Peter Parlagreco sent me a photo that he found online and he has a question about it. The photo below is a better copy that I had in my files but here's Peter's question…
I just saw this photo on Tom Brevoort's site and was wondering if it really is you in the Red Skull mask. If yes, any story attached to it? Just curious.
Yes, it's me…and once more, I can't imagine how someone couldn't recognize me.
Sadly, there's not much of a story here. This was taken back in the days when my pal Steve Sherman and I were working for Jack and also — though we would soon quit — for a company called Marvelmania International. Marvelmania was doing mail order stuff with Marvel Comics, taking orders for posters and decals and stuff and, once in a rare while, actually sending the folks who ordered what they ordered.
Marvelmania had done a promotion with the Marine Corps "Toys for Tots" charity and during it, the guy who ran Marvelmania had persuaded various firms to donate items to the campaign that he might be able to then also use for Marvelmania's own concerns. Among these were costumes of Spider-Man, Thor and Captain America.
There was then a gent named Don Post who made and sold rubber masks of all sorts of ghastly creatures. Among other places, they were advertised in the rear of Warren Magazines like Creepy and Famous Monsters of Filmland. The Marvelmania guy saw one of those ads, noticed a skull mask that Mr. Post sold and said, "Hey, we can get a costume of the Red Skull!" He persuaded Don Post Studios to donate one and Steve spray-painted it red…so we had a reasonable facsimile of Captain America's major villain! Mr. Post later began selling them in red but I don't know if he got the idea from us.
One day when Steve and I went out to Thousand Oaks to work with Jack, we took the mask along. I put it on. Steve took the photo. That's about the extent of the story. Don Post died in 1979 but apparently his son has made arrangements with this company to reissue and extend the mask line, and they'll soon be bringing them out. You can see the skull mask over on their website.
