The only corroboration of the fire story has been provided by Dennis Cresswell, the Binders’ next door neighbor on Voorhees, although it attributes the cause differently. “In early January [1969], Otto came close to burning his house down when he cut up his Christmas tree and started burning it in the fireplace. Soon the flames were out of control and were licking up over the mantel and scorching the wall. I was a young, dumb writer of documentary film scripts at the time, and I was in awe of Otto and his talent. I could not believe that this brilliant man did not know you can’t safely burn a Christmas tree in the fireplace.”213 Indeed, it seems clear that Binder was covering for Ione. Fear for her safety (and his own) fits with his decision to have her institutionalized a second time.
Chestertown, New York, was a community of some sixteen hundred inhabitants, more if you count those who lived nearby and were served by the handful of shops, restaurants, and gas stations that comprised its downtown area. The closest “big city” was Albany, some eighty miles to the south. The towns of Igerna, Riparius, and Darrowsville are nearby.
The Binders bought a house on Friend’s Lake Road, even though they had never seen it without its thick snow cover. The land was hilly, ringed with pine and spruce woods, and very beautiful. Their new home was more modest than the New Jersey place, though still in the white Colonial style. Tucked away in the pines, with no neighbors closer than half a mile, the house was quite isolated. They moved there in February 1969. (It’s not clear how the move dovetailed with Ione’s hospitalization in early January.)
In wintertime the area was replete with picture-postcard images of rustic homes and snow-laden mailboxes. The many paintings of covered wooden bridges could all have been made within a ten-mile radius. Television reception was spotty. The Binders would sometimes need to have their long driveway plowed to get out after a snowfall. When spring arrived, he wrote a friend, “Our new home is wonderful. We both love it. The beautiful woodland setting and untouched surroundings are superb. And oddly enough, we had quite mild weather with no real storms at all, whereas Jersey was blasted by five weekend blizzards in a row. Precognition? I moved in time.
Otto and Ione had lived in their home on Friend’s Lake Road near Chestertown, New York, for a couple of years when this photograph was taken. Courtesy of Jan Tabert. Photo of the house from the road is courtesy of Michael Turek.
“A new thing—my new bag—is writing for the Encyclopedia Brittanica! Yes, the real thing. They just couldn’t do without me. Actually, I’m writing for the Young Children’s EB, a branch project of theirs. This work came through my old writing pal (now editor of the project) W. Ryerson Johnson. The pay is $25 a page, whereas the best in comics was $16 … and half the work.”214 Binder was also finishing up a new SF novel.
Even though Otto worked steadily through the year, the Binders found themselves in another financial crisis with the coming of 1970, the most severe yet. Ione was much improved, for which Otto was grateful, but their bank account was drained by medical bills. They had no health insurance. They couldn’t afford it. The only substantial asset Binder had left was his inventory of old comic books with his stories, which he kept neatly stacked on shelves in their garage. There were lots of Fawcett comics from the 1940s, and DC comics from the 1950s, numbering in the hundreds. Most were probably in no better than “Very Good” condition, since he let his nephews and nieces read them, and referred to them often himself.215 (He didn’t, however, have the early Golden Age issues, since he’d sold some of the choicest items to Phil Seuling during an earlier cash crunch.)
Trusting Jerry Bails implicitly, Binder offered the comics to him at any terms Bails deemed fair. Did he want to buy them outright, in one large lot? Bails wrote back that he wasn’t interested in the comics as a collector, but would handle the sale for OOB just for the chance to microfilm them. He would type up sale lists, place the ads, and fulfill orders. He would send the Binders checks as the sales added up. Bails suggested that Binder could add to the value of the comics by signing them. Binder did so for the majority of the items.
“I realize that the DCs and most of the [other comics] are not Golden Age and thus can’t fetch high prices,” Binder wrote Bails on January 10, 1970. “Whatever the market bears is okay with me. These will all be listed issue by issue by my wife, starting with the Fawcett books, then working through the others. As fast as they’re listed, I’ll ship them to you.”
Bails was as good as his word, and within a couple of months the Binders’ financial crunch was successfully surmounted. By then, incoming royalty checks and payment for other writing assignments was sufficient to pay the bills.
In the midst of the flurry of letters and packages back and forth to Jerry came Otto’s letter telling of the death of Wendell Crowley, who passed away on February 18, 1970. Binder wrote to Jerry Bails, “Sad news. Wendell Crowley passed away four days ago. The operation on his heart, to put a new plastic valve in, replacing the one he had some five years ago, was apparently successful, but post-operative complications set in (unspecified) leading to his demise.
“He had been one of my closest friends, going way back to when he first worked in my brother Jack’s art-shop as editor, then for Fawcetts for many years where we had the close association of turning out most of the Capt. Marvel & Co. books. [A] Golden Era it was for us, both in money and creative fervor.”
In the wooded quiet, living close to nature, Ione and Otto began a new kind of life together. Their love had endured through their greatest crisis, and if neither was the same afterward, they still held onto each other and found a way to go on.
It was wonderful to have Jack and Olga living just a mile away. They hadn’t lived in close proximity for twenty years. The Jack Binders resided in an eight-room, two-story place, about a hundred and fifty years old, made of hand-hewn timbers with a full cellar, on about an acre of ground. In his barn, Jack had a large workshop, for he had developed a thriving business fabricating commercial outdoor sculptures. These could be used for made-to-order outdoor displays for stores, motels, and any other commercial establishment that wanted a touch of the unique. He developed the plastics and the coloring methods himself. Signs and statuary by Jack were visible throughout the Chestertown area, on motels and dude ranches, as well as other businesses and homes.
Jack Binder’s biggest project was making life-size figures of soldiers from the French and Indian War for large dioramas at Fort William Henry near Lake George. He designed all the figures for a series of displays about life in those pre-Revolutionary War days, including weapons, clothing, food, and tools. Then, when the fort burned down, Jack was paid to rebuild and expand all the previous exhibits.
“Many of the most precious memories of my time with Unk were after they’d moved to Chestertown,” Bonnie recalled. “By then, I was a married woman, and Unk just loved my four daughters. They always knew he loved them as much as he loved me. One thing I liked most about him, as a young mother, was that he had all these cute little nicknames for my daughters. Our second daughter Angela was a very active young lady who was always being told ‘No, no, Angela.’ So he named her No-No Angela. Hilary he always called our Hilarious Hilary. It was so endearing.”216
Otto set up his telescope on the patio for stargazing and searching for UFOs, and Ione made friends with the local fauna. She befriended a family of raccoons, whose mother only had three legs because one had been caught in a trap. The mother and her three babies would come right up to the door, and Ione fed them marshmallows. For a big night out, she and Otto went to town for bowling and Chinese food.
Binder spent a good deal of time in his workroom on the second floor of the house, pounding away at his typewriter. While he worked, his wife busied herself with projects around the house, or reading, or writing letters to friends. She dreamed of working with children in some capacity, and tried her hand at writing children’s books.
Otto Binder adapted several novels into comics form for Pendulum’s Illustrated Stories, some re
printed by Marvel such as Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, in Marvel Classics Comics #4 (1976). Cover by Gil Kane and Dan Adkins. Interior art by Romy Gamboa and Ernie Patricio. ™ and © Marvel Characters, Inc.
Occasionally, he would be contacted by a comics publisher about doing some scripts. “I offered Otto work on [Marvel’s] black-and-white horror magazines around 1972,” Roy Thomas recalled. “He just wasn’t interested.”217 The only writing by Binder that saw print in contemporary Marvel comics was part of the Marvel Classics Comics series in 1976, which included his adaptations of H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine and Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. They were packaged and produced by Vince Fago, and had originally been part of the Pendulum Illustrated Classics series.
In a letter to Jerry and Jean Bails, Ione wrote:
I am preparing for my brother and five kids for Thanksgiving, expecting to go back to my full-time job and doing up the house. It is a doll-house, 100 years old and very funny. If I’m lucky, I’ll get a book out about my experiences up here. Have you ever had a visiting snake in your living room? Or fed tame raccoons or had one in your living room, welcoming himself? Also squirrels and chipmunks … [and] chickadees who call back to you … ? Well, it’s quite a new experience to me, born and bred City girl … from Chicago. I adore it up here. The fall this year was extraordinary.
We sure envy you your new child. For us there will never be any more, due to age, finances, etc., but I am hopeful that someday there will be a day care center in our lovely barn and I can afford to have it converted for working mothers. I’d run a nursery school but I am not qualified. Well, we shall see.218
Finally, Otto Binder was able to indulge his passion for fishing, for there are many lakes and streams in the area. One of his favorite places to fish was beautiful Loon Lake, not far from their house. He owned a small, motorized aluminum boat for that purpose, getting out on the water two or three days a week. When times were lean and the cupboard bare, he knew he could always fish for their dinner.
“He used to take me fishing when we would visit,” Patricia Turek fondly reminisced. “Just him and me. He was quite a fisherman. I remember him being very gentle. My father was an explosive manic person, and Uncle Otto was almost a complete contrast to that. He never made me put the worm on the hook because I hated that. Sometimes while we were fishing, or doing other things, he used to talk to me about UFOs. In fact, we saw one together.
“We used to live in Pelham, New Hampshire, which was a small town right over the line from Lowell, Massachusetts. Uncle Otto and Aunt Ione came to visit one time that I’ll never forget. You could see more of the sky up there than you can anywhere else because it’s just country. We had about an acre of land there. We even had our own brook, and the woods all around seemed to go on forever.
“Otto and I were in the back yard, just the two of us, when we saw a UFO. It was red, and bright—and it wasn’t Mars. Otto was able to clarify that for me. It was moving slowly, and it disappeared after a few seconds. But it was there long enough for us to have that experience together.
“It was a special time because he was the one who helped me to understand that we are not alone,” she concluded.219
Leaving comic books gave Binder the time, and the financial impetus, to write more freelance articles. Most of them were about UFOs in one way or another. His best customer was Gambi Publications, Inc., whose Saga men’s magazine was at the height of its popularity. Saga, like other magazines of its ilk, ran sensational articles geared to appeal to their male readership on guns, hunting, government conspiracies, sex, and other subjects, including UFOs.
For Binder, like many others from science fiction fandom, the moon landing of Apollo 11 in July 1969 was an especially electrifying event. Interplanetary exploration was a dream he’d long harbored, and having been writing a bit for NASA, he may also have felt that he contributed in some small way to the achievement. What came next was surprising, even for Otto.
Although the details aren’t clear, Binder was contacted after the fact by ham radio enthusiasts who claimed they had intercepted radio signals from Neil Armstrong on the moon that were hushed up by NASA. In an article titled “Secret Messages from UFOs” in Saga’s UFO Special Vol. III, Binder wrote,
Certain sources with their own VHF receiving facilities that bypassed NASA broadcast outlets claim there was a portion of Earth-Moon dialogue that was quickly cut off by the NASA monitoring staff.
It was presumably when the two moon walkers, Aldrin and Armstrong, were making the rounds some distance from the LEM that Armstrong clutched Aldrin’s arm excitedly and exclaimed, “What was it? What the hell was it? That’s all I want to know.”
There followed further snatches of gasping interchanges between the two astronauts, with mission control also chiming in frantically. “What’s there? … malfunction (garble) … Mission control calling Apollo 11 …”
“These babies were huge, sir … enormous … Oh, God, you wouldn’t believe it!” (Apparently referring to parked UFOs in the distance.) “I’m telling you there are other spacecraft out there … lined up on the far side of the crater edge … they’re on the moon watching us …”
There has, understandably, been no confirmation of this incredible report by NASA or any authorities. We cannot vouch for its authenticity but if true … This staggering proof of UFOs, and especially the existence of a saucer base on the moon as long conjectured by ufologists, simply could not be allowed to be broadcast to such a large segment of listening humanity.220
For the record, the story prompted Neil Armstrong to respond to a writer asking about it: “Your ‘reliable sources’ are unreliable. There were no objects reported, found, or seen on Apollo 11 or any other Apollo flight other than of natural origin. All observations on all Apollo flights were fully reported to the public.”221
Saga Special UFO Report Vol. III (1972) carried the article with Binder’s report of a UFO sighting on the moon during the Apollo 11 moonwalk. ™ & © respective copyright holders.
UFOs on the moon. A government cover-up in the Apollo 11 mission. This was fantastic grist for the mill, and Binder didn’t hesitate to capitalize on it. It’s not known whether he took the ham radio operators’ accounts at face value, but he had accepted the existence of UFOs so he was certainly open to the possibility. In any case, there was a market for the story, and Binder got as much mileage as he could out of it.
Although he worked at a more deliberate pace than he had in the past, OOB wrote more than a dozen books in the five years he lived in the woods. His agent Roger Elwood was a bundle of energy. Although his aggressive Christian stance wasn’t very well received by the publishers, Elwood got good results for his client. “Curtis Books bought seven of my books in a row, including a few oldies, and Belmont issued another half a dozen,” Otto recalled. “I began selling ‘gothics’ besides a batch of flying saucer books and articles for Saga magazine.” He didn’t make as much money as he had working full-time in the comics field, “but there are other things,” he added. “It’s great fishing up here and I manage to get out several times a week, after writing chores are done.”222
He started with Menace of the Saucers and Night of the Saucers, both starring Thane Smith, a UFO skeptic who quickly becomes a believer. During the process of Smith’s “awakening,” the author repeats much of the information he had previously imparted in the book What We Really Know About Flying Saucers. But now that he was writing fiction, he was able to imagine what actual contact could be like. (Thane Smith was a transparent proxy for Binder himself.)
Unfortunately, Binder’s craftsmanship on these new novels, and most of the ones that followed, is—almost inexplicably—lacking in many important respects. One doesn’t expect the “great American novel,” but at the same time, here was a highly intelligent man who had made his living as a writer for decades. Shouldn’t he have been able to give a better account of himself?
Four books by Otto Binder: Flying Saucers are
Watching Us (1968). ™ and © the Estate of Otto Binder.
Menace of the Saucers (1969). ™ and © the Estate of Otto Binder.
Night of the Saucers (1971). ™ and © the Estate of Otto Binder.
The Double Man (1971). ™ and © the Estate of Otto Binder.
It wasn’t the plots that were a problem. It was his execution that fell short: poor construction, one-dimensional characters, plodding pacing, frequent repetition, and hackneyed writing. Sometimes, it almost seems as if Binder was trying to do nothing more than fill the requisite number of pages. After all, low-rung publishers like Curtis and Belmont didn’t ask much: merely a title and cover that would sell books. What’s inside should be competent, but was really beside the point. By the time that the reader did more than glance inside, the sale has already been made.
“[Curtis] published every type of book imaginable,” recalled Patrick O’Connor, who was editor in chief of Curtis Books from about 1972 to 1975. O’Connor’s claim to fame is that he bought the rights to the bestselling novel Love Story for a mere $32,000, and edited the later works of Ayn Rand.
“It was my happiest publishing experience,” O’Connor said. “I worked like a maniac with no budget and published some of the most important writers of the century in paperback for the first time. Writers I bought for an advance of $1,500 because no one else wanted them were Margaret Drabble, Ann Beattie, Margaret Atwood, and Elizabeth Smart.
Otto Binder: The Life and Work of a Comic Book and Science Fiction Visionary Page 23