character—even you guys!” As we immediately responded in the maniacal musicians from Apokolips in Jimmy Olsen. (That’s Jack
unison, “Okay, let’s do it!,” I noticed an “Oy vey, why did I promise Kirby-style arithmetic, folks.)
that?” expression quickly passing across Jack’s face. But many Sometime in the mid-Seventies, the San Diego Comic-Con
months later, Mike Towry, Roger Freedman, John Pound, Will decided to create a “Friend of Fandom” award and asked Jack

concepts. This particular issue stands out as a sterling example

of Jack’s ability to do scathing satire. Funky Flashman is Jack’s
barely disguised version of Stan Lee, and his obsequious houseboy
Houseroy is obviously based on Marvel writer/editor Roy Thomas.
Check out this intro text for an example of Jack’s attitude toward
his fellow inmates in “The House of Ideas”:
“In the shadow world between success and failure, there lives
the driven little man who dreams of having it all!!!—The opportu-
nistic spoiler without character or values, who preys on all things
like a cannibal!!!—Including you!!! Like death and taxes, we all must
deal with him sometime! That’s why, in this issue, we go where he
lives—in the decaying ante-bellum grandeur of the mockingbird
Detail of original art for “The Dingbats of Danger Street,” estates!!—and ‘Wait for Godot’ with Funky Flashman!”
a feature from the sixth issue of DC’s short-lived 1st Issue When Mister Miracle #6 was first published, the comics
Special (Sept. 1975). TM & DC Comics. Courtesy of Heritage. community was stunned by its uncharacteristically savage tone,
but in retrospect, it’s even more outrageous! To paraphrase Stan’s
familiar old hype-line, if there’s but one Jack Kirby comic that you
Kirby to add his art to the certificate. I did a rough drawing of a should seek out and read, this is the one! Taking the subtext of
super-hero huddling with two young fans, Jack did the pencil art, Funky Flashman into account, it’s a testament to his importance
and Dave Stevens, the future creator of The Rocketeer, did the final in the comic-book industry that Jack could return to Marvel in the
inking. mid-Seventies.
A few years later, Jack came up with a new kid gang for DC, Kirby was so impressed with San Diego Comic-Con co-originator
“The Dingbats of Danger Street” in 1st Issue Special #6 (Sept. 1975.) Barry Alfonso that he was not only the basis for the San Diego
A group of outsider kids—Good Looks, Krunch, Non-Fat, and Five String Mob’s “secret weapon” Barri-Boy, he was also Jack’s
Bananas—live in the rough part of town and have to deal with inspiration for Klarion the Witchboy, a new nemesis for The Demon
urban villains Jumping Jack and the Gasser. Jack enjoyed drawing it #7 (Mar. 1973). Klarion has since become part of the DC Universe in
and hoping that it would catch on, drew at least two more unpub- comics and animation. As for his shape-shifting feline Teekl, that
lished issues. Oddly, in 1st Issue freaky creature could be based on
Special #2 (May 1975), Jack’s former anything.
partner Joe Simon unveiled a In the Seventies, Mattel hired
similar concept, “The Green Team,” Jack to illustrate products, adver-
starring an international gang of tising, and packaging, including
multi-millionaire kids. Superman in Secret Picture Game
The digest-sized reprint comic (1971) and Big Jim’s P.A.C.K. (1975).
The Best of DC #22 (Mar. 1982) had
the holiday theme “Christmas with KIRBY KRAZINESS
the Super-Heroes” and featured KONTINUES
“The Seal Men’s War on Santa In 1975, Jack Kirby triumphantly
Claus,” written by Michael Fleisher, returned to Marvel Comics to
penciled by Jack Kirby, and inked write and draw Captain America
by Mike Royer. It was originally and his new creation, The Eternals,
intended for Sandman #7 in 1975, plus covers and other things. One
before that series was cancelled. of those “other things” was “What
Believe me, Fleisher’s script makes If the Original Marvel Bullpen Had
Santa Claus Conquers the Martians Become the Fantastic Four?” in
look like It’s a Wonderful Life. What If? #11 (Oct. 1978), written
But among all of these, Jack’s and penciled by Jack. It featured
most controversial creations he editor/writer Stan Lee as Mister
created while at DC were “Funky Fantastic, production supervisor
Flashman” and “Houseroy,” who Sol Brodsky as the Human Torch,
made their first appearances in
Mister Miracle #6 (Jan.–Feb. 1972).
Of all of Kirby’s “Fourth World” Kirby was a super-hero to many
titles (Jimmy Olsen, The New Gods, pros and fans, but in What If?
The Forever People, and Mister #11 (Oct. 1978) he and three of his
Miracle), Mister Miracle seemed fellow Marvelites “became” the
to serve as the outlet for many Fantastic Four! Cover by Kirby
of Jack’s more darkly humorous and Joe Sinnott. TM & © Marvel.

Destroyer Duck #1 (Feb. 1982). Kirby headlined this book for

Eclipse Comics to benefit Steve Gerber’s lawsuit against
Marvel Comics over the ownership of Howard the Duck. See
page 12 for TwoMorrows Publishing’s new “Graphite Edition”
re-presenting Jack’s issues in pencil form! © Gerber/ Kirby Estates.
artwork by Jack and a blurb that referred to Jack as “the King of

the Comics.” When funnyman Johnny Carson misunderstood the
reference and mocked Jack’s unasked-for title, things got very tense
until the Tonight Show host made a public apology to Jack.
Later, created during a bedtime story for his granddaughter
Tracy when she was a little girl, the Dr. Seuss-like “Goozlebobber”
turned up in Jack’s Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers #4 (Pacific
Comics, May 1982).
Topps Comics’ Satan’s Six #1 (Apr. 1993) was a comedic series that
Jack had created. He had only written and drawn ten pages before
he passed away on February 6, 1994, but his premise and penciled
material spawned two Satan’s Six miniseries that followed.
Edited by Michel Choquette, The Someday Funnies (Abrams,
2011) was an anthology of short pieces by a usually diverse
selection of contributors, including C. C. Beck, Rene Goscinny,
Harvey Kurtzman, Moebius, Art Spiegelman, William Burroughs,
Federico Fellini, Frank Zappa, Gahan Wilson... and Jack Kirby. Jack’s
entry was a two-page story, “The Ballad of Beardsley Bullfeather,
or, Tune-In, Cop-Out and
Drop-Up!”
One more thing: Musician
Frank Zappa was a big fan of
Jack’s, and they happened
to live nearby each other in
Thousand Oaks. Here’s a
photo by Michael Zuccaro
of them in Jack’s studio.
(Jealous, Paul McCartney?)
Stan’s Gal Friday Flo Steinberg as the Invisible Girl, and Jack What can I say in
himself as the Thing! summation? Jack Kirby was
Jack’s opinion of Stan and company had apparently mellowed, the consummate cartoonist,
although the story’s affectionate tone might be due to Jack’s excelling at every type of comic-book story, even humor. And to
artistic reunion with the FF (even this strangely warped version) paraphrase Jack, I didn’t ask, I just bought ’em!
rather than with Mighty Marvel itself. I was delighted to help
out co-inkers Mike Royer, Bill Wray, and Dave Stevens by doing For 50 years (and counting), SCOTT SHAW!
uncredited background inks throughout the story. has written and drawn underground
Always a trailblazer, Jack was one of the first big-name cartoon- comix, mainstream comic books, comic
ists to establish creator-owned properties for the direct sales comic strips, graphic novels, TV cartoons, toys,
market. Destroyer Duck #1 (Eclipse Enterprises, 1982) was Jack’s advertising, and video games. He has worked
long-awaited (by me, at least!) return to the funny-animal genre. on such characters as Captain Carrot and his
This satirical title was co-created with Steve Gerber in reaction Amazing Zoo Crew (which he co-created with
to both men’s mistreatment by Marvel (and to provide funds for Roy Thomas), Sonic the Hedgehog, the Flint-
Gerber’s lawsuit against Marvel over ownership of Howard the stones, the Jetsons, the Simpsons, the Futurama gang, the Muppet
Duck). Duke “Destroyer” Duck battles the forces of Godcorp, Ltd., Babies, Garfield, the Garbage Pail Kids, and yes, even Annoying
whose corporate motto is “Grab It All, Own It All, Drain It All.” Steve Orange. His career has garnered him four Emmy Awards, an Eisner
and Jack wrote and drew four more issues of Destroyer Duck; their Award, and a Humanities Award. Scott is also known for his “Oddball
last issue was dated December 1983. Comics Live!” visual presentation of “the craziest comic books ever
In 1982, 3D Cosmic Publications released Battle for a Three published” and for his regular participation in “Quick Draw!” with
Dimensional World, a 3-D comic book written by Ray Zone, designed Mark Evanier and Sergio Aragonés. He was also one of the teenagers
and penciled by Jack Kirby, and inked by Mike Thibodeaux, with who co-created what is currently known as Comic-Con International:
lettering by Palle Jensen. The publisher also sold a 3-D poster San Diego, America’s biggest annual fan event. He can be reached
by Jack. Both came with 3-D glasses designed by Ray Zone with at shawcartoons.com.

Ford Could Have Been ‘Meathead.’” Some of
these clippings might very well inspire future
RetroFan articles. Thank you, Jack!
We start this RetroFanmail column with articles, celebrity autographs, newspaper

Re the Too Much TV Quiz in RetroFan #21: My
a salute to one of our most enthusiastic clippings, movie poster repros, and other
wife and I found this more challenging, as the
supporters, reader JACK ROURLAY of Lincoln, ephemera connected to a treasure trove
robot pictures were not identified by names.
Nebraska. Jack recently sent ye ed a spiral- of pop culture, everything from a photo of
Even when we saw the answers (and how
bound copy of his self-produced grab-bag, Wizard of Oz actors without make-up to an
terribly we both did), we could not figure out
Scrapbooking Hollywood, from Funny People to All In the Family tie-in article titled, “Harrison
which photo went with which name.
Monsters (below). It’s a collection of magazine
Don’t recall if this is the standard or if it’s
a way to make a dual game (“Match the name
with the show, then match the name to the
photo!”), but numbering the photos would
definitely improve the readers’ chances.
VINNY AND JENNY BELLIZIA
Vinny and Jenny, not long ago a reader or two

cautioned ye ed about making these quizzes
too easy!
True, most of those robots aren’t as familiar
to RetroFans as the recognizable actors or
characters whose photos we drop in to our Too
Much TV Quizzes, but a few web searches for
the robots you missed on the quiz will provide
images to help you identify them. And the best
way to improve one’s chances at these quizzes
is to watch more classic TV!
In RetroFan #21, when Mark Voger listed the first

person to “officially” dress as Catwoman (below)

simply as Bob Kane’s “unnamed” girlfriend, I
thought I’d share this photo (and her name) with
you for the benefit of other curious readers.
Also, a friend of mine did further research
and sent me the attached article. It shows that
the “unnamed girlfriend” was not only named
Lynne Feldman, but was suing Kane for not
naming her as the real artist of paintings she did
and he took credit for, including the one of her
as Catwoman. She was also never his girlfriend
as she alleged he treated her very unkindly after
she spurned his advances.
VINNY BELLIZIA
A Bellizia double-shot! Thank you for the info

and images, Vinny. The newspaper headline
and photo below (undated, from an unspeci-
fied publication) will be of interest to fans of
Batman and followers of the controversy that
surrounds cartoonist Bob Kane.
my heart because it co-stars of green M&M’s, something I repeatedly tried

my good friend Kenny Miller, to prove true in high school by offering them to
who may be better known to every girl I knew (spoiler alert: it doesn’t work).
RetroFans for his roles in I Was Personally, I thought it was a stroke of genius
a Teenage Werewolf and Attack on the Mars marketing department to anthro-
of the Puppet People. Kenny sings pomorphize the green candy into a sexy, sultry
“Pearly Shells” in the film, and woman, paying homage to that long-standing
a few others on the soundtrack urban legend.
album. Kenny discusses making I have to disagree with Scott when he says
Surf Party in his autobiography, he “doesn’t cotton to all the fancy-fancy” M&M
Kenny Miller: Surviving Teenage offshoots. My go-to at the movies is peanut
The article, as reported by Alfred Albelli, is Werewolves, Puppet People and Hollywood butter M&M’s, dumped into my popcorn. Sweet,
of insufficient quality for reproduction here (McFarland, 1999), and notes that he was salty, peanut butter, and theater popcorn
but mentions Lynne Feldman’s mid-Sixties precariously perched on the back of a speedboat butter… that’s your four basic food groups right
lawsuit against Kane for lack of agreed-upon for close-ups during his surfing sequences. Every there, all in one slippery bucket.
compensation and credit for paintings he time the boat hit a wave, he ended up in the I also enjoyed your look at Fiftiesmania.
purportedly commissioned from her. She also water! I have shared a photo (above) from Surf American Graffiti is one of my all-time favorite
charged Kane of making unwanted romantic Party published in Kenny’s autobiography. movies, and its amazing soundtrack got me
gestures toward her, resulting in him “willfully I also greatly enjoyed Scott Saavedra’s hooked on the music of that era. And of course,
and maliciously attempt[ing] to cause me profile of Michael Dunn, who I also loved on The there was Fonzie from Happy Days. In my clue-
aggravation and mental anguish.” The results Wild, Wild West, and Scott Shaw!’s exhaustive less teenage years, thinking I was a lot cooler
of her lawsuit were not reported in this article. review of custom car magazines. I’ve never than I was, I once made an offhand comment
If anyone knows of the resolution, please been a gearhead, but I found this article to my mother: “If I had grown up in the Fifties, I
update RetroFan’s readers by contacting the fascinating. would have been Fonzie.” She laughed and said,
editor at euryman@gmail.com. DON VAUGHAN “No, you’d probably be Ralph Malph.” Good old
Mom, she always knew how to bring me back to
reality…
I have never seen Creature From the Black
I’m commenting on Mark Voger’s terrific article Explaining my excitement at receiving my Lagoon or The Prisoner, but thanks to the
about Sixties beach movies in RetroFan #22. This latest copy of RetroFan #23 in the day’s mail, I intriguing articles in this issue, I immediately
was yet another article I thought I would quickly told my wife, “Where else can I read articles on ordered DVDs of them. I look forward to
flip through, only to find myself engrossed by Colorforms, Yellow Submarine, M&M’s, and The watching them based on the excitement and
every word. Prisoner, all in one magazine?” enthusiasm seen in these articles.
Mark’s listing of beach movies is extensive, For me, the highlight of the issue was All of the other articles were fun, fine
but I believe he missed one: Surf Party (API, Scott Saavedra’s look at M&M’s. This was pure reading. I always look forward to the next issue
1964), directed by Maury Dexter and starring RetroFan stuff: a fun, information-packed look of RF! Thanks for producing such an original and
Bobby Vinton, Patricia Morrow, and Jackie at something we’ve enjoyed our whole lives. upbeat magazine.
DeShannon. This movie has a special place in Scott acknowledged the story about the effects MICHAL JACOT

Michal, you weren’t the only reader who fingerprints and glue drips on it. But it was fun than hooking me, it confused me to the point I
salivated over Mr. Saavedra’s M&M’s article, as building and made me instantly receptive to quickly changed the channel. It was when Rover,
you’re about to read. watching a film version when I came across it, the weather balloon, was attacking Number
switching channels, on TV. Years later, I saw Six. I thought it was incomprehensible or, as
Creature in a theater, where it was shown in 3-D. phrased when I was ten, “Dumb.” Hardly. I just
didn’t have the intellect to understand. Over
the years, I heard such heightened praise about
the program that I gave it a second chance, in
1986, when The Prisoner was rebroadcast on
PBS. Watched and, this time, enjoyed the vast
majority of the episodes. Even flattered myself
that I understood most of them.
I thought Patrick McGoohan was great. A
defiant individual who wouldn’t compromise or
meekly go along. Someone with a moral code
of his own and a mentality that could confound
and outwit all the various Number Twos. Loved
the tidbit in the article that theorized that
Number Six may’ve actually been the one who
dreamed up the Village and was disconcerted to
see someone put the concept in motion. Hadn’t
heard that previously.
Of course, the show, though about
escape, wasn’t escapist entertainment. The
viewer had to pay strict attention. Otherwise,
some allegory or subtle point could easily be
missed. Enjoyed that even the people respon-
sible, such as McGoohan or the actors, weren’t
always precisely certain what everything meant.
So, if I’m still unsure about some aspects, I
realize I’m in good company.
I’ve seen and enjoyed The Beatles’ Yellow
Submarine many times. How can you go
wrong with such a soundtrack and distinct
visuals? Highlights of the article were: the
film was a rush job yet, based on the level of
creativity and perseverance, came out as a
unique gem; and The Beatles themselves gradu-
ally warmed to it and then actively embraced it.
Potentially, they could have been the harshest
critics, yet they seemed to enjoy and appreciate
it, too. After reading the article, I wanted to go
After seeing the photo of the M&M’s dispenser Gimmicks and merchandizing are fine, but at watch it again.
in the current issue of RetroFan, please allow the center of all that was a movie that had much In addition, I laughed at the memory of
me to share photos (above) of the two M&M’s suspense, artistry, and excitement. It could and Colorforms, something I haven’t thought of in
dispensers that I own. Both feature red and did succeed on its own merits. well over 50 years. It’s a throwback to a simpler
yellow M&M’s riding fire engines, with Red I’m actually glad the Creature came later form of play. Adhesive elements that a kid could
driving and Yellow holding on for dear life. They than the other Universal monsters. He’s sepa- experiment with and move to his or
also feature sound and lights when the ladders rate, not interactive with the other snarlers. That her delight. No rules needed—
are moved. The older engine was found at a car might have been a good financial move—so just imagination. Maybe that’s
show while the newer engine was found at a many films in the Forties. However, all of the why it’s lasted so long?
CVS store. Hope you enjoy the photos. characters were lessened by it. None was as Also cracked up to see
BOB SOFFA distinctive or well done as their premiere Chief O’Hara (Stafford
solo films. As for a modern retelling of the Repp) from Batman in
Creature, why bother? What’s the point your TV quiz. While it’d
when it was done right the first time? Yes, be nice to read a chat with
A number of especially intriguing articles in it’s in black and white, but so were all the Burt Ward, nothing says
issue #23. classic Universal monsters. you couldn’t supplement
Though Creature From the Black Lagoon was Loved your photo of a Creature Soaky. it with an article about
four years before my time, it was subsequently Would have loved that when I was younger. some of the supporting cast
on TV so frequently and heavily merchandized Usually, we’re nostalgic about fondly members. Granted, so
that it seemed a familiar part of childhood. My remembered TV shows. That’s hardly my many are gone, and
introduction was that cool Aurora model you case with The Prisoner. I did catch part of interviews, via an
displayed. Yours was well painted. Mine had the premiere episode in 1968. Yet, rather Ouija Board, aren’t

the easiest thing. Still, it would be fun and your Captain Action book.” [Editor’s note: While
informative giving background and coverage to both the 2002 first edition and 2009 expanded NEXT ISSUE
those we fondly remember and are no longer second edition of Captain Action: The Original September 2023 No. 28 $10.95 Wonder Twin
around. For my money, Repp and Neil Hamilton Super-Hero Action Figure are sold out, an article powers, activate!
(Commissioner Gordon) were two of the most about the toy appeared in RetroFan #7.] “I, of
hilarious elements to the show. Even Alfred and course, bought the Batman outfit for Captain
Aunt Harriet added some humanity. While not Action, like almost every kid did,” Richard
as ideal as a current interview, a retrospective wrote. WORLD’S GREATEST SUPER FRIENDS
involving past greats could add a lot and cover

topics, in more depth, where live actors are
According to the photo above that Richard
sent, he (or his parents) also bought another
WIG OUT…
OUT…
no longer available. Certainly, that would be Batman outfit back in ’66: Ideal Toys’ Batman …over the Six tie s’
BRITI SH INVAS ION
!
applicable to the roster of super-villains: I think plastic helmet with cape. Holy haberdashery,
we’re down to two Catwomen, one Riddler, and Batman! It’s li’l Richard Kolkman, age five,
Lady Penelope Peasoup. standing vigil in his living room, not even
JOE FRANK requiring a Bat-signal prompt to spring into FLIP OUT…
OUT… …over Bond Girl
TRINA PARKS!
action!
FREAK
Rest assured, citizen, that there’s a lot of OUT…
OUT…
love for TV’s Batman here in RetroFanland,
over
Horror
Hostess
so don’t be surprised if you occasionally read MOONA

LISA! HANG
HANG OUT
O UT…
…
with Toon Titan THE
about its peripheral characters in future Tell your friends about us, and share your MIGHTY HERCULES!
editions. comments about this issue by writing me at TV Guide Fall Previews • Life & Legend of the Frito Bandito • Nehru Jackets & more!
Featuring Andy Mangels • Will Murray • Scott Saavedra • Scott Shaw! • Mark Voger • Michael Eury
Richard Kolkman, who wrote last issue’s All euryman@gmail.com. Super Friends © DC Comics. The Mighty Hercules © Adventure Cartoons for Television, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
In the Family merchandise Retro Collectibles MICHAEL EURY

article, recently wrote ye ed to say, “I loved Editor-in-Chief

ReJECTED!
Not every great idea is successful, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't celebrate the also-rans, the nearly-made-its, and the ReJECTED.
No matter who you are are or what you’re interested in, there is always some “expert” with advice to become better, richer, deadier...
BY SCOTT SAAVEDRA
the WORLD’S most

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An exclusive interview with Logan’s Run Dark Shadows’ Angelique, LARA PARKER, Our BARBARA EDEN interview will keep Interview with Bond Girl and Hammer MAD’s maddest artist, SERGIO
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July/August 2023 No. 27 $10.95 your eye

TV’S Captain Kangaroo,

All characters TM & © their respective owners.

SUBSCRIPTION RATES ECONOMY US PREMIUM US INTERNATIONAL DIGITAL ONLY

Alter Ego (Six print issues) $73 $100 $111 $29

The Crazy Cool Culture

Issue #27 July 2023

Columns and Departments

2 RETROFAN July 2023

Good Morning, Captain!

Years before he died, Robert “Bob” Keeshan said he would like to

RETROFAN July 2023 3

4 RETROFAN July 2023

(TOP AND CENTER) CBS’ Captain Kangaroo promotional

RETROFAN July 2023 5

FROM COAST TO COAST

Watch out for falling ping-pong balls, Captain! © Creative Artists

Initially, Keeshan had to do each program twice a day, Monday

6 RETROFAN July 2023

(TOP LEFT) The big

RETROFAN July 2023 7

The roster of celebrities invited to visit Captain Kangaroo’s Trea-

8 RETROFAN July 2023

games were having on children, and (as a former smoker himself)

RETROFAN July 2023 9

The Andy Griffith Show, Our Miss Brooks ©

10 RETROFAN July 2023

A) Liz McIntyre, Room 222

B) Andrea Thomas, The

C) Ken Reeves, The White

D) Connie Brooks, Our Miss

E) Miss Canfield, Leave It to

F) Pete Dixon, Room 222

G) Eleanora Poultice, The Andy

H) Edna Garrett, The Facts of

I) Lydia Grant, Fame

J) Gabe Kotter, Welcome

THE BEST OF SIMON & KIRBY’S

MAINLINE COMICS by JOE SIMON & JACK KIRBY

DESTROYER DUCK by JACK KIRBY & STEVE GERBER

leader Ned Packer and the (literally) spineless Booster Cogburn,

CLIFFHANGER! CINEMATIC SUPERHEROES OF THE

Dawn Richard isn’t

14 RETROFAN July 2023

Tony takes his sweetheart Arlene

RETROFAN July 2023 15

MORE TEENAGE MONSTERS

16 RETROFAN July 2023

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Jack Pierce. “That was bad (TOP LEFT) Sandra Knight

18 RETROFAN July 2023

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(LEFT) The sheriff

20 RETROFAN July 2023

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22 RETROFAN July 2023

(TOP LEFT) Model sheet for Green

RETROFAN July 2023 23

THE CHALLENGE OF THE CHALLENGE

(ABOVE) Character designer

24 RETROFAN July 2023

The Hall of Justice at The Darth Vader–inspired Hall of Doom rises