“I had the barest minimum budget, and a very small staff. An art director, one editor, one sales manager and one secretary. My chief reader was Dudley Frazier who happened to be out of work at the time. He ultimately went on to become the best paperback editor in the history of the business.”223
O’Connor didn’t have any contact with Otto, and tried to keep his interaction with Elwood to a minimum. Elwood had been busily putting together dozens of SF anthologies, and was more aggressive than ever. “We all thought of him as the creep of the world, and we made fun of him,” O’Connor said.224
One can speculate on the various reasons for the generally mediocre-to-poor quality of these books, so far below the level that Binder had achieved in prior works, especially the Adam Link and Via stories.
OOB was no longer an ambitious young go-getter. He was getting into writing novels in his late fifties, when his energy was not what it had been. There was also the fact that he wasn’t working as part of a team. The editors of his books would have been, for the most part, little more than proofreaders. He always did his best when he was trying to please a vigilant editor.
One must also consider that these books didn’t pay well, probably not much more than the $1,500 advance against royalties mentioned by O’Connor. Otto couldn’t afford to do much, if any, rewriting.
One of the factors that damaged his writing was the ravage of heavy alcohol consumption over a twenty-year period. Even if Otto never drank while he was at the typewriter, the effects of alcohol would still be present.
But by far the most important cause of this decline in the quality of his writing was that he was heartbroken by Mary’s death. He no longer had the desire to strive. It was all he could do to fill up the pages. At a low point, he confided to one fan, “I see [Adventures of] Captain Marvel, the movie serial, is still a headliner in fan groups. Makes my heart skip a beat thinking back to those ‘golden days,’ when writing was fun. Today it’s sheer drudgery.”225
When asked the sort of books he read, Binder always cited Robert A. Heinlein as his favorite SF author. Heinlein, whose best-known works are Stranger in a Strange Land and Starship Troopers, focused nearly all of his books squarely on the characters and their central dilemmas, rather than the speculative science or the mechanics of the plot. If Otto wanted a blueprint for short but engaging SF novels, he had only to read Heinlein’s The Door into Summer or Double Star.
In fact, one of Otto Binder’s few SF novels that isn’t strictly about UFOs suggests that he had read those two short Heinlein books and was trying something along those lines. The Double Man (Curtis Books, 1970) suffers from the same problems as Binder’s other late novels, even though the premise was workable: a fatal virus is attacking anyone with an IQ over 125, thus threatening our technological society with a “brain gap.” Binder’s protagonist is scientist Wayne Durk, who miraculously survives a space disaster by orbiting Earth in suspended animation, and later “returns from the dead” to discover his place has been taken by an exact duplicate of himself. Robert A. Heinlein could have built a masterful story with those two plot threads. It’s surprising that Binder wasn’t able to come up with a better result.
Trying to read the book for pleasure is difficult, but if one approaches it as an artifact of Otto’s state of mind in 1970, there are interesting aspects to The Double Man. Sometimes a line will resonate with a sentiment that seems reflective of his torment: “Greater forces than he could muster had taken over his life, making a mockery of his past and a farce of his future.”
There is a reference to his interest in the writings of Konstantins Raudive (see chapter 18), with respect to ghost voices captured by tape recorder. A character says, “Look, a garbled voice on the tape could be simply a distorted reflection of earthly radio voices …”
Much of the text involving a “brain gap” harkens back to Careers in Space (1964), when Otto asserted that America wasn’t training scientists in sufficient numbers to maintain our technological superiority over the Soviet Union, and that such a gap would be disastrous for society in many ways. There was also some emphasis on unidentified aerial phenomena in the course of the story, which allowed the author to sound familiar refrains on that subject.
It would be wonderful to be able to report that, after leaving the comic book business, Binder flowered as a successful writer of novels and nonfiction books. Had he been able to work through the mail, he would probably have been able to turn out more entertaining work writing for DC, perhaps as a mainstay of editor Joe Orlando’s “ghost comics” of the early 1970s, The Witching Hour, House of Secrets, and House of Mystery. (His scripts for Web of Horror were very good.) Working under the auspices of a vigilant editor, Binder would have been able to turn out something better than shoddy novels. But that’s missing the point. He had firmly shut the door to the comic book rat race.
If Binder was through with comics, comics (in their way) weren’t through with him. In the spring of 1973, DC sent seismic shocks through the comics community when it announced the revival of Captain Marvel (and the rest of the Marvel Family) in a brand new comic book. Editor Julius Schwartz doesn’t remember if Binder was asked to write it, but if he was, Binder declined. However, C. C. Beck did agree to return, which was an exciting prospect for fans of the classic Golden Age hero. The scripts would be by Denny O’Neil, Elliot S. Maggin, and E. Nelson Bridwell. The title of the comic book was With One Magic Word … Shazam!, since Marvel Comics now had the title Captain Marvel trademarked, although the Captain was referred to by his proper name in the stories themselves.
Shazam! began auspiciously, with the first story page giving a cameo to none other than Otto Binder. The art by Beck was solid, though it showed evidence of being drawn on smaller pages than during the 1940s, when all the artwork was done double-sized, rather than the 1970s standard of 150 percent “up.” But script weaknesses quickly became apparent, with O’Neil and crew unable to capture the peculiar mix of whimsy and seriousness that had made the Marvel Family so successful. What they failed to understand was that, despite all the talk about humor in the strip, the original stories were still, primarily, straight-ahead serious adventures. At DC, the writers seemed to treat Shazam! almost as they would a humorous comic book like Binky or The Adventures of Jerry Lewis. When Beck attempted to correct or compensate for script deficiencies, he found himself at odds with DC.
Inevitably, Binder was asked his opinion of the Captain Marvel revival. He seemed hesitant to be too critical, although his views became clearer as he expounded further. “It might surprise you to hear that I find the new Captain Marvel stories to be quite good, although I certainly understand Beck’s point of view,” he told interviewer Matt Lage. “It must be difficult for today’s writers to recapture the whimsy and gaiety we used thirty years before. I myself wouldn’t even try to recapture it. We were more or less inspired in those days, in context with a different world and long-gone values.
A tip of the hat to Otto Binder on page 2 of With One Magic Word … Shazam! #1 (1973). ™ and © DC Comics.
“My opinion would be that the new stories are a little too whimsical and downright silly at times. In the old days we treated Captain Marvel lightly with humor and satirical plots. But nevertheless we were quite serious about putting across Captain Marvel’s character, with Billy Batson as the actual main character. We took a great deal of care to keep them both in character, but that took endless discussions, while being immersed with the atmosphere of the times, all of which the new writers are missing, I’m afraid. Hence, their attitude toward the Captain Marvel character is well out of character!”226
In another interview, he was considerably more forthright. “It’s just so light and whimsical,” he said. “It just doesn’t seem to be the real Captain Marvel. The artwork yes, because it’s Beck, but the stories just don’t have the flavor I felt in the old days. As Steranko said in his History of Comics, ‘The magic is gone!’”227
In an issue of Fawcett Collectors of Am
erica, C. C. Beck pointed out that Otto Binder’s name never appeared in a Fawcett comic book. He was completely unknown to all the Marvel Family readers whom he entertained for that glorious twelve-year span.
Similarly, he worked in anonymity at DC in the 1950s. But thanks to Dick Lupoff, Jerry Bails, Roy Thomas, and others in comic fandom who came after, he was recognized for his great contribution to the medium during his lifetime.
Therefore, his mailbox frequently yielded letters from comics fans who had managed to track him down. In the 1970s, he and Jack were invited to be guests at various comic book conventions, and though they weren’t exactly opposed to the idea, they never actually made it to any of them. Still, Otto was buoyed by the letters and occasional phone calls from admirers. When he was down, he could wrap himself in a figurative quilt of fan letters.
Otto had come from a large family, and had endowed Captain Marvel with a family of his own. He’d given Superman a super cousin and a super dog, but when it came to his own immediate family, Otto had been cheated by fate. Yet, in a sense, he had other children: those who had grown up on the comic books he wrote, and who now came to pay homage.
Despite all the coverage of his career in the fanzines of the 1960s, no one actually sat Binder down for a real interview at first. This was, perhaps, because he wrote several long, revealing letters that provided fans with much of what they wanted to know. Now that he no longer wrote for comics, he was approached by interviewers who wanted to fill in the gaps. Probably the most extensive interview was for The Steranko History of Comics (1972), artist Jim Steranko’s effort to unearth the comics’ past in a kind of depth and detail that had never before been attempted. Aided by the Binder brothers, Steranko produced a history of Fawcett and the Marvel Family that stood for many years as the single most definitive source on the subject.
Otto Binder also granted an interview, in the late summer or early fall of 1973, to three of the most active fans in comicdom: Martin L. Greim, Bob Cosgrove, and Al Bradford. Greim was best known as editor and publisher of the popular fanzine Comic Crusader, and wanted to run the interview in an upcoming issue dedicated to Captain Marvel. His friends Cosgrove and Bradford were also fanzine publishers and contributed often to Greim’s publication. They lived in nearby Massachusetts, making the jaunt to Chestertown relatively easy.
Cosgrove described OOB: “Otto is a short, portly man, with graying hair and a pencil line moustache. Eager for news of the comic industry, he leans forward during conversations, anxious to capture each word, punctuating his comments with short, animated hand movements.”228 Some of the leaning forward could be attributed to his loss of hearing in one ear, one of the reasons he was deferred from military service during World War II.
Of Jack Binder, Cosgrove wrote, “Jack Binder, in snow-white hair and black, thick-framed glasses, is about the same height as his brother. He is an abrupt, dynamic man.”229
A discussion about the difficulties inherent in reviving Captain Marvel led Jack to talk about how difficult it is to recapture the magic in a revival project. “We tried a revival with ‘Little Nemo,’” he recalled ruefully. “I spent thousands of dollars on Bob McCay, Winsor McCay’s son, who had his father’s technique down to perfection, but lacked the imagination and vitality to get it across. I talked Street & Smith into publishing it, did a few layouts for Bob McCay, and Otto even did a few scripts for it; but when Winsor McCay died, Little Nemo died with him. It’s almost impossible to revive something and get the same life and dynamism into it that the original had.”230 Jack Binder opined that the success of the Marvel Family in the Golden Age was due to dozens of factors that were distinctly of that time. Even if exactly the same creative team had produced the new Captain Marvel, it would be impossible to duplicate all the intangible factors that made the original incarnation so special.
Although away in college, comics fan Louis Black corresponded with Otto after his move to Chestertown, and visited him twice in the early 1970s. “Visiting was a bit of an ordeal,” Black remembered. “Getting to take walks and talk to Otto was great. In the evenings, after dinner, sitting in the living room, Otto and Ione would both be talking to us at the same time, ignoring the other one. It was disconcerting and a bit surreal. I was young enough to feel very conflicted by this. I wanted to be nice to Ione but I was mostly interested in Otto.
“My last memory is one of relief—just Otto and I walking and talking. He was working on so many projects because money never stops being an issue, and for him, to write is to live. As late as 1973, he wrote me: ‘High hopes is all we’re living on, no money. My bank owns me down to my skeleton.’”231
18.
THE SOUNDS OF SILENCE
Darkness shrouded the house in the woods. Inside, in the family room, the lights were low, as four figures huddled around a large reel-to-reel tape recorder. They were conducting an experiment to see if they could receive messages from the spirits of departed friends and loved ones.
One pushed RECORD and spoke into the microphone. “We’re at the house of Otto Binder in Chestertown, New York. There are four of us. This is Otto Binder speaking, and the others will introduce themselves in turn.
“We would like to contact the Spirit Man, and call for Mary Binder, my daughter. This is your Daddy.” He paused to leave room on the tape for a response to his request. Then, “I would also like to contact Earl Binder, my brother. This is Otto, your brother.” Again a pause while the tape recorded only the silence in the room. “Please try to come in. Try to state your names or some message which will indicate that it’s you.”
Otto handed the microphone to one of his guests. “This is Randy Cox. I would like to know if Mark Van Doren, poet and good friend, remembers sending me autographed copies of his books.”
A third person, only sixteen years old, took the mic. “This is Frank Miller. I’d like to contact my grandmother Brigham, and ask her to say her name, or say hello, or anything.”
The last one spoke. “This is Tom Fagan.” He asked to hear from a correspondent whose name isn’t decipherable on the existing recording of this experiment.
Then Otto said, “Okay, let’s let it run for a few minutes. Give the spirits a chance to respond.”232
The date of this experiment was October 29, 1973. Otto Binder had received another group of enthusiastic admirers: Tom Fagan, a well-known writer of articles for classic fanzines such as Alter Ego, Comic Crusader, and The Collector; J. Randolph Cox, a researcher of dime novels and the history of publisher Street & Smith; and teenage Frank Miller, who lived in Vermont and dreamed of drawing comics for a living someday. They had driven over from Rutland to visit with the famous writer.
Frank Miller recalled, “Back then, I lived in farmland, a few miles from Montpelier, Vermont, where I was raised. I’d gotten word about an annual comic book Halloween parade in Rutland, Vermont, run by Tom Fagan. Tom was very generous with his time, letting me tag along as he put the show together and managed it. I’d known since I was six years old that I was going to make comic books for the rest of my life. This was my first chance to actually mix with other people who shared the passion.”233 The trip to Chestertown was another chance for Miller to pal around with Fagan, as well as meet a comics legend.
In a 2002 interview about the visit, Tom Fagan began by saying, “There’s a lot I don’t remember, probably because I was so starry-eyed to be meeting this person who was like a God to us.”234 However, once he got started, Fagan was able to recall quite a lot about that visit. By piecing his memories together with recent recollections of Randy Cox and Frank Miller, and paying close attention to the surviving three-hour tape recording (of fluctuating audibility) made during the latter half of the get-together, a rather complete account of that day’s events can be constructed.
On the drive to Chestertown, Fagan had cautioned his compatriots, “Whatever you do, don’t ask him about trying to communicate with the dead. It might embarrass Otto.” But Cox recalled, “Funnily enough, it was Otto who brou
ght the subject up. He was apologetic, saying he realized we might not be too interested in the phenomenon.”235
Binder had become captivated by the theories of Dr. Konstantins Raudive, the Latvian born student of Carl Jung who wrote a book about electronic voice phenomena (EVP). In his book Breakthrough: An Amazing Experiment in Electronic Communication with the Dead (1971), Raudive published his interpretation of tens of thousands of “spirit voices” obtained by simply turning a tape recorder on and recording “silence.” When played back, with the volume amplified, he claimed that the sounds one hears are the voices of dead people trying to communicate with the living. For a while in the early 1970s, EVP was popular in the counterculture, apart from its ongoing appeal to spiritualists (some who continue to use the technique to the present day).
Fagan said, “Otto did play us a tape that he claimed sounded like his daughter saying something like, ‘I’m here. I’m here. Help.’ I couldn’t hear it, but I have always been curious about such matters so I didn’t think it was ridiculous.”
Miller recalled, “Otto Binder struck me as a deeply haunted man. The whole business of recording an empty room—it spoke of abiding grief for his daughter Mary. Never having believed in mysticism, I still had to go along with it, but even at sixteen, I could tell that I was witnessing a man in unanswerable pain.”
When they replayed their tape at high volume, “You could hear sounds when he played back the tape,” Fagan recalled, “and they did sort of sound like voices, or maybe voices played backwards.” Before long, they had pronounced the results of the eerie experiment inconclusive, and turned to an extended discussion about the history of comics.
The trio’s visit had begun late that autumn afternoon, when they arrived at the white house tucked among the trees on Friend’s Lake Road. While it was still light, their host took them back to his garage to show them where he had kept his Fawcett and other Golden Age comics. “There was nothing there but new stuff, but I guess he wanted to show us where they’d been,” Fagan said. “He said he was eternally grateful to Jerry Bails for helping him sell them. When I asked why he would sell his personal collection, Binder said simply, ‘I had to eat.’ I think he was a pretty brave soul, considering his situation at the time.
Otto Binder: The Life and Work of a Comic Book and Science Fiction Visionary Page 24