This is a partial reprint of an item I posted here a few years ago but with some stuff expanded and altered.
As noted here, last Friday would have been the 98th birthday of Jack Kirby. On the long, long list of Jack's many accomplishments — down around #1,253 which was creating a character who had one line in a Green Arrow story — is that Jack was one of the three people most responsible for me getting into the comic book field. The other two were a gentleman named George Sherman who worked for the Disney Studios and a gentleman named Chase Craig who worked for Western Publishing Company. Last Friday would have been the 105th birthday of Chase Craig.
Chase edited thousands of comic books for Western Publishing which were published under the Dell and later the Gold Key imprint. Since titles like Walt Disney's Comics and Stories and Uncle Scrooge were selling in the millions per issue back in the fifties, there was a time when more people were reading comic books edited by Chase Craig than those of any other editor alive.
And by a very wide margin. There were individual Craig-edited comics of the day that sold more copies per month than all the comics edited in that same month by Stan Lee or Julius Schwartz or maybe both of them put together.
His comics were reaching a much narrower audience by the time I met him in 1970. Comic sales had declined everywhere and despite having superstar characters like Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny, Western was having trouble getting its wares distributed. So were DC and Marvel to some extent but DC and Marvel didn't rely wholly on newsstand sales for their income. To some extent, publishing comic books was for them a loss leader to promote their characters for merchandising. They didn't make money off the Wonder Woman comic book. They made it off licensing the Wonder Woman t-shirts.
With comparable newsstands sales, Western didn't fare as well. The revenues from the Mickey Mouse t-shirts went to Disney, not to them.
In 1970, my friend/partner Steve Sherman and I were assisting Jack Kirby with his new comics for DC. Our buddy Mike Royer was working for Chase, inking comics and sometimes penciling or writing them. Mike happened to mention to us that Chase had mentioned to him that Western was looking for ideas for new comics. Mike had nothing in mind to submit to them but he thought we might want to.
We decided to take a crack at it. Emboldened by our proximity to the all-time greatest creator of new comics the industry has ever seen, we whipped up written presentations for about a half-dozen new comics. Steve phoned Mr. Craig, got us an appointment and we ventured to the Western offices, which were located on Hollywood Boulevard directly across the street from the famed Chinese Theater.
Chase was very nice and treated us like seasoned professionals, which we were not. He said he'd take a look at our ideas and pass them on to the many other folks in the company who would have to approve any new books. Then he'd get back to us.
As I later learned, Western did want new comics but it wasn't as simple as filling that want. To get one approved by all the folks in that company who then had a say would be like getting an unanimous vote today out of Congress on anything meaningful.
Western did many things very, very well but they were quite conservative about publishing decisions. If Western and Marvel each put out a new bi-monthly comic at the same time and got the same encouraging sales reports, Marvel would instantly up the book to monthly and start planning spin-offs. Western would say, "Hey, let's keep an eye on this for a year or two and if these numbers hold up, we could try publishing it eight times a year!"
So they wanted new comics but they really didn't want new comics. They certainly didn't want ours. They were rejected with about as polite a turndown as any writers ever received anywhere. For some reason, it didn't dawn on me that Chase edited lots of ongoing comics that needed the services of writers. I cannot for the life of me tell you why I didn't think to go back to him and submit ideas for his Woody Woodpecker or Pink Panther comic books. I can't even tell me that.
If it had occurred to me, I might have been dissuaded by a brilliant but cranky artist named Alex Toth who drew for various publishers and animation houses, never for any one for very long. I occasionally visited Alex back then. He loved to sit for hours and talk about comics and so did I. When I mentioned that my partner and I had submitted some proposals to Chase Craig, he exploded.
Chase Craig? Alex had drawn years earlier for Chase and he hated the guy, thought he was an idiot, thought he was unethical, etc. Later because of his explosion, I learned two very important lessons in life…
One was that Alex felt that way at one time or another about darn near every single person with whom he ever worked. The problem wasn't always them but it was always, to some extent, him. He was one of the most talented people I ever knew but also one of the most insecure and self-destructive.
The other thing was that in this world, you have to go by your own impressions and experiences. If you're warned away from someone, you might be wise to keep that warning in mind. It might well be right and you can perhaps avoid or minimize the damage if you are on guard. But you also can't assume it's totally true or that your experience will be the same as their reported experience. Chase Craig was utterly wonderful to me.
I started working for him because I was working for George Sherman…and I started working for George Sherman because of Mike Royer. Him again.
Chase Craig edited Western's line of comics based on the Disney properties. The Disney Studio sold stats of all that material to the various publishers in other lands who published Disney comics. In most of those countries, there was more demand for Disney comics than there was in this country. Western didn't produce enough material to fill the demand so a division on the Disney lot in Burbank bought scripts and art for additional material that was only published overseas. George Sherman was one of the editors in that division.
Mike Royer had been asked to write for them but he couldn't because he'd just landed a dream position. He was taking over as the inker on Jack Kirby's books for DC Comics, a job that I had a lot to do with. To thank me for my help, Mike arranged for me to submit material to George who liked what I did and encouraged me to write more. I did. Lots more.
I wrote scripts for George for a while and it was slow-going because he was out for weeks at a time due to the illness that took his life but a few years later — in 1974. Before that sad event, he'd come back from medical leave and find his desk piled high with Evanier submissions.
I joke that he referred me to Chase just to get rid of that drain on his health but the truth is, I'm sure, that he felt guilty about his slow response time on every script. One day, he was talking to Chase about perhaps improving the quality of the material Western was producing and Chase lamented that a couple of his best writers had left him or were burning out. George said something like, "Hey, I've got a kid here you oughta know about," and he sent Chase copies of scripts I had done for him.
So it was that on one day outta the clear blue sky, Chase Craig called me and asked, "Can you write Super Goof stories for me the way you write them for George Sherman?" Well, I could sure try.
I sold him a few, then he had me write an emergency, had-to-be-done-almost-overnight issue of The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan. After I handed it in, there came this extraordinary (for me) moment in the office depicted above. He leaned back in his chair and said, "You know, if you were able to write four or five comics a month for me, I could probably use them."
Then there was a pause — and I really remember that pause because of what came after — and he said, "I could really use you on Bugs Bunny."
This will all mean nothing to most of you and perhaps it shouldn't. But somewhere out there, there's a fellow professional writer who'll identify. He or she will recall the instant when they thought, "Hey, I really may be able to make a living in this business." That was mine.
For Chase, I wrote Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck and Porky Pig and Beep Beep the Road Runner and Woody Woodpecker and Scooby Doo and many others. I largely moved away from the Disney titles, which was financially foolish on my part. Chase occasionally rejected a script — usually because I didn't have an idea but I wrote it anyway. If he bounced a Daffy Duck script, it went into my filing cabinet and I never got paid for it. If he bounced a Donald Duck script, I could sometimes turn around and sell it to George Sherman. But I didn't think that way. I just felt more comfy with Daffy than Donald.
He was a very good editor. I knew that then and later, when I had some very bad ones, I appreciated Chase even more. He played no power games. He never changed a word to show he was in charge, only when he thought it had to be changed and he was usually right. When I screwed up — and I did, many a time — he explained why to me in a polite, respectful manner.
We discussed matters like adults and I could sometimes talk him into my point of view. All in all, it was probably a more pleasant experience to have Chase reject one of my scripts, as he occasionally had to do, than to have certain other editors I've had buy one.
Chase retired around 1974. Soon after, he came out of retirement to edit a new line of comics for Hanna-Barbera. In one of the most amazing moments of my life — I wrote about it here — he hired me to write them. He did it for a while, got bored and then retired again, passing the whole job on to me.
Early in my new responsibility, I went to my filing cabinet and hauled out the pile of scripts he had rejected back at Western. It wasn't a huge stack but I figured there had to be some good ideas in there that I could use on the H-B comics. There were two Scooby Doo scripts that Chase had bought but which had never been published or even drawn because Western lost the rights to do Scooby Doo comics. In my capacity as editor, I immediately purchased them from myself. But among the scripts Chase had rejected, I didn't find a single plot, joke or line of dialogue I could recycle. That was how good an editor Chase was.
In the last few years, I've become very sparing in the use of words like "mentor" and "protégé" when I write about my years with Jack, Chase and a few other talented folks who I've been blessed to have in my proximity. While those nouns might apply in some senses, I see them frequently used by a "new kid," consciously or not, trying to claim a piece of someone else's greatness. Not always but too often, it's like "Hire me because I was that guy's protégé so I'm therefore in his league."
Nope. One thing I did learn from both Jack and Chase is that your work is your work. It stands or falls on its own merits, if any, and who you know or knew doesn't make it one iota better. When I write a joke, no one laughs at it because I've worked with a lot of funny people. (Sometimes, no one laughs at it at all but that's a separate matter…)
I write a lot about Jack Kirby and from the reaction I get, I don't think it's humanly possible to write too much about Jack Kirby. But Chase was very important to me too and from now on, every August 28 when I write about Jack, I'm also going to write about Chase. I don't believe they ever met but they had these things in common…
They were both responsible for some of the best and most popular comic books ever published. They were both very nice men. They were both born on August 28th. They both employed Mike Royer and thought he was one of the best, most professional and reliable artists in the business. And they both helped me an awful lot towards whatever kind of career I've had since I got out of high school.
That last thing-in-common may not matter in the slightest to you. You may even see it as the greatest failings of each. But it sure matters to me.