I recently did a post here about what happens when, as occasionally happens, the artwork for a comic book gets lost in the mail. Right after I posted that, I noticed that the Comic Book Resources site had this post up about a time back in 1978 when by a strange twist of fate, I wrote the first solo story of the Marvel super-hero, The Falcon. [CORRECTION: No, I didn't.]
As you'll see, it was another example of artwork getting (sorta) lost in the mail so I figured I oughta tell the whole story. This may take a while so I'm going to include this cautionary note…
Now then: My friend Steve Gerber was living out here in Burbank, working for Marvel and serving as writer-editor of his beloved Howard the Duck comic. They'd just assigned him a similar post on the Captain America comic and when he got it, the book was several months behind schedule, probably through no fault of whoever had preceded him.
The way to get it on-schedule — the only way, really — would have been to do two or three issues a month until he was caught up. I had that problem once on the first comic book on which I was editor and in this case, it was my fault. I stupidly let my "lead" slip away so I sat down and wrote full scripts for three issues in one week. Then I hired a couple of different artists to draw them and before long, I was not only on schedule but ahead.
Steve couldn't do that. He couldn't find a couple of different artists who were acceptable and immediately available. He couldn't find one. He made a number of calls and at that moment, anyone he knew who was good enough to draw Captain America was also good enough to have a full schedule of work.
The only artist he had was the book's regular artist, Sal Buscema. And the problem there was that Sal was drawing, I believe, four comics a month for Marvel at the time…doing rough layouts or rough pencils, true, but he couldn't do more than one issue a month for Steve.
Steve spent a lot of time talking to various folks in the New York office and it was finally decided that there would be a fill-in issue that spotlighted The Falcon, The Falcon then being Captain America's sidekick and co-star of their comic. Marvel was then somewhat fussy about how their superstar characters like Captain America were drawn but The Falcon was not then a superstar character. There was less concern about who would draw him…and someone other than Steve could write that issue so Steve could focus on getting ahead on the regular Captain America storyline, which was going to be neglecting The Falcon for a while.
He then called me and asked me to write that Falcon story. It had to be a one-issue standalone story and it had to be out-of-continuity because they weren't sure exactly which month it would run. Also, it could have a brief cameo of Captain America but for no more than a few panels. I asked who was going to draw it. He said, "Whoever's wandering around the Marvel offices tomorrow who needs work."
I shrieked, "Tomorrow?" and he said, "Yes! I need you to drop everything and write a plot outline we can get in the mail to New York tonight so it can go to an artist tomorrow. I'd do it but I have to finish dialoguing Howard the Duck pages and get them in the mail tonight."
(I should explain: Like most Marvel comics then, Howard the Duck and Captain America were being done "Marvel Method," meaning that the writer wrote a plot outline, it was sent to an artist to draw in pencil and then those pages were sent to the writer to compose the dialogue.)
I said okay, fine, I'll do it. You could then send overnight packages to New York via Express Mail if you got them to the big post office near Los Angeles International Airport by 10 PM. I sat down and wrote a plot. Around 9 PM, Steve arrived at my house with his Howard the Duck pages and we went over my hastily-written Falcon storyline. He okayed it — like he had much of a choice — then we packed it and his pages up in an Express Mail package and drove out to the airport, getting there with seconds (but not minutes) to spare.
We then drove to Canter's Delicatessen for chow since neither one of us had had dinner. Steve was confident it would all work out and get the book ahead. I asked him who he thought would draw the Falcon story from my plot and he said, "I asked them to give it to anyone…well, anyone except Sal Buscema." He said that because as soon as he finished the next Captain America plot in a day or two, that would be going to Sal Buscema. It wouldn't get the Captain America book ahead if they sent my plot to Sal.
And of course, the next day, whoever assigned such things in the Marvel office then sent my plot to Sal Buscema.
There was some question as to whether whoever did that did it because they didn't pay attention to Steve's request or because they were trying to sabotage him or because at that moment, Sal needed something to work on and there was no plot to send him from Steve or the folks writing the other books Sal worked on. I have no idea which was the case; just that my plot went to Sal so the fill-in to get the book ahead was not going to get the book ahead. (I also have no idea who sent it to Sal. In the Comic Book Resources piece, author Brian Cronin speculates it was Jim Shooter. I see no reason to assume this.)
Steve meanwhile had a similar but not-as-severe deadline problem with Howard the Duck which was being drawn by Gene Colan — again, one of several books (like Tomb of Dracula) that Gene was doing for Marvel then. Gene's schedule was similarly tight so he could only do one issue of Howard per month at best. Fortunately, Steve didn't have to get anyone's okay to assign an issue of Howard the Duck to another artist so again, I quickly wrote a plot and our mutual friend Will Meugniot began drawing it.
He continued battling with Marvel over deadlines and before the penciling was completed on either of the stories, Steve was fired. I don't know to what extent that was because of lateness and to what extent it was because he was making noises about how he should own all or part of Howard the Duck. I'm not sure Steve knew, either. In any case, he still owed Marvel a certain number of pages for which he'd been paid in advance and his lawyer suggested that it would be good if Steve finished them, a.s.a.p. before everyone plunged into the murky area of lawsuits relating to his termination.
Will had just finished penciling the Howard story and turned its pages over to Steve to give to me to dialogue. I suggested that Steve do it instead of me, which would help him whittle down the number of pages he owed Marvel. This was done. Meanwhile, Sal Buscema had sent Marvel the pages for the story with The Falcon and they were reportedly being forwarded on to me to dialogue. I was going to turn them over to Steve to dialogue, again so he could get even with Marvel on pages owed.
But that didn't happen. Well past the date when they should have arrived at my home, I hadn't received them. I called Marvel to tell them and someone there — Roger Stern, I think — told me to just keep waiting. (These were the original art pages Sal had penciled. And no one in New York had made copies of them.)
The folks back there were worried about lost pages but not about deadlines. I was told they weren't going to use the story in the Captain America comic because, once it was drawn, they saw that it didn't have more than a few panels of Captain America in it. That is, of course, exactly what I'd been told to do. Not using it in the Captain America comic would put that book even farther behind for whoever took over as editor from Steve…but, hey, that wasn't my problem. It was also no longer Steve's.
They weren't sure where, when or even if it was going to be published so we could just give the mail time. If the pages never showed up, they would just scrub the whole story. If the pages did turn up, I could dialogue them at my leisure and send them in whenever.
Weeks passed. The pages did not arrive. We gave up on them.
Now all this time, I was editing and writing most of the Hanna-Barbera comics that Marvel was then publishing. The original art pages for those comics were returned to H-B after publication in packages that were not addressed to me — just to the studio. A guy in the mailroom there would look at the return address and think, "Marvel Comics? I guess this goes to the office where they're doing the comic books!" And he'd then throw the packages in the corner of my office where they usually remained unopened for some time. For me, it was one of those "I'll get around to it one of these days" tasks.
One of those days, I had a rare spot of Nothing To Do so I opened a half dozen of them and in one package, there it was, nestled in amongst a batch of returned Scooby Doo and Yogi Bear pages: The missing Sal Buscema artwork! It had arrived when it was supposed to arrive. I just didn't know or imagine it was in one of those packages.
I don't know why whoever shipped art out from Marvel did that. Clipped to the pages was a note with my home address and instructions to send the art there but whoever sent them hadn't done that. He or she had no way of knowing that package would wind up in my office instead of going to some H-B warehouse. Even if they had known that, I could have gone several more months without opening that particular package and finding Sal's pages in it.
Anyway, I called Marvel to report that I'd found the missing story. They said fine, just get it done whenever you get it done. I got it done, sent it in, got paid, assumed I'd never see it published…and many months later, was surprised to see it turn up as an issue of Marvel Premiere. What did I think of the finished product? Well, it had a real nice Frank Miller cover on it.
(More detailed answer: If I'd known it was going to run as a standalone — and if I'd had more than about three hours to plot it — I would have done a very different story.)
Before I end this, I don't want to give anyone the impression that Steve Gerber — a friend I still miss an awful lot — was always late with his work. When he worked for me on several projects, he was always on time or close enough. But we all go through periods where we have problems — sometimes of our own making, sometimes because we find ourselves in a less-than-ideal work situation, occasionally both.
Steve was not one of those writers who could sit down every day at 9 AM and have X number of pages completed by quitting time and that is not a criticism of the man. I've known good and bad writers who could do that and good and bad writers who couldn't. And sometimes, the guys who can are the guys who are satisfied with whatever they produce, whether it's any good or not.
And sometimes, work comes in late due to circumstances beyond our control…like when someone mails pages to the wrong address in a package they weren't supposed to be in.