Category Archives: Obituaries

John Severin, hailed as one of comics' great illustrators, has left us at the age of 90. He was much admired for his work on war and western comics, to which he brought a serious sense of authenticity and research. And he was also known for his work in humor. For years, he was the star artist of Cracked magazine and sixty years ago, his work appeared in the first issue of MAD.

Severin began drawing at such an early age that he was having work published by age ten. He attended the High School of Music and Art in New York where he became friends with many comic book superstars of the future including Harvey Kurtzman, Will Elder, Al Jaffee and Al Feldstein. He would later share a studio with some of those men and work with Kurtzman and Feldstein at EC Comics. (Severin not only drew for EC but was also an editor there for a while.) For a time, he and Elder were a team with Severin penciling and Elder inking. Their first professional assignment, which predated EC, appears to have been a story in a 1948 issue of Headline Comics, published by Prize. The job was given to them by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby.

Most of Severin's work through the fifties was for Prize, EC and for Timely/Atlas, which is now known as Marvel. In the sixties, he worked mainly for Marvel (on Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos, among other features), for Warren Publishing and for Cracked. Later, he worked for DC, Dark Horse and many other companies. Often, he was cast in the role of inker where he usually overpowered the pencilers, outputting finished work that at first glance looked like pure John Severin. It also always looked very, very good. Among his happiest jobs were the few (too few, he felt) times when he was engaged to ink pencil art done by his sister, Marie. Marie followed her older brother into the comic book industry, colored his work and the work of others at EC, then became a valuable member of the Marvel art staff. (Marie is currently recovering from a stroke.)

I had the pleasure — and that it was — to interview John privately at the one Comic-Con International he attended and to also see one of my comic book scripts illustrated by him.  I wish there had been more of both.  I'd been warned before our conversation that he was a serious man who had strident, right-wing political opinions but we got along great even when the conversation veered unexpectedly into a discussion of Vietnam.  He did not particularly enjoy the convention experience so he was rarely seen at them.  That was a shame if not for him then for the legions of fans, including many professionals.  All would have liked the chance to tell him how inspiring his artwork was.  Even Jack Kirby used to say that when he had to research some historical costume or weapon for a story, it was just as good to use a John Severin drawing as it was to find a photo of the real thing.  They don't make 'em like that anymore.

Sad to hear of the death of singer Whitney Houston. I must admit that I don't know much more about her other than that she had a stormy life due to drug use and other mistakes but I sure enjoyed her singing.

I hope this is not an inappropriate time 'n' place to say this but something has always bothered me a bit about tributes to singers…and I guess we're about to see and hear many for Ms. Houston. To me, a tribute honors the person's work. I don't see how that is done when someone else sings the songs for which that singer was known.

If Whitney Houston had written the songs in question, that would be a performance of her work. If someone else comes out and sings "The Greatest Love of All," that's kind of offering a Whitney Houston presentation without any Whitney Houston in it. Imagine if when Rex Harrison died, someone came out and said, "To honor the fine work Mr. Harrison did, I will now play Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady."

Maybe this is trivial but I hope that when people honor her memory, it's done by presenting her work, not by proving someone else can sing the same songs well.

The Brazilian comic book artist and animator Al Rio has died (an apparent suicide) at the age of 50. I did not know Al, though I certainly knew and liked his work. His friend and occasional collaborator David Campiti has written an obit that all of Al's many fans will surely want to read.

Hey, wanna hear Dick Tufeld doing what he did best? Here's a link to a YouTube video of a Hollywood Palace episode. If I've configured this right, it should start playing at the end credits so you can hear the kind of Dick Tufeld performance that so many others tried to emulate.

A lot of websites are noting the passing at age 85 of Dick Tufeld, the man who supplied the voice of the robot on Lost in Space. That's a great credit and I don't mean to belittle it in any way but it was, I'm guessing, about 2% of the amazing career of the man. There were probably years there where Dick had the most-heard anonymous voice in this country. He was the go-to guy for commercials, promos and especially for announcements on variety-type shows.

TV networks have been known to issue lists of "approved voices." The premise is that if you're an off-stage announcer, you more or less represent the network, especially if you're saying things like, "We'll return to our show after these commercial messages." When I produced a few variety specials for CBS in the eighties, we needed to hire someone to say things like that and we were handed such a list. It had about twelve names on it and one was Dick Tufeld's. I suspect he was on every such list issued by any network while he was actively working.

At the end of many an awards show, special or variety program, you'd hear him say over the credits, "This is Dick Tufeld speaking." He said it so often that it got to be a running gag that his name was Dick Tufeld Speaking. Once on some show, I actually heard him say, "This is Dick Tufeld Speaking speaking." And he was so adept at announcing that just with his voice, he managed to capitalize the first "speaking" and not the second.

I directed him once on an episode of the old Garfield and Friends show. This is it and it's a little bit outta sync but you'll recognize Mr. Tufeld's voice instantly…

As was the case the four or five times I worked with him, he arrived on time and did everything perfectly on every read. But unlike a few guys in his class and job description, he was utterly cooperative if asked to do it again and again and again and again. I once saw a director demand that Dick read an innocuous line about sixteen times with different inflections. Dick did so without even a twitch of complaints…and then they used the first one. They could have used any of them. He was that good and the industry mourns the loss.

Oh — one other thing about his appearance on Garfield: I couldn't resist so I had them do the end credits on that episode like this…

Veteran comic book and strip artist John Celardo died Friday at a nursing facility near his home on Staten Island, New York. He was 93.

According to this obituary in his hometown newspaper, Celardo attended the New York Industrial Arts School, Federal Arts School and New York School of Visual Arts. They note he began working as an artist in the late thirties, drawing animals at the Staten Island Zoo.

I can pick up the story after that: His first work in comics was done in or around 1939 for the Eisner-Iger Studio and he quickly segued to drawing comic books for Fiction House, Quality Comics and other companies. For Fiction House, he often drew Kaanga, which was a Tarzan-like character. It is said that it primed Celardo's desire for a crack at drawing the real Tarzan some day. He would get his chance but before he did, he served in World War II and drew a lot more comics, including a long stint for Better Publications.

He got his shot at the Tarzan newspaper strip in 1954, taking it over from his friend and studio-mate Bob Lubbers when Lubbers accepted an offer to go work for Al Capp. Celardo drew (and eventually wrote) Tarzan until 1967 when he was replaced by Russ Manning. With nary a week off, Celardo moved over and began drawing the Tales of the Green Beret newspaper strip when its first artist, Joe Kubert, gave it up.

When that strip ended in 1969, Celardo began drawing for DC Comics and Western Publishing. For the latter, his work was featured throughout the seventies in the Gold Key "ghost" comics like Grimm's Ghost Stories and Twilight Zone. DC used him on a wide array of books, often as an inker. Celardo was a very good artist and the kind of inker who tended to dominate a page. Often but not always, he was assigned to ink pencil work by other artists who, some editor felt, needed a lot of "fixing."

In 1981, Celardo left comic books, returning to the strip world. He took over the Buz Sawyer newspaper strip and became the last in a line of artists to continue Roy Crane's creation. As far as I know, he retired after the strip ended in 1989.

I never met Mr. Celardo but I admired his work. From all reports, he was a solid professional and it's obvious to anyone who saw his work that he really knew how to draw and he maintained a high standard throughout his career.

That's a photo taken by my pal Will Murray, the first time I met Joe Simon in person. I wish I could place the year but it was a year or two after Jack Kirby died so it was '95 or '96. I'd heard so much about Joe from Jack over the years that it didn't seem like I was meeting a new friend but reuniting with an old one. There had been business-type disputes between the two former partners, Joe and Jack, in the sixties and early seventies and each had said a few things in interviews that were later regretted. But 99% of the time, both spoke with unabashed admiration and even affection for the other.

Jack didn't particularly envy the way anyone else wrote or drew comics. Respect and admire, yes…but envy, no. He was simply not competitive in that area and it didn't matter to him if someone else drew better or worse than he did. What he did envy about Simon was Joe's total command of the process of publishing comics — from making the deal in the first place to shipping the book off to the printer. Joe could write or draw or ink but a lot of guys could do that. Where he really impressed Kirby was in how he could edit and design a book, especially the covers and splash (opening) pages. Editors, as often as not in the early days of comics, were guys hired to be traffic cops and paper-shufflers. "They didn't understand the process," Jack would say. Joe understood the process. He knew how to talk to publishers or editors when he and Jack weren't the publishers or editors. He knew how to talk to printers and to the other artists, writers, letterers and colorists. I have interviewed at least two dozen writers or artists who worked for the Simon-Kirby shop. Some made better money elsewhere but that aside, all said it was the best place to work because the guys in charge were so good at what they did.

Joe was better than Jack at reading a contract, negotiating a deal and convincing a publisher or editor that Simon and Kirby knew what they were doing; that they could and should be left alone. The team got good deals because of Joe but they also — and this mattered to Jack a lot — were trusted to do their work without micro-management and often, macro-management. It usually led to good and therefore successful comics.

Where Joe envied Jack was at the drawing table. Joe was a pretty good artist on his own but all too aware he could not compete with his partner for quality or even quantity. Often but not always, Jack penciled and Joe inked. Most of those who inked Jack's pencil art over the years felt they did it best; that they knew better than anyone how to "plus" every single thing Jack put on a page and add to it. Joe especially felt that way though much of the time, he was too busy with editorial and writing so it was necessary to engage others to ink Kirby pencils. Invariably, when the inked-by-someone-else Kirby pages crossed Joe's desk for editorial processing, he couldn't resist grabbing up a brush and adding a little something here, some texture there. It probably made the work a tad better but the main reason for it was that it made Joe feel better…made it all the more "Simon and Kirby" work.

Simon and Kirby split up in the late fifties when there was no available work for them as a team and contact after that was minimal, confined mostly to when one was involved with some project that required that they readdress the terms of the divorce. Finally in the early seventies, they got together at a New York comic convention for what was supposed to just be a brief dinner. It was cordial and a few outstanding points of contention were settled, though not nearly enough. There just wasn't time to talk it all out before Joe had to get back to Long Island or wherever the Simons were then residing. As it turned out, when Joe left the convention at 10 PM to head home, he found he'd parked in a lot that closed at 9. It was locked tight 'til morning and his car was penned inside. So he returned to the convention hotel where, as luck would have it, Kirby's room had a spare bed. They spent all night talking about the old days, discussing that which had earlier gone undiscussed and they became friends again. Still, they were friends who didn't communicate very often.

The last project they did together was not, as some obits on Joe reported, the 1975 Sandman series. They just did the first issue, which was released in 1974 as a special. Simon had been editing a few comics for DC then, most notably Prez, a witty and fresh title that I think would have succeeded if it had been allowed to run longer and perhaps if it had had a different style of artwork. Sales at DC then were in general freefall and almost all new titles were axed after only a few issues — in some cases at the slightest hint of weak sales. This is one of those theories that no one can ever prove right or wrong but I believe several of the many comics DC started and quickly stopped during this period would have caught on if they'd been given more time on the newsstands. Sometimes, it just takes time for something new to get noticed and appreciated. If Marvel had been as hasty to cancel new titles as DC during this period, Conan the Barbarian would have been declared a flop and cancelled as of issue #6. DC was axing books that sold better than Conan did at first.

Joe was understandably frustrated that everything he was coming up with for DC was meeting an almost immediate demise. As something of a last attempt, he proposed a new hero with the same name as a hero he and Jack had done back in the forties, Sandman. Jerry Grandenetti, who drew most of Joe's books of this period, was assigned to draw the pilot issue…and I'm not sure if he got all the way through the story or if he was stopped after a few pages but whatever he drew, it did not meet with favor in the DC offices. The project was aborted.

But then someone got the idea of reteaming Simon and Kirby. Hey, what about having Jack draw it?

Jack said no…and it was nothing against his former partner. For a myriad of reasons, Jack just plain didn't want to work with other writers then. But the publisher exerted pressure and Kirby finally gave in and began drawing the same story Grandenetti had at least started on. One piece of what Grandenetti did made it into the book — an Eisner-like rendering of the hero's name on page two was cut-and-pasted into Jack's pages.

Kirby, who was officially the editor of the book, did some rewrites on Joe's script. When the issue was handed in, all lettered and inked by Mike Royer, Joe and/or someone else in New York changed a few things back Simon's way without telling Jack. Still, Joe was genuinely thrilled with what Jack had done. DC Management thought the book would flop so instead of starting on a second issue, they put out the Simon-Kirby issue as a one-shot. It was a pretty good comic and when it sold well above expectations, they hastily scheduled a regular bi-monthly series.

By this point, Simon had fallen into general disfavor at DC and had gone elsewhere and Kirby wanted to go back to writing his own material and didn't like the first script that was produced by the writer the firm had engaged to replace Joe. DC published the new comic anyway — edited, written and drawn by different folks who'd done the issue that had sold so well. Jack did agree to do the covers and they put the name "JACK KIRBY" on them in uncommonly large letters, which I suspect was a mistake. If you splash Jack Kirby's name big on the cover and then offer a Kirby imitator inside, readers feel baited and switched…or at least they did then. In any case, the book did not sell. Kirby was practically ordered to begin drawing the insides along with the covers…which he did as of #4, hating every minute of the assignment. His ordeal didn't last long. Sales had been disastrous on the first three and when the numbers began to trickle in on #4 showing only a modest bump, the distributor insisted on killing the title.

Kirby found himself blamed for the failure…and oddly enough, Simon did as well, though he was nowhere near the premises when the poor-selling issues were published. One of the ways in which Joe and I bonded the day we met in person was via a discussion of this scapegoating. The day before in the DC offices, I'd gotten into one of my frequent (like, every time we were in the same room) arguments with a man named Sol Harrison who had been DC's Production Manager and later became its President. Sol had many fine accomplishments to his name but he tended to believe that anything done in the DC offices by folks on staff was magnificent and that if a comic flopped, it had to be because those fallible outsiders had screwed up. Simon and Kirby, he insisted to me, had screwed up on Sandman.

We debated that to no resolution but someone had told Joe what I'd said and we chuckled over it. I reminded him of the old Jackie Mason routine where he took stage and said, "Last week I played a club and the girl singer who was on before me was so bad that right in the middle of my act, they started booing her. They couldn't forget how lousy she was. Do you know that some people walked out on her while I was still performing?" Joe laughed and from that moment on, we were friends. He was a guy with pretty thick skin but the failure of Sandman had been a real emotional thing for him since it represented the finale of the Simon-Kirby team. And Joe was very proud of the Simon-Kirby team.

I visited him every time I went to New York after that. We'd usually meet for lunch at the Ben Ash delicatessen, which is across the street from the Carnegie — pretty much the same food but not as crowded. Once when I told him my lady friend would be joining us, he arrived with flowers for her. To this day, she often reminds me that Joe Simon brought her flowers and that I never do. My defense is that I'm just not as classy as Joe Simon. Which is true. Odds are you aren't as classy as Joe Simon, either.

There were other things I learned or could still stand to learn from Joe. He was always thinking of new ideas and new ventures. He was shrewd. He was not afraid to do battle.

People thought he was litigious and he did file a number of lawsuits during his lifetime…but he entered into them judiciously, usually winning and/or settling for fair amounts. He did not initiate them blindly out of anger as some do. At one point, he wanted me to help him sue a publisher he felt had wronged him but ultimately decided against it. "I'd win in a second but never collect a nickel from the guy," he said and later developments proved him almost certainly correct about the money end. Just after the great caricaturist Al Hirschfeld died, Joe told me how much he admired him.

"Because he drew so well or because he lived to be almost a hundred?" I asked.

"Neither," Joe replied. "Because when he was 95 years old, he sued his agent."

That was Joe Simon…who when he was almost the same age sued Marvel Comics and collected a modest (but worth the effort) settlement. He was a smart guy right up to the end and in case it isn't obvious, someone I really, really liked. His recent death at the age of 98 did not of course come as a shock but the point is it was his body that was 98. Inside that, he was younger than most of us. And probably a lot smarter.

Way too soon after we lost Jerry Robinson, we've lost another of his contemporaries from the Golden Age (and later ages) of Comics: Joe Simon has passed, two months after his 98th birthday.

I have two pieces to write here — one about Joe's enormous contribution to the world of comics, with and without Jack Kirby. Joe and Jack were really the first superstar creator(s) of comic books. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were important because they were the creators of Superman. Simon and Kirby were important because they were Simon and Kirby. They were the guys who were ahead of everyone else in making comic books different from comic strips. They were the guys everyone in the industry looked to for the next trend, the next innovation, the next hit. It wasn't just that they gave the world Captain America. They also showed everyone how to make comics more exciting.

I also need to write something about Joe himself. He was an amazing man, too often wrongly viewed as just the "business" side of Simon and Kirby. Jack was the better artist — even Joe admitted that — and Jack had that ultrahuman work ethic that allowed him to labor at the drawing table all day and all night. But if you asked Jack who did what in the Simon-Kirby parlay, he usually said, "We both did everything." That was true. Joe wrote, Joe drew, Joe inked. And he especially excelled in managing the money end of things because he understood publishing and contracts and such matters — a rare skill among comic book creators. He was also a superb designer and editor who really knew how to put a book together. People also too often overlook his many achievements wholly apart from Kirby. They included Sick magazine — for my money, the best of the MAD imitators and one of only two (the other being Cracked) to last long enough to be called a true success.

I need to write about all that and about how much I loved and respected the guy. Even into his nineties, he was sharp and friendly and generous with his time and knowledge. When my biography of Jack came out, Joe faxed me a lovely note and then called to ask if he could sit with me at the New York Comic Convention and sign copies. I told people, "Never mind my signature. Come buy a book and get Joe's." And people lined up because they wanted to shake his hand, tell him how much his work meant to them…and to be able to tell everyone for the rest of their lives that they met Joe Simon.

There will be more posts here about Joe over the next few days. I'd write them now but the phone is alive with the sound of reporters who need facts and quotes for obits. Back soon.

I spent much of today telling Jerry Robinson's life story to reporters who'd been assigned to write obits of this man about whom they knew little. Which is understandable. Jerry lived a long and productive life but was rarely out front, taking bows for his many accomplishments.

What struck me in all the phone interviews was what a small fraction of Jerry's life was getting covered. I don't think most people realize how politically involved he was in issues of Free Speech (especially that of cartoonists) in countries where they don't cotton to any kind of dissent. I don't think most folks know how involved he was in the mid-seventies campaign to establish a credit line and pensions for Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster on Superman. Most folks know that Neal Adams spearheaded that campaign and his efforts were vital in making Time-Warner realize that a horrendous situation had to be rectified and put right. Not to take anything away from Neal but it was Jerry Robinson who negotiated with senior Time-Warner execs of behalf of Siegel and Shuster. It was Jerry who closed the deal.

Over the years, I interviewed Jerry about ten times at conventions plus once at the Skirball Cultural Center here in Los Angeles. I was always torn between asking him the questions that I knew would lead him into great, audience-pleasing anecdotes…and asking about the nooks and crannies of his life. When I went the latter route, I always found out something I didn't know he'd done…heard of some moment that would have been a high point in the life of any other cartoonist but was just another passing incident in the life of Jerry Robinson.

Often, of course, we spoke of Batman. I tried to explain to a couple of reporters today that it wasn't just that Jerry came up with The Joker and Robin. He was largely responsible for the look and feel of the early Batman comics. Others later drew the character…but the ones who tried to imitate the "Bob Kane" style were largely going for a Jerry Robinson look, whether they knew it or not. Jerry took Kane's limited drawing ability and distilled it into something more compelling and less dependent on swipes. What emerged was something that was probably just what Kane himself would have produced if he'd drawn as well as Jerry Robinson.

I won't go over the career narrative here. The main points were covered today in obituaries like the one in The New York Times. I'll just add a personal note: Jerry was a helluva guy. He was smart. He was industrious. He was amazingly versatile. When I introduced him, I usually explained how as a kid, I assumed the Jerry Robinson who drew the Still Life newspaper strip was a different Jerry Robinson from the one who'd worked for DC and Marvel. I mean, how could a guy draw so well in two totally different areas of cartooning?

I was a fan of Jerry Robinson's work but I think I was even more a fan of Jerry Robinson. If I ever get around to growing up, I want to be as much like him as possible…especially the part of about continuing to do work worthy of your name until the day you die. Oh, and especially the part about being loved and admired by every damn one of your peers.

There will be a proper obit up here later on Jerry Robinson, who passed away last night at the age of 89. Right now, I'm deluged with calls from reporters and others who are writing about him…and he had a long career and a staggering number of credits to talk about. I'll try to write something worthy of the man when the phone stops ringing. Jeez, that guy did a lot.