If you haven't read Part 1 and Part 2 yet, read Part 1 and Part 2 before you read Part 3, which is this part, the final part…
I only met Frank Robbins once and then only for about fifteen minutes. It was either 1975 or 1976 and it was at a cocktail party staged by ACBA during that year's New York Comic Art Convention. Those initials stood for "The Academy of Comic Book Arts," which was a short-lived society for professionals in the field.
So I was standing there, not having a cocktail — which is what I do at cocktail parties — and a man I'd never seen before in my life approached me. He asked if I was Mark Evanier and when I owned up to it, he said, "I understand you're a Vince Colletta exorcist." I begged his pardon and ask him what in the world he meant.
He said, "I understand you were responsible for getting Vince Colletta moved off inking Jack Kirby's pencils at DC."
For a moment, I thought this might be some relative of Colletta's preparing to sock me in the gut or something but I said, "I guess so." Whereupon the man extended his right hand in friendship and said, "I'm Frank Robbins. How is it done?"
Much of the fifteen-or-so minutes was spent talking about inkers. I asked him who he'd prefer to have ink his work and he answered, "Me and only me." By that, he meant Frank Robbins, not me. He went on to say that one thing he didn't like about doing comic books was the whole idea of one artist penciling and another guy — often, a stranger — finishing the work: "I don't understand why anyone with any artistic talent at all would want someone else finishing their drawings or would want to finish someone else's drawings." He was not the only penciler or inker I've met who felt this way.
Another thing he said he didn't like about doing comics: Being switched from strip to strip. This is an approximate quote: "I like to really understand the characters I'm drawing and once I learn the characters on one book, they move me to another one." When years later Mike Sekowsky said that line to me about being a chess piece, I immediately thought of Frank Robbins.
Frank and I talked a bit about Jack Kirby that day. He loved Jack and the feeling, I assured him, was mutual. He also told me about his plans to retire to Mexico and paint. By whenever this encounter was, those plans were very much at the "probable" stage. He seemed like a nice man who took great pride in his work and I wished I could have talked with him longer. I did remind him that depending where he wound up living in Mexico, it might be a short commute to the annual comic book convention in San Diego.
I told him I was sure I could persuade the con to invite him as a guest. He thanked me for the thought but said that if and when he relocated to Mexico, it would be to put comics behind him.
By 1977, Johnny Hazard had lost enough newspapers that he and his syndicate decided jointly to put it behind him and to end its 33 year run. The last installment ran in papers on August 20, 1977. He finished out his Marvel contract early the following year and, as wished, moved to Mexico — to San Miguel de Allende, located in the far eastern part of Guanajuato, to be exact. There, he produced a great many paintings, some of which still hang in galleries around the world.
As far as I know, he never drew another comic book or comic strip though he had many offers. That's what I heard from Alex Toth, the only person I knew who kept in touch with him. Alex supplied Frank's address via which I got him invited to the comic convention — an invite that he politely declined. San Miguel de Allende, it turned out, is about 1,600 miles from San Diego so maybe that was a factor in his decision. Or maybe he simply didn't want to discuss the work he'd done in what by then he may have regarded as a previous life.
His run as a comic book artist for Marvel only lasted a little over four years during which he indeed averaged two comics a month…so roughly a hundred stories. I think I've now seen more than a hundred Facebook threads in which someone is losing it over the fact that Frank Robbins briefly drew some super-hero comics almost a half-century ago. It's like their whole childhoods were scarred by the site of a slightly-spongy Captain America or a Daredevil with unrealistic anatomy…as if most other super-hero artists drew the realistic kind.
It bothers me to see so much ire directed at Mr. Robbins for not being John Buscema or Curt Swan, never at the editorial decision to place him on a certain feature with someone else finishing his work. They think he was untalented. As I keep saying here, I think he was miscast…and in the theater or in film, when an actor is miscast, you blame the person-in-charge who miscast him or maybe the business realities that forced the miscasting.
In comics, a lot of that has been because the company was really stingy with their rates. I once asked Sol Brodsky, who had a lot to do with who drew or inked Marvel Comics of the sixties, why a certain artist was employed as an inker. I should have known what he'd say: "Because we were desperate and I couldn't find anyone else who'd work for what the publisher would allow us to pay."
And sometimes, a comic looks like the artist knocked it out as fast as humanly possible…which indeed he may have done because the company needed that artist to knock it out as fast as humanly possible. To be fair, some of the best comics ever done were truly knocked out as fast as humanly possible but that's not a reason to make people do that. And sometimes, oddball "casting" results in something wonderful…but again, that's not the best way to do things.
Frank Robbins passed away at the age of 77 on November 28, 1994 from a heart attack. Alex Toth gleaned from their correspondence that Robbins couldn't have been happier in those last years of his life, painting to please only himself. I've seen photos of some of those paintings and I wish I owned one. Beautiful work.
I understand why some people didn't like what he did in some of the comics that got him there to Mexico and I can even understand why some of them thought he was just a bad artist. What I don't get is why some of them are still incensed over his work long ago and why they blame him. To me, that's a lot like watching a losing game of chess and blaming the pieces instead of the person who moved them to the wrong squares.
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