The accident took place at Dwight Morrow Junior High, just three blocks from the Binder home. Mary knelt to pick up some books in a school driveway when she was struck by a car and instantly killed. The Bergen County Evening Record on the following day conveyed all the important details in the article headlined, “Car Kills Teen-Age Girl In Sight Of Classmates.”
Frank and Alice Turek, ca. 1965. Photo courtesy of Michael Turek.
Mary and Ione Binder. Photo courtesy of Michael Turek.
Frank and Alice’s daughters Patricia and Elizabeth in January 1964. Photo courtesy of Michael Turek.
Mary standing in front of the vacant lot adjacent to the Binder home. Photo courtesy of Michael Turek.
Mary in an image taken from a Binder family Christmas card ca. 1958. Photo courtesy of Michael Turek.
Patricia Turek added, “The boy [twenty-year-old Brian Hetzel] was mentally handicapped and didn’t have a driver’s license. He had no business being behind the wheel of a car.” Hetzel and a sixteen-year-old passenger were motoring on the driveway looking for a friend. Witnesses said the car was moving rather slowly, and Hetzel later said that he saw the two girls in the driveway and thought they had passed the area. What seems to have happened is the boys were looking around for their friend when they struck Mary Binder. It was later described as a “freak accident,” something so unlikely that it almost seemed as if fate had gone out of its way to end Mary’s life.
The death of their daughter—a beautiful girl, with such promise—was the event that colored the rest of Otto’s and Ione’s lives in the darkest of hues.
The impact was felt almost as keenly by Ione’s brother Frank, who was especially attached to Mary. His daughter Patricia remembers him openly weeping at the news, remarkable because of his usual emotional reserve.
“It was as if Mary was an angel, and God needed her in heaven,” Patricia said. “Have you heard the expression, ‘she was too good for this world’? That really seemed to apply to Mary.”
Jack and Olga were devastated, and the loss resounded throughout the Binders and Tureks. Many of Otto and Ione’s friends had grown attached to Mary, and even if they hadn’t, who couldn’t understand how much the death of a fourteen-year-old daughter would mean to her parents?
The funeral was held on March 29. William Woolfolk said, “It was a terrible, terrible, terrible thing. I couldn’t go to her funeral. It was just too much.”196 Michael and John Cassiello, two teenage boys who lived next door to the Binders and knew Mary quite well, were shattered by her demise. “I was profoundly affected by Mary’s death,” Michael Cassiello recently wrote. “I still keep four photos of Mary displayed in my living room. Even forty-eight years later, on March 27 and Sept 13 (Mary’s birthday), I never forget to reflect on the tragedy. She was very intelligent. I will always remember that when asked (even as a young child) ‘what do you want to be when you grow up,’ she would say ‘a scientist.’ What would she have accomplished?”197
The students at Dwight Morrow, many of whom attended Mary’s funeral, started a memorial scholarship fund in her name. The Binders were quoted in the Evening Record as saying, “Because any contribution of any kind which helps anyone, children or adults, means so much to us, we ask that you, if you wish, contribute to Memorial House as we are doing, for all funds personally addressed to us by relatives and friends go there.” Otto formally requested that the school block automobile access to certain parts of the Dwight Morrow campus (including the area where his daughter was killed).
The next year was an awful one for Otto and Ione. Despite a trip to Paris in November 1967 (with Frank’s family) for a complete change of scene, both drank more than ever to numb their grief. Ione’s behavior became increasingly erratic, and Otto was lost in despair.
Somehow, despite being prostrate with grief, Binder still had to make a living. He had commitments to fulfill. Perhaps in the demands and routine of work, he found some solace from his pain—if nothing else, a reason to get up in the morning. His agent Roger Elwood was able to broker deals with a number of publishers of paperback originals on Binder’s behalf. Belmont, Collier, Bantam, Curtis, Popular Library, and Fawcett Gold Medal together published about a dozen books by Binder over the next eight years.
What We Really Know About Flying Saucers (1967) finally went to press. Binder had already spun excerpts into articles such as one in the June 1967 issue of Mechanix Illustrated. (It was no coincidence that Fawcett published both the book and the magazine.) “10,000,000 UFO witnesses can’t be wrong!” began with some eye-opening statistics from the book:
A Gallup Poll discloses the astonishing fact that five million Americans claim to have seen an UFO at one time or another since 1947. Even if eighty per cent of these so-called sightings can be proved to be of such ordinary objects as balloons, high-flying aircraft, birds, stars, etc., that leaves one million unsatisfied witnesses. In America alone!
But UFOs also have been reported from more than seventy other countries and the estimated grand total of living witnesses for this little orb called Earth exceeds ten million. Ten million men, women and children who have seen something out of the ordinary in the sky!198
The book was destined to become one of Binder’s top selling paperback originals, although he didn’t know that when he launched into writing a sequel of sorts. Flying Saucers Are Watching Us, for Belmont, bore the lurid cover text, “Startling new scientific discoveries and sexual experimentation lead to an astonishing theory: that a race of men from outer space is the long sought after ‘missing link’ in human development.”
This was no rewrite of What We Really Know About Flying Saucers, but a speculation based on the results Max Flindt had submitted to Space World in the form of a twelve-page paper called Tip-Toeing Past Darwin. Flindt was an engineer and scientific researcher who had been senior lab technician at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley, California, and had worked for two prominent scientists (Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg and Dr. Edward Teller). He had also worked at Lockheed on classified space work, and in research at Stanford University on biological studies.
Max Flindt’s basic theory was that beings from outer space had appeared on Earth eons ago and mated with humans, which (he maintained) explained numerous questions about the evolution of the human race. Binder was fascinated by that idea, and used it (giving Flindt appropriate credit) as a jumping-off point for a book that runs the gamut of titillating theories about aliens, especially the sexual side of abduction stories. It was published in 1968, and carries a dedication, “To my deceased daughter Mary L. Binder, my greatest ‘fan’ …”
What We Really Know About Flying Saucers (1967) was Otto Binder’s first book to explore UFO phenomena. ™ and © the Estate of Otto Binder.
Meanwhile, Otto’s situation at DC Comics became increasingly difficult and frustrating, not in this case due to problems with Weisinger (who was nearing retirement), but rather the way management was sticking to business practices long accepted in the comics industry. The workers had no benefits: no paid vacations, no sick leave, no health care coverage. Since the Depression, workers during comics’ Golden Age were generally grateful to have jobs, and didn’t want to make waves. Most were young, and had yet to face serious medical conditions.
Writers and artists were freelancers who sold all rights to their “work-for-hire” upon cashing their checks. The workers were paid by the amount of product they turned out. This went back to the owners thinking of producing comic books in the same way garment-makers think of producing pants. Creativity was a component to be bought like fabric and thread. Once the product was used up, it would be thrown away and replaced by another.
Or would it? “Work-for-hire” meant creative folk weren’t paid for reprints of the stories they wrote, drew, lettered, or colored. The fact that reprints were “free” to the company was one of the main reasons their use was increased dramatically through the 1960s, as a way of fighting rising costs and maximizing profits. An explosion of annuals a
nd reprints in the back of regular comic books meant, in essence, that Binder was losing work to himself. Many of the reprints of the Superman family were tales he’d written between 1954 and 1960. Bill Finger, who was not a fast writer but was one of the best in the business, was especially angry about the lack of payment for reprints.
At the 1998 Comicon International in San Diego, prominent DC writer John Broome recalled, “I developed a fixed idea that DC should pay us for reprint material. When they reprinted a whole story without paying us, that was a stealing of our abilities. It was stealing something away from us. I knew that, in movies and television and ASCAP [the composers’ union], they paid royalties … so I thought comics should pay royalties and I talked to the other writers.”199
The issues of “work-for-hire” and health insurance weren’t unrelated. Freelancers could seldom afford to pay for health insurance independently, when their markets were filling books with reprint material—much of it written or drawn by themselves. Health insurance was especially important to Otto, because of the costs he was incurring for psychiatric help for Ione and monthly upkeep for Robert.
Thus occurred what has come to be known as the “writers’ rebellion” at DC, a matter that was a strict secret for many years. Otto Binder, Bill Finger, John Broome, Arnold Drake, and Gardner Fox were involved, as was a single artist, Kurt Schaffenberger. Some of them individually met with management to see what could be done. Their requests were deemed unreasonable and were firmly rejected. This response was a blow, but the ensuing repercussions were the worst part.
In the book Superman at Fifty (1987), Denny O’Neil wrote, “Only last year, after I’d been working in comics for two decades, I learned that I was originally hired by DC in 1968 because a few of the regular scripters had asked—not demanded, asked—for health insurance. The reply was instant dismissal. (Today, employment and compensation practices are eminently fair; score one for progress.)”200
But there’s no evidence Otto Binder was instantly dismissed from DC, and he never said that his participation in the writer’s rebellion led to the termination of his work for DC. Binder maintained that his cessation of work at the firm was of his own volition.
In a letter in late 1968 to Louis Black, when the Binders were planning to move to upstate New York, Otto wrote, “I’m kissing off Mort Weisinger and his Superman line, as it is impossible to work with him by mail, and I cannot come down to see him every week. But naturally I’m going to praise the Lord for that, getting him off my neck.”201
To Dick Lupoff, a year later, he wrote, “I [have] switched [back] to my first love, science fiction. It’s just as well I quit comics cold as I heard that as soon as Mort Weisinger retired (as editor of Superman), the new editors dropped his writers and artists (the usual custom).”202 But this was at best only partly true, because Curt Swan continued on Superman for years. After all, the new editor of the Superman title was Binder’s old friend, Julius Schwartz. And Otto had been writing for another editor in the late 1960s, Murray Boltinoff, on stories for Mystery in Space.
Comics historian Mark Evanier evinces the view that the parting of the ways was not for one clear-cut reason. He wrote, “I think it’s a little simplistic to say the new editors dropped the old talent. First of all, [Carmine] Infantino was the main one assigning such things and he’d already started shaking up the talent on Weisinger’s books, even before Mort left. Just about all the writing assignments on all DC comics changed about this time. A few of the writers who’d been writing for Weisinger did still work for DC. Leo Dorfman, for instance, and Bob Haney.
“Binder saw the whole company changing and a lot of longtime editors and freelancers being cut loose. If anyone there was willing to use him (and after the rebellion, that was probably discouraged), he must have known it wouldn’t last long. All of the DC editors except [Murray] Boltinoff preferred to work with new writers.”203
Before giving up comics entirely, Otto added a third phase to his horror comics oeuvre (after EC and Warren) with stories for Web of Horror (WoH) from Major Magazines, Inc., publishers of Cracked. Creepy and Eerie had gone to reprints, so the timing was right for a competitor to make inroads. WoH became the recipient of the pent-up creativity of a number of the best young artists in comics. Binder likely got wind of the upcoming magazine at one of the informal monthly meetings of comics writers and artists in New York City. Clark Dimond, who had been writing stories for Warren, recently recalled, “I only met Otto [Binder] once, at a New York professional comics group meeting. It was around the time Jim Warren stopped paying the artists and writers at Creepy and Eerie. [Binder] may have heard from me, or Jeff Jones, or Bernie Wrightson, that Web of Horror was in the works. We were all pretty pissed off at Warren at the time. I had suggested to Terry [Bisson] that we start our own magazine. Word of work was often passed around at those monthly meetings.”204 It’s also possible Binder heard about the new magazine directly from Robert Sproul, owner of Major Magazines, Inc.205
Bisson was named editor of the new magazine. With artwork by Jeff Jones, Bernie Wrightson, Roger Brand, Ralph Reese, and Frank Brunner, the short-lived magazine allowed old-timer Binder to rub shoulders with a whole new generation of talents, many who would drive the comics industry in the 1970s and beyond. His status as an EC comics alum helped him gain acceptance by the young creators.
Fandom welcomed the magazine with open arms. “Web of Horror absolutely blew me away when it came out,” comic book writer-artist Michael T. Gilbert said. “This seemed like a real opportunity for a new EC, spearheaded by Wrightson (Ingels), Kaluta (Williamson), and Reese (Wood). It was great while it lasted.”206
In Web of Horror #2 (February 1970) Otto Binder wrote and Mike Kaluta drew “Sea of Graves,” about an ancient pyramid on the bottom of the sea, and “Man-Plant from the Tomb,” with art by Ralph Reese. In #3, he again collaborated with the same two: “Dead End” with Kaluta, and “Curse of the Yeti” with Reese, which was cover-featured. “Dead End” was an especially effective tale, with its protagonist who finds himself driving on a road into the future. He ends up unable to leave the road, until he reaches a sign that announces DEAD END. When asked about what he remembered about working on the two Binder-written stories, Mike Kaluta said, “I was so caught up in trying to draw them, I don’t recall my reaction to the scripts themselves. I was quite new to it all. Coming up with the sort of metaphysical take on “Dead End” was an epiphany for me, and, since I wasn’t really strong enough to carry a non-fantasy-looking story with any authority, adding the ‘giant gears of time’ saved it all, as far as my art went.”207
From Web of Horror #3 (April 1970). ™ & © respective copyright holders.
Unfortunately, after three excellent issues, the publisher and the finished artwork for the fourth issue vanished. “The publisher just packed up and left town,” Bernie Wrightson recalled. “Bruce Jones and I went out to the office … in Queens or Long Island. We just walked in and the office was empty. They were just gone. [Later] the publisher turned up in Florida.”208 Web of Horror hit its own “dead end” just as it was gaining momentum. To this day, some fans believe that Web of Horror pushed Jim Warren into getting new and better material for Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella.
Meanwhile, Otto Binder lost a market for his work. He didn’t care. In fact, he had already moved on, and was more than ready to concentrate on other types of writing.
17.
A NEW LIFE
“The house that Captain Marvel built” had been a place of good cheer. Now, after Mary’s death, it was like a mausoleum. Where once there had been convivial barbecues and impromptu jam sessions, with lively conversation and children’s laughter reverberating through the premises, now came bursts of anger and tears, alternating with dark depression.
Otto came to a decision: he was through with the comics rat race. He wanted to eliminate that reminder of his late daughter—because she shared her first name with one of the gems in his comic book crown.
“
I remember talking to Otto soon after his daughter’s death,” Roy Thomas recalled. “He told me that he didn’t have the enthusiasm for [comics writing] any more. He hinted that with his daughter’s death, it was a little too painful, and he would just as soon forget about comics.”209
The Binders decided to sell the house in Englewood. Remaining there would have consigned them to a kind of purgatory, facing phantoms of Mary everywhere. Also, with Otto’s income much reduced, they had little choice but to adopt a more modest lifestyle. As he put it to Jim Steranko, “We finally made up our minds to ‘start a new life.’ I quit DC and comics entirely and went back into the sci-fi paperback field.”210
Otto contacted his brother Jack, asking if he knew of any inexpensive properties in the Lake George area. He wanted to move closer to Jack and Olga and their family. Fortunately, on September 17, 1968, a $7,500 cash settlement had been made by the New Jersey Superior Court against the driver of the car that had killed Mary. With that, and whatever equity had been regained in the Englewood house (including the vacant lot next door, which the Binders also owned), Otto was able to purchase a modest home near Chestertown, New York, about a mile from Jack and Olga’s place. Niece Patricia Turek recalled, “The house they moved to in upstate New York was about as far into the boonies as you could get.”211
Before they could move, Ione lost her grip again. Michael Uslan, who remained in touch with Binder, said, “The two of them just couldn’t deal with it, and Ione began to spiral downward mentally, emotionally. She was functioning less and less, and she was dealing with reality less and less. So now Otto had lost his daughter and felt like he was losing his wife. In reaction to that, he began to drink even more, to drink more heavily. Substantially so, as I recall. Then at some point of time in her spiral, Ione tried to set the house on fire, and he had to have her committed.”212
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