Brian Cronin

by Was Superman a Spy?

  When he was still a teenager in the late 1940s, Landau, who is from Brooklyn, began working as a cartoonist at the New York Daily News, drawing various small illustrations. He then went on to work as an assistant for Gus Edson on the popular comic strip The Gumps (which was one of the very first continuity strips, telling the story of an ordinary family from 1917 until the series ended in 1959). However, by the 1950s he was fully pursuing a career as an actor, doing a number of roles on various television programs (and small film roles) before finding success on two notable series, Mission: Impossible and Space: 1999. He soon became a popular film actor, ultimately winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1994 for his role in Ed Wood.

  Landau from the 1970s science fiction series Space 1999.

  Most likely, Landau missed out on drawing comic books just by bad timing. He was born in 1930, so during the big boom of the 1940s he was only an adolescent, and by the time he was of age to work in comics the industry was in a post-World War II slowdown, eliminating the surplus of jobs of the war era.

  It is probably for the best, because if comic books gained Landau, the world of acting would have lost him, and he is far too good of an actor to lose.

  EVEN IF MARTIN Landau had worked as a comic book artist, he would not have been nearly as strange of a comic book artist as another actor who did work at Harvey Comics in the 1960s.

  Harvey Comics was founded by Alfred Harvey in 1941 and became one of the biggest sellers of comic books for children, popularizing such notable characters as Casper the Friendly Ghost, Baby Huey, and Little Audrey and creating characters like Richie Rich, Little Dot, and Hot Stuff. They were massively popular throughout the 1960s, but while the Harvey characters continue to be popular in other media, the company ceased publishing comics in 1986 (with a brief comeback in the late 1990s).

  At one point in the 1960s, Ruth Leon, an artist for Harvey, brought in a young artist from France, and editor Sid Jacobson gave him a few pages to ink, which he did before leaving New York to try his luck as an actor. The young artist’s name? Hervé Villechaize.

  Hervé Villechaize had proportionate dwarfism from birth, and took solace from the taunts of schoolmates by losing himself in painting. After graduating from art college in France, he traveled to New York, where he lived the life of an artist, learning English from television and working as an artist and photographer. It was then that he worked for Harvey Comics. He also began to act in plays and soon moved to Hollywood to pursue a film career, which was highlighted by his turn as Nick Nack in the James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun. Soon he costarred in the hit television series Fantasy Island as Tattoo, the assistant of the island’s owner, Mr. Roarke.

  After leaving the show over a salary dispute, Villechaize’s life was difficult.

  In 1993 he committed suicide, just as he was about to gain a regular role as the sidekick on the upcoming Cartoon Network series Space Ghost Coast to Coast, based on the work of comic book artist Alex Toth.

  IT WOULD NOT be much of an exaggeration, if one at all, to call Héctor Germán Oesterheld the greatest comic book writer Argentina ever saw. In fact, it might not be a stretch to say that he was the greatest comic book writer South America ever saw.

  After becoming a popular comic book writer during the 1940s and ’50s, Oesterheld was able to launch his own comic book company with his brother Jorge in 1957. The company was called Ediciones Frontera. The company launched two hugely successful comic books, which Oesterheld wrote many stories for, and they were Hora Cero (Zero Hour) and Frontera (Frontier).

  For Hora Cero, Oesterheld worked with legendary comic artist Hugo Pratt on the popular “Ernie Pike.” Ernie Pike was a war journalist, likely modeled after Ernie Pyle, and Oesterheld used the comic to express his disgust with war.

  It was also in Hora Cero that Oesterheld developed perhaps his most popular work, the time-travel science fiction epic, “El Eternauta,” with artist Francisco Solano López. The series dealt with an alien invasion of Earth, during which a deadly snow falls over Argentina, wiping out most of the population. Equipped with protective gear, small groups of resistance fighters try to regain their world from the invaders. In an attempt to escape, the main character, Juan Salvo, and his wife and daughter are instead hurtled through time, each to a different time continuum. Salvo then has to search through various alternate realities to find his wife and daughter.

  An economic depression in the 1960s caused Oesterheld’s company to close down, but Oesterheld continued to write for other comic companies. Eventually, his work took on more and more of a political bent, culminating in perhaps his greatest political work, a biography of Che Guevara titled Vida del Che, which came out in 1968, with artwork by Alberto and Enrique Breccia.

  In 1976 there was a military coup in Argentina. In protest, Oesterheld began work on a continuation of “El Eternauta,” this time showing a future Argentina ruled by a dictatorship. In addition, Oesterheld (and his family) joined the antigovernment group the Montoneros, whose existence was outlawed by the government. Oesterheld mailed in his “El Eternauta” scripts from secret locations.

  Late in 1976, after already seeing all his daughters arrested, Oesterheld too was arrested by the government, and no one ever saw him after Christmas of that year.

  There is a famous quote (perhaps apocryphal) concerning Oesterheld, which was supposedly told to an Italian journalist, Alberto Ongaro, in 1979 when he was inquiring about Oesterheld’s disappearance: “We did away with him because he wrote the most beautiful story of Che Guevara ever done.”

  In the late 1990s, a wonderful documentary called H.G.O. was made about Oesterheld’s life and tragic death.

  AFTER BEING OUSTED as the editor in chief of Marvel Comics, Jim Shooter decided to start his own comic book company, Valiant. He got the company started off by first doing a number of tie-in books with the World Wrestling Federation and Nintendo. Then, as a basis for the new universe of characters he was creating, he licensed a number of characters from Western Publishing’s defunct Gold Key line of comics: Magnus, Robot Fighter (a man in the future who, well, fights robots); Dr. Solar, Man of the Atom (a hero who wields energy powers); and Turok, Son of Stone (a Native American who hunts dinosaurs).

  After establishing the universe, Shooter began introducing new characters. One, who received his own book, was X-O Manowar, a barbarian from the fifth century who is given a futuristic and powerful suit of alien armor then brought to the twentieth century and forced to make his way in the world. Marvel took issue with the title of the book, apparently feeling (perhaps not too unreasonably) that any comic with an X so prominently displayed would be confused with its X-Men comics.

  Shooter obviously disagreed with his former employers, but to hedge his bets he played an interesting trick, along with fellow former Marvel writer Steve Englehart, who he had hired to write some of the early Valiant titles. In his creator-owned title in the 1980s, Englehart had created and trademarked a character named X-Caliber. Marvel attempted to purchase the character from Englehart in the late 1980s, but he turned down the offer, so Marvel instead launched a book called Excalibur instead of X-Calibur, which was the original hope. So when Shooter was approached by Marvel over X-O Manowar, he licensed the name X-Caliber from Englehart and had him guest star in X-O Manowar. Marvel backed down, and eventually Shooter agreed to stop using the name X-Caliber and changed the name when Valiant did a trade collection of X-O Manowar.

  MARVEL WAS BLAMED for the loss of another prominent independent comic of the 1990s, but the actual reason was much more typical (if disappointing).

  John Byrne was one of the most popular comic book artists of the 1980s, doing a number of popular series for Marvel. In 1991, after a deal failed to materialize with DC Comics, Byrne debuted his series John Byrne’s Next Men for Mike Richardson’s Dark Horse Comics.

  The series starred a group of genetically engineered young men and women with various superpowers who escape from custody and go on the run so
metime in the near future (at least it was the near future when the comic debuted in the early 1990s). The book was typical for its time period in the way that it took a more mature look at superheroes and how they would affect a fairly realistic world. Also, being at Dark Horse, Byrne had more freedom to use language and content that would be considered too adult for DC or Marvel.

  The series was acclaimed and sold well at first, but in 1995 it ended with #30 and a cliff-hanger. There were rumors going around at the time that Marvel was complaining about the book, feeling that Next Men was too similar of a title to its X-Men series, especially with the at-first-glance similarities between the characters.

  However, that was not the case (and Byrne using his own name as part of the title was likely a purposeful move to ensure that the title was clearly different). The title folded because Byrne decided to take a break to do some mainstream work since sales of the book had dropped. Byrne’s intent was to leave, do some higher-paying mainstream work, and then return to the series. Little did he know that the bottom proceeded to fall out of the comic book industry during the late 1990s, and by the end of the decade a series like Next Men would not be financially possible.

  Byrne has not returned to the characters since then, but it was recently announced that IDW Publishing, a company Byrne is doing some work for at the moment, will be releasing trade collections of the series.

  WHEN IMAGE COMICS began, Todd McFarlane might have been the most popular of all the original Image artists. His debut title for Image, Spawn, about a government assassin who dies but returns as a demon from hell determined to use his evil powers for good, was a monster hit, with the first issue selling over a million copies.

  Over the years, McFarlane has drawn more attention for his actions outside his comic (which he stopped drawing himself after a few years). These include his popular toy company (McFarlane Toys is noted for the extremely high quality of its sculpting and is used by many companies to create licensed toys, including most popular American sports) and his obsession with sports (highlighted by his purchase of the baseball Mark McGwire hit for his seventieth home run in 1998 and the ball Barry Bonds hit for his seventy-third home run in 2001: three million dollars for McGwire’s ball, considerably less for Bonds’s).

  One thing McFarlane probably does not want to be reminded of is his legal battles. The most notable occurred because of something that happened in his comic (and came about due to his love of sports).

  McFarlane is Canadian and a major fan of the National Hockey League (NHL), and once even part owner of the Edmonton Oilers, so in the pages of Spawn, he introduced a mob enforcer named Antonio “Tony Twist” Twistelli. Anthony “Tony” Twist was an NHL player known for being a fierce “enforcer”; that is, a player who makes sure that the star players on his team are protected from being roughed up by opposing teams’ players. Twist sued McFarlane over the character, claiming McFarlane was attempting to profit off Twist’s likeness. In 2004 a jury awarded Twist fifty million dollars in damages. McFarlane appealed, but after two appeals, the judgment was upheld in 2006. McFarlane declared bankruptcy to deal with the settlement, but as of today his company is still around, making toys and hoping to produce a second film based on the Spawn character.

  ANOTHER COMPANY THAT was involved in a legal matter involving names was Archie Comics, which drew quite a bit of attention (and more than a bit of derision) for a cease and desist letter it sent in 1998—telling a family to pull down a Web site called veronica.org.

  The Internet has been a difficult area in which to establish hard-and-fast rules for the protection of intellectual property, such as trademarks. So-called cybersquatting has become a major issue online, with people registering domain names that they feel companies will later want to use and then attempting to sell the companies the rights to the domain name for exorbitant fees, or using a domain name that would likely bring in people interested in a particular company or organization and then using the Web site to insult that company or organization. A notable case of the latter would be when People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) won a lawsuit against a man who registered peta.org for a site called People Eating Tasty Animals.

  However, that was not the case when David Sams registered the domain name veronica.org in honor of his infant daughter named Veronica. In 1998 he received a cease and desist letter from Archie Comics, telling him to give up the Web site, because it was a trademark of Archie Comics (which already owned the domain name veronica.com).

  Rather than give in, Sams responded with a letter to Archie Comics explaining his dissatisfaction with its behavior. He made it public, and it soon became an embarrassing news story for Archie. It is similar to an incident in 1998 where the Prema Toy Company sent a cease and desist letter to what turned out to be a twelve-year-old boy who registered pokey.org for his personal Web site because that was his nickname. Prema wanted it because of its character Pokey from the Gumby toy line. In both cases, the public outcry led to a quick withdrawal of the letters (in the case of pokey.org, the creator of Pokey even wrote to complain).

  Amusingly, veronica.org is, as of March 2008, not currently registered by anyone.

  STRANGELY ENOUGH, THIS was not the only instance when Archie pursued legal action over the use of a character’s name. Even stranger is that the second instance also involved Veronica! Luckily, this case had a happy ending for both parties.

  Lisa Marie Origliasso and Jessica Louise Origliasso were born in Australia, to Italian parents, on Christmas Day 1984. The twins grew up interested in show business and appeared on television in the 2001 Australian children’s series, Cybergirl. When they turned eighteen years old, Jessica received a guitar, and the two began writing and performing songs together, eventually forming a band called Teal. The Bell Hughes Music Group (BHMG) took an interest in the girls, and it was around this time that they changed the group’s name. Since both girls were attractive, black-haired teens, people used to call them the Veronicas, after Archie’s girlfriend in the Archie comic book series. That is the name they began to perform under (although the girls were ambivalent about the name because it gives the impression that they are a pop duo, while they maintain they are a full rock band).

  Archie took issue with the use of the name and filed a suit against the band for trademark infringement. Luckily, this time, the two reached an agreement. Rather than fight, they signed a deal to cross-promote each other. The girls appeared in Veronica #167, along with a card that featured a code for a download of a Veronicas music single.

  Since their first appearance, the Veronicas have become popular guest stars in the comics, appearing numerous times, even in Archie’s 65th Anniversary Bash (which was given out on Free Comic Book Day 2007). Meanwhile, the Veronicas have released two well-received albums, The Secret Life of . . . (2005) and Hook Me Up (2007).

  It’s always nice to hear of an intellectual property case having such a happy ending.

  IN 2001, WHEN Ben and Ray Lai created their Radix series about a group of armored operatives, for Image Comics, they could foresee a number of options for their book: It could be a surprise hit, or it could come and go without much fanfare. It could serve as a gateway to future work at Marvel or DC (it did, in fact, get them work at Marvel on the Thor comic book series). What they could not have foreseen was their work being used by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to receive a fifty-million-dollar grant from the United States Army, and yet that is exactly what happened!

  Edwin L. Thomas, director of MIT’s Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies, headed up the grant proposal, which was to develop a supersoldier armor that would enhance strength and allow for some form of invisibility as well as many other fantastic features. Thomas featured on the cover of the proposal a drawing from the Lais’ comic series Radix, as an example of what the armor would look like.

  Thomas claims that his daughter told him that she drew the image, and in fact the image is credited to H. Thomas. However, even after being challe
nged by the Lais, at first MIT would not apologize, claiming it was “innocent use.” The Lai brothers felt that it damaged their reputation, as it appeared as though they copied MIT, while it was the other way around, and that it could damage their attempts at perhaps having Radix optioned for film or television.

  Ultimately, MIT issued an apology, and that essentially finished matters (although the Lais kept holding out for more), but in a way it is almost a compliment (while still being quite wrong on MIT’s part) to know that one’s artwork was a part of a grant proposal for over fifty million dollars!

  Recommended Reading

  Here is a list of sources for, and interesting further reading related to, each chapter of this book.

  First off, though, here are five good general resources:

  News from Me (http://www.newsfromme.com/): Mark Evanier’s Web site, packed to the brim with helpful information.

  Alter Ego: Roy Thomas’s monthly magazine about comic book history from TwoMorrows Publishing.

  Back Issue: Michael Eury’s bimonthly magazine about more recent comic book history, also from TwoMorrows Publishing.

  The Comic Book Makers: Joe Simon’s book about comic book history—partially his own memories of the business and partially objective history.