Actually, Binder’s first sale to EC was “Only Sin Deep” in Haunt of Fear #24, then “Operation Friendship” in Tales from the Crypt #41. Next he wrote a handful of stories for Crime SuspenStories and Shock SuspenStories. Binder later recalled, “In the period I worked with [Al Feldstein], our plot discussions were intensely fascinating, as he would dig down deep for the greatest emotional impact angles leading to what I think are real literary masterpieces (meaning some of Feldstein’s own work, not our collaborational items).”118
OOB broke into EC’s Weird Science-Fantasy title (#24, June 1954) with an adaptation of a story he had written in the 1930s called “The Teacher from Mars.” Binder had already selected it for reprinting in My Best Science Fiction Story, a paperback anthology edited by Leo Marguilies and Oscar J. Friend for Pocket Books that was scheduled for release about the same time as the EC comic book. In “The Teacher from Mars,” Binder again utilized the first-person technique that had made the “Adam Link” and “Via” stories so distinctive. He clearly had a lot of empathy for the downtrodden. “While I was writing the story, I was a Martian,” he said in his introduction in the text anthology, “and I was beginning to hate the whole human race for mistreating ‘my people!’ That’s how much I was thrown into the story.” Instead of emphasizing hard science, Binder chose to focus on “a living, breathing character.”
“The Teacher from Mars,” from Weird Science-Fantasy #24 (June 1954). ™ & © William M. Gaines Agent, Inc.
The story begins, “The afternoon Rocket Express train from Chicago came into the station, and I stepped off. It was a warm spring day. The little town of Elkhart, Indiana, sprawled lazily under the golden sunshine. I trudged along quiet, tree-shaded streets toward Caslon Preparatory School for Boys.
“Before I had gone far, I was discovered by the children playing here and there. With the dogs, they formed a shrill, raucous procession behind me. Some of the dogs growled, as they might at a wild animal. Housewives looked from their windows and gasped.
“So the rumors they had heard were true. The new teacher at Caslon was a Martian!
“I suppose I am grotesquely alien to human eyes. …”
In the year 2040, Earthlings and Martians are living at peace, although there had been a war between them after Earthlings landed on Mars. When a Martian teacher by the name of Professor Mun Zeerohs is the first of his race to take a teaching post on Earth, the students demonstrate how postwar prejudice against Martians is still near the surface. The boys harass him unmercifully, especially a boy named Tom Blaine, whose father is in the Space Patrol. “My father says Martians are cowards. He says that in the war, the Martians captured Earthmen and cut them to pieces slowly.”
Only when a communiqué arrives informing them that Zeerohs’s son was killed protecting Tom’s father is the boy able to conquer his prejudice against Martians. In an emotional ending, Tom says, “Every one of us here … is your son, now—if that will help a little. You’re staying of course, Professor. You couldn’t leave now if you tried.”
Binder denied that the anti-discrimination sentiments in the story were his main reason for writing it. Since this is an examination of postwar prejudice, it’s more likely that OOB was thinking about the plight of Japanese and Japanese Americans in the United States after World War II. After the unconditional surrender of Japan, the country would nominally become America’s ally, but tales of atrocities perpetrated against American prisoners of war were not easily forgotten. Even Japanese Americans who had been interned in America during the war found themselves being blamed for events that occurred overseas.
Joe Orlando’s artwork reached its EC zenith with his interpretation of Eando Binder’s Adam Link stories. “I, Robot” appeared in Weird Science-Fantasy #24 (January-February 1953). ™ & © William M. Gaines Agent, Inc.
Superior artwork by Jack Kamen on one of Binder’s best EC scripts, “Standing Room Only” in Crime SuspenStories #23 (July 1953). ™ & © William M. Gaines Agent, Inc.
“I, Robot” didn’t get adapted for another six months. When it was (in the pages of Weird Science-Fantasy), the combination of Otto Binder, writer, and Joe Orlando, artist, proved an inspired one. Much of Orlando’s artwork for EC had a scattered focus and lacked design sense, but his style gelled on these adaptations, which even the great EC artist Wallace Wood could hardly have topped. The result found favor with the fans, and several more Adam Link adaptations were done. They are the most memorable Binder stories published by EC.
“Otto Binder was an important part of this phase of my operation, though his contributions to EC seem to get overlooked,” Feldstein declared. “Perhaps that’s why his contributions to EC have drifted out of memory—because he was such a quiet and unassuming man … which masked his image as a huge writing talent.”119
In all, over two-dozen EC stories—a significant number for that small publisher—came from OOB’s typewriter. Binder’s job, as he saw it, was to emulate the writing style of Al Feldstein, who always put lots of lengthy captions into the strips. This wasn’t Binder’s normal inclination, but he did his best. The results varied in quality.
With its exploration of transvestitism, “Standing Room Only” in Crime SuspenStories #23 (July 1953) was an early success. After a man murders his twin sister, then masquerades as her, the story takes a number of unusual twists and turns. The killer gives himself away, after a few drinks, by selecting the wrong restroom at a restaurant—thus, the title. In his annotations to Russ Cochran’s Complete EC Library presentation of that story, Max Allan Collins (author of Road to Perdition) described it as “one of EC’s most daring little tales” and wrote that it was “a slick, slyly funny story with slick, slyly funny [Jack] Kamen art. This reads like Feldstein. …”
On the other hand, Collins complained that Binder’s “‘This’ll Kill You’ [also in CSS #23] is a bad story … a bald-faced lift of what has come to be considered a classic film noir: D.O.A. (1949). Still, [Reed] Crandall’s gloomy mood is noir on paper, and the introspection of the dying man is nicely handled.” Indeed, the artwork is among Crandall’s finest.
Of “Oh Henry!,” the Witch’s Cauldron offering in Vault of Horror #37 (June–July 1954), Collins dismissed the writing as “amateurish.” It was one of the few contemporary stories drawn by “Ghastly” Graham Ingels, who excelled at period tales. The surprise ending, with a little old lady preparing to carve up the man responsible for her husband’s death, was old hat for regular EC readers.
But “Close Shave” in Weird Science-Fantasy #27 is a fine allegory of race relations, published shortly before court-ordered school integration began in Arkansas, the first Deep South state to be affected by the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education decision. Otto’s words benefited from another of Reed Crandall’s superb art jobs. In that same issue, Binder also wrote “Adaptability” and the text story “Hello? Hello?” According to his records, he wrote all four stories in Haunt of Fear #26.
Good or bad, Otto Binder only had EC as a market for about a year. Bill Gaines exited the comic book business when its toned-down “New Direction” comic books (Valor, Impact, etc.), introduced at the end of 1954 to replace its suddenly discontinued horror and crime titles, received spotty distribution. In the wake of televised hearings and a nationwide crusade against comic books, the EC name was poison. Gaines had no choice but to focus on another publication, Harvey Kurtzman’s runaway success Mad, in its new magazine format.
By then, Otto Binder had landed a plum job with the most successful publisher in the comics industry.
12.
SITTING PRETTY
In the early years of the comic book industry, one publisher was dominant: National Comics, now known as DC Comics. They published the first ongoing comic books with all-new material, they published the first “theme” comic book (Detective Comics), and they published the character—Superman—who got superhero comics going, a genre that continues to be popular to the present day.
National had a fab
ulous roster of characters and a dedicated team of editors, writers, and artists. When a freelancer was accepted and regularly employed by an editor in the firm, he couldn’t help but feel that he had attained a certain summit.
But getting accepted … aye, there’s the rub. No company was harder to break into than National, due to the sheer number of talented craftsmen who were constantly beating a path to its door—and because of the quirks of the various editors and assistant editors who ran the place.
By the end of the 1940s, the books were split up among editors. Mort Weisinger had been handling the editing chores on Superman and Action Comics for years. His position was further strengthened when executive editor Whitney Ellsworth moved to California to supervise production of the Adventures of Superman television program. As editor of National’s top-selling character, and a close friend of the company’s co-owner, Jack Liebowitz, Weisinger was “first among equals” among the DC editors, who included Julius Schwartz (SF and Western titles), Jack Schiff (Batman titles), Robert Kanigher (Wonder Woman and the war comics), and Zena Brody (romance comics). Each tended to have his or her favorite writers and artists, who often did no work for the others. (This is why Gil Kane didn’t pencil Superman until Weisinger retired, and Curt Swan never drew Green Lantern.)
Sometime around November 1953, the door to National again swung open for Otto Binder. He was desperate for work, and finally—with the Fawcett lawsuit settled—his friends Weisinger and Schwartz got the green light to invite their old friend back to 480 Lexington Avenue after a four-year banishment.
Otto immediately began producing scripts for Schwartz’s two science fiction titles. His first for Strange Adventures appeared in #42 (March 1954), “I Delivered Mail from Mars” drawn by Mort Drucker and inked by Joe Giella. Binder’s debut in Mystery in Space saw print in #19 (April–May 1954), “The Great Space-Train Robbery,” with art by Gil Kane–Bernard Sachs. For Binder, this was heaven: writing SF for comic books. The plots for such stories came easily to him. A lot of the story resolutions involved questionable or at least very sketchy scientific principles, but the gimmicks were always fun, and highly visual. Here the virtue of comic books shone, as artists depicted things that could not have been portrayed in movies of the day. Binder was paired with some of the best artists at National: Carmine Infantino, Gil Kane, and Sy Barry. In all, OOB would go on to script eighty-seven stories for Schwartz over the next six years. Some of the most fondly remembered were those in the Binder-created Space Cabby series in Mystery in Space.
Otto Binder’s first story for National’s Mystery in Space was the cover-featured “The Great Space-Train Robbery!” in #19 (April–May 1954). ™ & © DC Comics.
Also upon his return to National, Binder picked up the reins of the Tommy Tomorrow feature (that he had written in the late 1940s), beginning in the Weisinger-edited Action Comics #195 (August 1954) with “Time Vault World.” Binder wrote all the rest of the Tommy Tomorrow scripts in Action until the feature was dropped in 1959, occasionally recycling ideas from his Jon Jarl stories. Binder addressed this topic in his 1948 memoir: “There is no such thing as a ‘new’ idea, unsullied, untouched, virginal. What is done is to take an old idea and dress it up in new form. And there, thank heaven, the writer faces infinity. There can be no end to the variations which can be written around a basic theme. A change of scene, of characters, of crimes, and of motivations, and you have a brand new story. Each new generation of readers faces a new world, and is ready to absorb all the old plots but re-adorned with the symbols and values he knows.”120
Mort Weisinger had bigger things in mind for Otto Binder. Due to the success of the Superman television show, Weisinger was planning an expansion of his line of comics starring the Man of Steel. Sales for Superman and Action Comics were on the rise. His first idea to take advantage of the increased interest in Superman was to spin off a comic book about the hero’s pal Jimmy Olsen.
Jimmy Olsen debuted in Superman #13 (November–December 1941), identified merely as an office boy at the Daily Planet. A couple of issues later, his full name was given for the first time. In his earliest appearances, Jimmy was portrayed as about the same age as Billy Batson, twelve or thirteen years old. Over time, he aged until he was in his later teens, though his initial appearances in the comics were infrequent and incidental. It was the Superman radio show produced by Robert Maxwell that developed the Olsen character, when his youthful impulsiveness and lack of experience gave rise to numerous rescues and other problems for the Man of Steel. By the early 1950s, Jimmy had become a frequently recurring character in the comic books.
When Maxwell set about producing the Adventures of Superman program for television, he made sure that Jimmy was part of the mix, casting the young actor James Larson in the part. The show began airing in February of 1953. Suddenly Jimmy Olsen became a household name, like those of Superman, Clark Kent, and Lois Lane.
When Weisinger broached the idea of devoting a comic book series to Jimmy, and then Lois, he ran into resistance. “The management [at National] protested that the characters weren’t strong enough and they’d never go,” Mort is quoted in Superman: The Complete History by Les Daniels. “But I had a gut feeling, and I had talked to kids.”121 He needed a top writer for the Olsen project. Binder turned out to be the perfect choice. Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen was a solid success, and ran for the next twenty years.
Otto Binder wrote all the Jimmy Olsen stories for the first thirty issues (with the exception of two, according to his records), then wrote two of the three stories in each issue through #51 (March 1961), his last until years later. Among the more significant stories written by Otto during this run were the origin of Elastic Lad (#31), the introduction of Lois Lane’s sister Lucy (#36), and the first appearance of the Superman Emergency Squad (#48).
The Jimmy Olsen series is also notable for another reason: it was the first Superman-family book that regularly employed the drawing talents of Curt Swan, who would eventually become the quintessential Superman artist for a generation of readers. Swan had done an occasional Superman story before as a fill-in, but now he was a regular in Weisinger’s bullpen, and eventually proved he had an interpretation of the lead character that Mort preferred over that of Wayne Boring, who was the chief artist for the Man of Steel until 1960.
Jimmy Olsen’s “Superman signal watch” was introduced in Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #1 (September–October 1954). All three stories in that issue were written by Otto Binder. ™ & © DC Comics.
In Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #1 (September–October 1954), the opening caption on the splash page of the first story reads, “Cocky, courageous and clever, that’s Jimmy Olsen, cub reporter for the Daily Planet. You’ve seen him on television as Superman’s plucky pal. Now join his exciting adventures when he goes in quest of sensational scoops on his own!” The tone of the series was established in “The Boy of 100 Faces!,” the first issue’s opener. Jimmy Olsen is shown to be energetic, resourceful, and somewhat reckless, getting in and out of scrapes, and relying on nifty props invented by Binder like his Superman Signal Watch and the Flying Newsroom. Interspersed are humorous incidents, like Jimmy being trapped into washing a kitchen-full of dirty dishes for some crooks in order to spy on them.
For the most part, Superman was on hand to pull the overconfident cub reporter back from the brink of disaster. In the second story in the first issue, however, Olsen proves his “pluck” by saving himself and single-handedly solving “The Case of the Lumberjack Jinx!” As Superman comments at the conclusion, “You’ve got a story to write up, junior reporter! And don’t forget to give yourself full credit. I didn’t help you at all!”
Yes, the comic book Jimmy did exclaim “Jeepers!” sometimes, after his television counterpart—but this was soon switched to “Super Duper!,” which was Otto’s idea.
Binder’s enjoyment in writing Jimmy Olsen is evident in the novel story gimmicks and the tales’ playful ambience, as well as the mix of humor and danger. In later
years, unprompted, Binder named Jimmy Olsen as his favorite character at DC to write, except for one other: Superboy.
Just as Otto Binder was virtually the only writer on Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen for its first four years, and was able to put his stamp on the character, he became chief writer on Superboy from the moment he returned to National. Having lived in Randolph, Nebraska, for much of his childhood, OOB had a feel for writing about small-town America. Because Superboy’s adventures are set in the past, the Smallville milieu has a patina of nostalgia. (We never know exactly when this past is supposed to be. Of necessity, it moved forward with the passage of time.) Binder must be given credit for the comparisons that are made between the Superboy strips and the illustrations of Norman Rockwell. Both offer a nostalgic look at a more innocent time in America.
Just as he had with Captain Marvel Junior, Otto fleshed out Clark’s teenage world. The Kents had already moved from their farm to town, and opened the Kent General Store, by the time Otto came on board. But Superboy’s secret tunnel exit from their home was Binder’s invention, and he penned the story introducing Superboy’s pet Krypto, the Dog of Steel. A scientist named Professor Potter brought scientific gimmicks into the mix, and the characters of Lana Lang and her father Professor Lang were developed. (Lana was introduced in Superboy #10, September–October 1950.)
Binder wrote Boy of Steel stories from 1954 to 1960, with a story in nearly every issue of Superboy and Adventure Comics (where Superboy was the lead feature)—and about twice a year, he composed all three stories in Superboy. He made the Boy of Steel series something surprisingly interesting and durable. Of course, it was a team effort, and artists like John Sikela, Charles Sultan, George Papp, and Curt Swan all provided admirable visual interpretations.
Otto Binder: The Life and Work of a Comic Book and Science Fiction Visionary Page 14