At the same time, Otis Kline finally realized the truth of Otto Binder’s declarations that the New York branch of his agency needed Kline’s personal direction if it was to succeed. Otis and his wife Ellen moved to Gotham, at least temporarily, in the fall of ’36 too. Probably Jack and the Klines made the trip together.
Though indications in a letter by Kline in May 1936 suggest that Jack had expressed an interest in going into business with OAK, perhaps agenting for him or in some other venture, there is no evidence that he worked for Kline once he actually made it east. Instead, the eldest Binder brother freelanced, doing art for Street & Smith and other pulp magazine publishers, as well as any other art assignments he could wrangle.
Soon Jack was making headway. In his letter to Earl in February 1937, Otto wrote, “Jack has had quite a boom with his color work at the Art Show in the Penn Hotel, and may give the awaited word soon for his family to come. Yet it will take some careful figuring, for as yet his income is hardly steady and you know what that means, when those lean times come along. But slow and sure—that’s the Binder middle name.”35
Jack put it this way, in a brief handwritten addendum to Otto’s letter: “I was just down to see [Harry] Chesler of Star Comics, as he called me yesterday, and gave me an order for silks, sixteen buck’s worth. So far this month, I’ve done fairly well. Standard $15.00, Astounding $30.00, Chesler $16.00, and Prince for samples alone $45.00, not counting the orders from the show, which should be at least another $100.00. So as soon as this dough comes in I’ll have my sweetheart with me. Boy, how lonesome I’ve been, and just full of Vitamin E!”36
Jack didn’t realize it, but he was on the verge of finding his first real break. A whole new marketplace for his talents was getting underway: comic books.
About the same dimensions as pulp magazines, but full of color comic strips and special features aimed at younger readers, comic books began in a series of experiments beginning with Funnies on Parade in 1933. Famous Funnies went to regular publication in 1934, and like its predecessor consisted of reprints of newspaper strips. Public acceptance was immediate, and it soon became clear that original material was needed. New Fun Comics #1—the first published by the company now known as DC—used comic strips prepared especially for the new format, and soon entrepreneurs emerged to supply that new material. They formed comics production shops, which were often assembly-line operations to divide comic book story production into distinct stages, each with its own specialists doing scripting, page layouts, penciling, backgrounds, lettering, inking of main characters, inking of the subsidiary parts of the art, proofreading, corrections, and clean-up. When it worked properly, it was a system that got the best out of each of the cogs in the machine. If the result had a generic, homogenized look, that was okay as long as the stories were easy to follow and delivered the requisite action and thrills.
One of the pioneers of the comic shop was one Harry “A” Chesler, Jr. What did the “A” stand for? “Anything!” was his answer. His shop could produce any kind of feature, and he was able to land accounts with a number of publishers who wanted to jump on the comics bandwagon. He also published his own comic books.
Not long after Jack Binder arrived in New York, Otto’s writer-friend Frank Gruber suggested that Jack should see about working for Harry Chesler. Gruber was dropping off a script, and Binder could come along. “[Gruber] introduced me to Chesler,” Jack told Jim Steranko for his History of Comics, “and after we talked for a while about art, he offered me a job. But, frankly, I didn’t like the looks of the shop and turned him down.”37 Jack did, however, sell some artwork to Chesler on a freelance basis.
In March 1937, Jack Binder’s wife and children arrived by train from Chicago. The Binders and the Klines (including their children) and Otto lived together at 430 West Thirty-Fourth Street. The apartment consisted of four rooms, unfurnished but equipped with Frigidaire, steam heat, cross ventilation, and a modern kitchen. “Our two families, totaling ten, have been more like one these four days,” Otto wrote to Earl, shortly after Olga’s arrival. “Eating together, working together and everything else like a group of Communists. The Klines even had Jackie and Eddie sleep in their bedroom last night, as that was the only arrangement that seemed to work.”38
Soon, the lure of steady money pulled Jack back to Chesler’s shop. Jack recalled, “After an hour’s discussion Harry said, ‘I don’t want to use you as a staff artist. I want you to take charge, to take over the staff!’ I stayed for three years.”39 Members of the Chesler shop in the late 1930s included talents who would go on to contribute mightily to the comics medium. Creig Flessel, Bob Wood, Fred Guardineer, Jack Cole, Charles Biro, Gill Fox, and Ken Ernst all toiled in Harry’s sweatshop. The first comic book Chesler produced and published was Star Comics, an oversized anthology featuring the adventures of “Dan Hastings” and “Lucky Coyne,” among many other strips. Its first issue probably appeared in late 1936, although it was cover-dated February 1937. He put out another comic book called Star Ranger about the same time.
By 1938, comics were gaining momentum and developing their form. They were no longer mainly composed of one and two-page features. At this point, the norm was stories of six to eight pages. Most of the characters were adventurers: detectives, soldiers of fortune, magicians, strong men, and other pulp carryovers, along with humorous fillers. A new hero appeared in Action Comics #1 in 1938. Superman looked promising, if a little on the fanciful side. New writers who could handle the demands of the comic book medium—a totally new invention, with very different requirements than the daily or Sunday newspaper strip—were vitally needed. Thus it was inevitable that Jack Binder would suggest (more and more emphatically, as the months went by) that Otto ought to give comics a try. Otto wasn’t interested.
It wasn’t an improving outlook for the Otis Adelbert Kline Agency that kept him afloat. He’d been completely on his own since separating from the agency in mid-1937. “I stayed with him as his assistant until a downturn in his agenting forced him to let me go,” was how Otto put it in a later interview. “But I was well launched in my own writing career, and it was a break, really, allowing me to put full time into my freelancing.”40
This was Otto Binder’s moment to rise to the occasion, and he did so, magnificently. He showed himself to have the kind of inner grit and determination that it took to become a successful, self-supporting writer. While it isn’t known if he took any fill-in jobs to tide him over, it seems unlikely. His prodigious output is ample evidence of many long hours “banging the keys” of his typewriter. That he could do this in a corner of the crowded apartment amid all the inevitable distractions was a testament to his concentration and drive.
By this time, Binder was hitting his stride as a wordsmith. With what he had learned evaluating the dozens—nay, hundreds—of manuscripts that Kline had been trying to place, and the hints and inside knowledge that OAK himself had imparted to him before and after the move, OOB knew what was required to sell stories. His imagination was firing on all cylinders, and he produced thousands upon thousands of words.
The Binder brothers had broken into Weird Tales with the short story “Shadows of Blood” (April 1935). A second short story, “In a Graveyard,” saw print in that venue shortly before Otto’s move. Eando also bylined two novels in Weird Tales: “The Crystal Curse” (March 1936) and “From the Beginning” (June 1938). Although these stories were overshadowed by the riveting works of Robert E. Howard, H. P. Lovecraft, and Clark Ashton Smith, the fact remains that “Eando” rubbed shoulders with them in the pages of this legendary pulp magazine. The Weird Tales stories were among the last that Otto and Earl Binder wrote as partners.
Excerpt from Earl Binder’s letter to Otto, stating his decision to end their writing partnership, and Otto’s reply, which was dated January 20, 1936.
Earl, not Otto, instigated the partnership’s end. Earl’s obligations to his wife and children made the insecure life of a freelance writer untenable. Otto had pre
viously offered to continue their partnership even if Earl could do no more than suggest plots and make corrections to the manuscripts when Otto had written them, but Earl’s pride and sense of rectitude would have none of it. On January 16, 1936, less than a month after his younger brother left Chicago, Earl wrote, “Otto, I want this understood clearly and without one word of opposition. … Any story written and sold by you, beginning with the year 1936 and from thence onward, is to be all yours. I do not want a penny of it and will not take a copper, nay, not even a plugged Chinese nickel. It isn’t fair to you and it would only make me feel like a chump.”41 OOB had to accept his older brother’s decision.
In reply, on January 20, Otto wrote, “Earl, I think I realize your decision to withdraw from any more share in the Eando stories with this new year is that of a mind set firm in its choice, so I won’t attempt to lead the matter into channels of discussion. I abide by your decision, respect you for it, and am only sorry that it could not go on. And when you do some more writing, the name Eando is still as much yours as mine, so it’s there to be used, with an appreciable amount of reputation behind it.”42 All the stories written in New York bearing the Eando pseudonym were done solely by Otto, except for a few rewrites of early, unsold material.
In mid-1936 Mort Weisinger hustled his way into a job editing the new Thrilling Wonder Stories. “Of course it was good for Otto,” Julius Schwartz recalled in 2000, “but with Mort, the stories still had to be good. He wasn’t going to take weak stuff just because you were his friend.”43
Although all three took their business seriously, they were young and single, and frequently got together to gossip about the SF field, chase women, and go to baseball games. (Otto swore he’d always be a Chicago Cubs fan.)
Julie remembered, “Mort, Otto, and I were extremely close. We hung out together all the time. We loved to play bridge together. Mort was a terrible bridge player, and I was an expert bridge player. Mort, his brother Eddie, Otto, and I would play bridge late into the night. We’d start playing about five o’clock on a Saturday afternoon. And we’d break for dinner, maybe a spaghetti dinner, and we played all night long until, finally, it was eight or nine o’clock in the morning. I’d say, ‘I can’t play anymore. I have to teach Sunday school.’”44 (Schwartz was Jewish.)
In August 1936 Julius Schwartz was busily producing the 38th (and, though he didn’t know it at the time, penultimate) issue of Fantasy Magazine. FM was the direct lineal descendent of The Science Fiction Digest, which in turn had sprung from The Time Traveler—all produced by Schwartz, Weisinger, and others. Now that Mort had moved into the professional arena, and other regulars like Conrad Ruppert had also moved on, the whole project fell on Julie’s shoulders.
In an attempt to revitalize the fanzine, and increase its subscription list, Schwartz used all his connections to put together a spectacular fifty-page issue. Fantasy Magazine #38 (1936) was an awesome achievement by any measure, without a doubt the most impressive fan magazine published up to that time. But, despite including something by just about everyone in the field, including OOB (who contributed to another round-robin story called “The Great Illusion,” along with Jack Williamson, Edmond Hamilton, and others), the response to his editorial plea for subscriptions was deemed disappointing. After a last, much smaller final issue, dated January 1937, Julie’s fanzine publishing days were over. He now would focus on other, less burdensome projects—and his work as a literary agent.
Fantasy Magazine #38 (1936) was Julius Schwartz’s last major fanzine.
In 1937 Mort, Julie, and Otto teamed up to drive across the United States in order to link up with members of SF fandom on the West coast. “Mort, Otto, and I decided to go to Los Angeles and hang out for a few weeks,” Schwartz recalled. “We had a friend living in Beverly Hills, a science fiction writer by the name of Henry Kuttner. Kuttner arranged for us to stay for a couple of weeks and introduced me to his closest friend, Jim Mooney, the artist who went on to do so much comics work for DC and Marvel.
“Otto was a good-natured guy, a wonderful companion, sort of quiet … and a good guy to hang out with. The fact that Mort, Otto, and I—and one other guy, whom I can’t remember—drove out to California twice, shows you we got along.”45
Otto Binder and Julius Schwartz meet up with Forrest J. Ackerman on a trip to California in 1937. Courtesy of the Julius Schwartz Collection.
In California they hung out with Kuttner and one of the main contributors to their fanzines, Forrest J. Ackerman. They also dated some girls that Julie thought, in retrospect, may have been “escorts”—though if they were, they didn’t get paid.
He also shared this anecdote: “On one of our trips, it may have been the first one, Mort checked to make sure that Otto and I had brought enough money to make the trip. He didn’t want us hitting him up for loans. Then, in California, he spent all his money on a girl named Henrietta. So when we stopped at a candy store on the way back to get a snack or a malted, Mort sat in the car.
Edmond Hamilton, Otto Binder, and Oswald Train in New York, ca. 1938. Courtesy of the Julius Schwartz Collection.
“Now, knowing Mort, he was stewing. When we got back, he said, ‘Okay, I’ve had enough.’ He got out of the car, climbed across a barbed wire fence to a cornfield, tore some ears of corn off the plants, and brought them back to the car where he proceeded to try to eat the raw ears of corn. Otto and I finally broke down and gave him some money.”46
By 1937 science fiction fandom had grown to the point where a convention of fans seemed feasible. The California trips had served notice to West Coasters that a cross-country trip was not too much to ask of a “trufan” (fan jargon for a true-blue fan). It also showed that New Yorkers didn’t automatically expect everyone to come to them. Still, New York had the largest number of fans in its immediate vicinity. Thus, the first convention occurred in nearby Philadelphia in 1936.
The Second Eastern Convention—the first to rent a hall and have a formal program—took place in early 1937. When the day and hour arrived, early arrivals at Bohemian Hall in Astoria on Long Island held their breath and hoped for good attendance. At first things seemed tenuous, but then Julius Schwartz, Mort Weisinger, Otis Adelbert Kline, Charles Hornig, and Otto Binder arrived, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief. The one-day convention proved a great success.
The following year, the First National SF Convention was held in Newark, New Jersey. This was the high-water mark of Binder’s involvement in fandom. Not only was he highly visible at the biggest convention yet, but he again accompanied Julie and Mort on an automobile trip to California, this time being the occasion when Otto Binder first met a young Ray Bradbury. Bradbury had just sold his first story.
By the beginning of 1937, Otto Binder had adjusted to writing without Earl’s input. Otto wrote Earl, “We have both benefited, financially and otherwise, and I’m sure neither of us has any regrets. It’s too bad in a way that we had to break it up and ‘lone wolf’ it, but I think that was inevitable, don’t you? A writer is essentially a lone worker, because writing is such a psychological thing, and each mind is a world of its own.”47 Earl planned to write occasional stories on his own, when time permitted. Eventually, he submitted both Western and solo SF stories to the pulps.
In addition, Earl earned a 10 percent commission for acting as intermediary between his brother and the Chicago-based pulp magazine publishers. Earl may not have known the markets as well as Julie and Mort, but he had the advantage of being able to drop in to the offices of Ziff-Davis for “jaw sessions” with Raymond A. Palmer, editor of Amazing. This arrangement lasted through the end of 1939. By then, Otto was selling virtually everything he wrote, even rewrites of the brothers’ early, unsold stories. (Earl got 25 percent of the fees earned by those rewritten tales, such as “Strange Vision” and “A Comet Passes.”) Despite the breakup of their partnership, Earl and Otto remained very close. In Earl, Otto was able to see what might have been his fate if he’d gotten married young, stayed in Chicag
o, and been forced to find employment in a noncreative job.
In the period between 1938 and 1941, Otto Binder produced a staggering amount of fiction. Nearly all of it saw print. “For years I sold more words than any other SF author, but I never wanted to be a writer,” Binder later declared. “I felt I had just enough ability to beat out the herd.”48 Binder was so prolific that he had to assume pen names. Magazines were reluctant to publish more than one story per author in a single issue. Thus “Gordon A. Giles” became a frequent contributor to the same magazines as Eando. The popular and influential “Via” series of stories all appeared under the Giles pen name in Thrilling Wonder Stories. OOB’s other pseudonyms were John Coleridge and Dean D. O’Brien. (Some stories written under the Coleridge and O’Brien names are said to have been mostly penned by Earl with the final draft polished by Otto.)
The frequent letters flying back and forth between Otto and Earl reveal the closeness of their relationship. They wrote about all sorts of things: the increasing certainty of war in Europe, opinions of stories by other writers in the SF pulps, philosophies of life, and much family news. These missives show Earl to be a frustrated, rather morose individual who felt trapped in his domestic situation. The death of their father Michael in October 1937 hit Earl especially hard. Their mother, who had been seriously ill about six months before, rallied. Marie Binder must have especially appreciated the checks that Otto sent whenever he could.
The “Via” series began in late 1937 with “Via Etherline,” which was written in the first person in the form of radio messages sent from astronauts on Mars to mission control on Earth. Otto was able to combine hard science, speculation, and human interest in a way that hadn’t been tried before. The “hardware” was still important, and the scientific ingenuity remained a pivotal element, but the horrific heights the first episodes reach as the space explorers desperately try to get back to Earth are a result of Binder’s emphasis on the astronauts’ emotional reactions to the various challenges and setbacks. This really was something new in SF pulps, and was soon emulated by others. The series ran for ten episodes. For many, these harrowing tales of interplanetary exploration are personal favorites among all of Binder’s pulp fiction.49
Otto Binder: The Life and Work of a Comic Book and Science Fiction Visionary Page 6