Binder also wrote the first story in comic books featuring Bizarro, the imperfect, artificial version of Superboy created by a scientific experiment gone awry. While Bizarro was created for the Superman daily newspaper strip written by Alvin Schwartz, the two-part Bizarro introduction in Superboy #68 (1958) is one of Binder’s best for DC.
Page from “A Visit From Superman’s Pal” in Superboy #55 (March 1957), with Binder bringing together the heroes of the two books that he scripted most often in the 1950s for National Comics. ™ & © DC Comics.
In a story that harkened back to Charlie Chaplin’s silent film classic City Lights, the Bizarro Superboy meets and helps a blind girl who can’t see his deformed face. It ends poignantly when the girl’s blindness is cured by vibrations from the explosion that destroys Bizarro. This story is a comic book classic that has been reprinted often, including in the book The Greatest Superman Stories Ever Told. Binder also scripted the next two Bizarro tales, which brought the character into the adult Superman’s world, and the especially memorable three-part story in Superman #140, “The Son of Bizarro.” He had nothing to do with the whacky “Bizarro World” series in Adventure Comics. Those were written by Superman’s co-creator Jerry Siegel, after Binder quit writing for National for a time.
Just like Adam Link, Bizarro was partly inspired by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. From Superboy #68 (October 1958). The plight of “outsiders” was a recurring theme in Binder’s stories. ™ & © DC Comics.
It will never be known for certain which of the various plots, supporting characters, and gimmicks originated with Binder or Weisinger. This is because Weisinger was more involved with plotting and creating springboards for stories than most other comics editors at the company, a fact that Otto readily acknowledged. At an appearance before a group of comic fans in 1965, Weisinger explained, “I could not ask any writer to come to me with, say, several plot ideas. I can’t say to Otto, ‘Otto, I want you to spend your weekend thinking of plots. Come in Monday morning, and I’ll pick the best one or two, and those you will write.’
“Otto is a wonderful writer. He’s written a lot of wonderful novels for me when I was editor of Thrilling Wonder Stories, but if Otto spends the weekend plotting, and he’ll come in Monday morning, and I look at the first plot, and say, ‘That looks just like the one Jerry Siegel already submitted. And this one is one we have in a drawer and I’m going to publish two months from now. This one I think is a good plot, but we just got a new directive from the Comics Code Authority, and they don’t want plots of this nature.’ So Otto says, ‘I’ve spent an entire weekend working on these plots. Now I’ve got to start all over. How am I going to make a living?’ Well, Otto is a very valuable man to me, I don’t want him to say that.
“So I tell him, and the other writers in our family, ‘Look. You don’t worry about the plot. I’ll worry about the plot. I’ll sit down, and think of springboards, and we’ll kick them around.’ I find that when a writer is relieved of the responsibility of having to write a plot, he is going to be secure. He’ll be able to develop this bare skin-and-bones skeleton of a plot that I give him, and we’ll get a fine story.”122
Binder wasn’t particularly concerned about who got the creative credit. He was working as a freelancer, and knew that any characters he originated while writing for National automatically became the property of the company. Still, without a doubt, Binder must be considered a co-creator of many of the supporting characters in the Superman family, and a large number of the most memorable stories that have been reprinted again and again.
Otto Binder was happy to be working steadily. To be a major writer for the best-selling superhero comics of the day was no comedown from his days at Fawcett. While he always maintained that he never had the passion for Superman that he had for Captain Marvel, there’s no denying that he had been just about tapped out for Marvel Family stories by the end. The switch to National was just enough to spark his creativity, thus the new scripts had a zestful, positive spirit. (This can especially be seen when you compare his Superman stories to those of Jerry Siegel, who brought darker tones and an almost fatalistic air to some of his Man of Steel stories.) Compared to the writers and artists who were competing for work in a contracting industry in the second half of the 1950s, Otto was sitting pretty.
With so many of his Fawcett colleagues drifting away, and his brother Jack now living in upstate New York, Otto’s social life brought increased contact with his old friends from science fiction fandom, and now his editors at National, Julie Schwartz and Mort Weisinger. They revived their bridge games, including (as before) Mort’s brother Eddie in their foursome. Again they played on Saturdays all day and into the night—often so late that they could hear the morning birds chirping as they broke things up and staggered to their cars. Then too, there were bridge games with the wives, and other get-togethers with the Schwartzs and Weisingers.
In 1955 Ione’s brother Frank got married, and soon wife Alice and their growing family (eventually five children) were regular visitors to the Binder residence. Frank Turek became very fond of little, blond Mary Binder, who by now had become almost chubby. On those visits, the place would be overrun with youngsters. Otto and Ione loved it, although a shadow was cast over this time by a new kind of misfortune.
Ione had become pregnant again, and gave birth to a boy they named Robert. This second child, however, had Down syndrome. Doctors in the 1950s didn’t know as much about “mongoloid” babies (as they were commonly called, due to the shape of their eyes) as they do today, but they were aware of their medical prognosis: mental retardation, shortened life span, heart problems, and a whole laundry-list of probable lesser maladies. Doctors often advised parents to institutionalize such children “for their own good.”
We cannot know the reasons why, for Otto rarely spoke of this second child outside his family, but the Binders did place Robert with similar children in a group home somewhere in New Jersey, where he would live (with their financial support) for the rest of his life. This decision—this secret—is hard to reconcile with the Binders’ loving, accepting natures. If nothing else, it shows that they were complex, imperfect people who could and did make mistakes. Although they were doubtless assured that it was the right thing to do, they might have resisted. Apparently, they didn’t. Their decision not to raise Robert must have haunted them for the rest of their days, especially in light of events to come.
Binder immersed himself in his work, and Ione lavished attention on Mary. They took refuge in the company of family and friends. They often got together with the Woolfolks and the Schaffenbergers for bridge games, and also films, some plays, and an occasional baseball game. This was the (supposedly) placid Eisenhower era, when prosperity was busting out all over, and the suburbs were growing by leaps and bounds. Many tried to pattern their family life after the families they saw on television shows such as Leave It to Beaver, Father Knows Best, and The Donna Reed Show.
“That’s how I best remember Ione from that period,” niece Patricia Turek recalled. “She dressed something like Donna Reed. You know, the hair, the pearl necklace, the dress that poofed out. Very flawless-looking. I think she really did try to be the perfect wife.”123 For his part, Otto would never be the typical button-down commuter husband. He continued to write in his pajamas and robe, puffing on cigars as he worked in his upstairs office.
Of course, Otto, Ione, and Mary were no strangers at Jack and Olga’s place in Warrensburg, New York. Their niece Bonnie, who was then a teenager, recalled, “I can never think of a time when all my brothers and sisters didn’t rally around when they knew “Unk” (our nickname for Otto) was coming to visit. We could hardly wait for them to arrive. We would go fishing on the river early in the morning. Jack and Otto would shoot 8mm movies of us. We’d laugh and joke and have a wonderful time. Unk was a warm, gentle, marvelous person.
“Ione was kind, too. When I was visiting their place in 1957, a hurricane blew in and blew out. Afterwards, we found a par
akeet who had been blown by the storm into one of their backyard trees. Aunt Ione and I coaxed it down, and I adopted it. I really felt like I had two sets of parents.”124
Bonnie described Otto’s daily writing routine, which she witnessed firsthand while visiting Unk. “He would get up in the morning, get his coffee, and I think it was two ounces of cream and two teaspoons of sugar, and two pieces of dry toast. He’d put them on a tray and go upstairs. Nobody was to disturb him. Then, at ten o’clock, Ione would take up another cup of coffee and more toast and put it outside the door. And it was clack, clack, clack, clack all day, until three o’clock in the afternoon. He would then take a shower, get dressed, come downstairs, and start his cocktails.”125
13.
THE MOST DIFFICULT MAN IN COMICS
The main difference between his work experience in the second half of the 1950s and that of a decade earlier was the difficulty Otto Binder had working with the editor of the Superman comic books. At Fawcett, his relationships with his editors were all good, with Binder later heaping praise on them, especially Wendell Crowley, who had been his editor for most of those years. All seemed quite benevolent.
Mort Weisinger wasn’t a benevolent editor. He was, quite simply, the most difficult man to work for in the comics business—and he was getting more irascible and egotistical as time went on. Freed in the mid-1950s from the supervision of Whitney Ellsworth, Weisinger began to feel more at liberty to launch into angry tirades at the drop of a hat, playing writers against each other (“Bill Finger thinks you’re a bum”) and arrogantly lord it over the other editors at National. He would reject story ideas from one writer, only to suggest them to another writer, passing them off as his own concepts. (In fairness, it should be said that Weisinger has had an occasional champion, like artist Dick Sprang. But Sprang worked through the mail from Arizona, which was a far different thing than dealing with the man in person day after day.)
“Mort was an unbelievable character,” Binder recalled in an interview late in life, when he felt freer to talk frankly. “One afternoon, we were all sore at him. I got mad as hell, and told him off for a half an hour. Called him every goddam name I could think of. I walked out, and went to see Julie, and Mort comes down the hall and says, ‘Are you going to have lunch with me, Otto?’ He didn’t believe a word I’d said! So I said, ‘Okay, Mort.’ And I went to lunch with him, and believe it or not, we got along fine. I’d said everything I had to say, and he didn’t believe a word of it.
“There’s just something in Mort’s mind, where he really believes he’s the greatest guy on earth … and that no one could dislike him! He really believes that! If someone told him, ‘Otto hates your guts,’ he wouldn’t believe it for a second. If someone quoted me saying that, he’d be one hundred percent sure that I had been misquoted. That’s just the way his mind worked. He lived in a world of his own.”126
Mort Weisinger, ca. 1961.
Courtesy of Jean Bails.
Otto recalled, “One day [Mort] went up to Julie [Schwartz] and said, ‘You can’t have Otto anymore.’ He didn’t ask me whether I wanted to write for Julie, and of course, I wanted to because Julie was easier to work for. He could be finicky, but there was a good back-and-forth exchange with him. But no, Mort had to have his way. It was a quarrel. Julie said, ‘For Christ’s sake, Mort, how can you just take him away? That isn’t right. You can’t do that!’ So when I went to Julie the following week, he said, ‘You can’t write for me. Mort will make trouble.’ Mort was that kind of a guy. Crazy, crazy. He was a madman. It’s a wonder I didn’t go mad!”127
“My last science fiction scripts for DC were in January 1959,” Otto wrote in his notes, “at which time Mort Weisinger ‘commandeered’ me wholly for his Superman group of comics, paying me higher rates.”128
Mort’s rationale for this was that he needed Otto not only to sustain the successful launch of the supporting Superman titles, but to allow the writer more time to help Weisinger reinvigorate the “universe” of the Man of Steel. Without condoning Weisinger’s methods, it’s possible in retrospect to understand that Binder’s talents were better utilized working on the Superman line than on “one-off” science fiction stories. His Superman work would become a part of a mythos for the character who was National’s top seller. (The sales of Superman still approached a million copies per issue.)
Unlike Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane first had to prove herself in two issues of Showcase, National’s try-out vehicle, to see how readers responded to a whole book featuring Superman’s girlfriend. Of the six stories in Showcase #8 and 9 (August and October 1957), Binder wrote four: “The New Lois Lane,” “Mrs. Superman,” “Jilting of Superman,” and “The Forbidden Krypton Box.” The readers approved. Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane began publication with its first issue bearing a March–April cover date.
Otto didn’t write quite as much for Lois in her own book as he did for Superboy or Jimmy Olsen—generally a single story in each issue, from #1 through #27. The other scribes were Robert Bernstein, Leo Dorfman, and Edmond Hamilton. But he contributed something really important: a first-class artist for Lois Lane. It was Otto who suggested Kurt Schaffenberger to Mort Weisinger. Schaffenberger had done excellent work on the Marvel Family, but had been struggling after their demise. At that time, industry rates dropped considerably, and Kurt scrambled around, working for anybody who would have him: Gleason, Atlas, Gilberton, and Premier. In 1955 he found steady work with Richard Hughes at ACG (American Comics Group) and became their top cover artist on Forbidden Worlds, Unknown Worlds, and Adventures into the Unknown. Then his close friend Otto got him a berth at National, with the best pay in the industry.
Lois Lane and Superman. Art by Kurt Schaffenberger. ™ and © DC Comics.
Schaffenberger had a slick, precise style, and was especially adept at drawing women—not just their faces, but their mannerisms, the way their bodies moved, and the way they dressed. “Kurt Schaffenberger’s artwork was simply excellent!” Otto enthused. “I think he ‘made’ Lois Lane by his artwork. More importantly, he tells the story with his art. Many artists kill a story by failing to make good transitions from panel to panel to keep the continuity intact. Choosing how to show each scene is vital and Kurt always chooses right.”129
While Jimmy, Superboy, and Lois were the three characters that Binder wrote the most for in the late 1950s, he also scripted the hero who started it all, Superman himself. Some of his most memorable stories are “The Invulnerable Enemy,” “Titano, the Super Ape,” “The Story of Superman’s Life,” and “Superman’s Battle with Hercules.” He also planted the seed for what would become a series of “imaginary stories” about the Superman family.
As early as “Superboy’s Most Amazing Dream,” in Adventure #211 (April 1955), Binder demonstrated a penchant for presenting alternate realities for established characters by the use of the dream story device. It may have been born out of Otto’s own daydreams about how his life might have been different if he had made different choices. From a practical standpoint, the dream stories offered more plot possibilities to a writer who was turning out as many as four short Superboy scripts each month.
But it was with the publication of “Superman’s Other Life” in Superman #132 (1959) that the most direct antecedent to the popular “imaginary story” series appeared. In this three-part tale, which ranks as one of Binder’s true masterworks for the Superman titles, Superman sees what his life would have been like if Krypton hadn’t exploded, and he had never been rocketed to Earth as a child. In the story, Batman and Robin suggest (as their birthday gift) that Superman feed available data into his Super Univac computer, which will then predict what would have happened on an attached television screen. What follows differs from the subsequent imaginary stories in that it allows Superman, Batman, and Robin to comment on the action in the story, as they watch it unfold before their eyes. In the course of the tale, Superman finds out that he would have had a younger brother, that Krypton would have had its own he
ro named Futuro, and that he would eventually have ended up becoming Superman on Krypton. Interestingly, the tale is presented as though it truly is what would have happened to Superman if Krypton hadn’t been doomed.
The first official imaginary story was “Mr. and Mrs. Clark (Superman) Kent” in Lois Lane #19 (August 1960). The authorship is in question. Jerry Siegel claimed he wrote it, and so did Otto Binder. With the number of stories they produced, it’s hardly surprising that memories can get mixed up. Otto openly admitted that his records were not perfect, though he estimated they were “ninety-eight percent correct.”
Superman #132 (October 1959). ™ and © DC Comics.
Clark Kent becomes Super-Sister in Superboy #78 (January 1960). ™ and © DC Comics.
Binder also added tales to the mythos that had forward-looking subtexts. In “Claire Kent, Alias Super-Sister” (Superboy #78, 1960), Superboy dreams that he wakes up one morning to find himself transformed into a girl. He then finds that his life as a girl is far more constrained than that of a boy, providing a subtle but unmistakable proto-feminist message. Upon encountering Super-Sister, one of the townspeople says, “Hmff! You may not be as able as Superboy, Super-Sister! After all, super or not … you’re just a girl!” In return, she thinks, “I’ll show them that Super-Sister can do as well as Superboy!” Indeed she does.
Otto Binder: The Life and Work of a Comic Book and Science Fiction Visionary Page 15