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The Comics Journal Library Volume 8:

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THE EC ARTISTS

Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7Will Elder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11William M. Gaines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .63Al Feldstein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .73Johnny Craig . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .99Frank Frazetta. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .113Joe Kubert. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .117Harvey Kurtzman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .125George Evans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .133Al Jaffee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .149John Severin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .157

TABLE OF CONTENTS

7Introduction

M.C. Gaines was both a practical man (credited with inventing the comic book as we know it — although comic strips had been reprinted in book form for at least two decades prior to his 1933 Funnies on Parade) and a visionary.

In the late 1930s, he formed a partnership with the owners of Detective Comics, Inc. (subsequently best known as DC Comics) and began publishing a series of superhero titles: All-American Comics (which featured the Green Lantern), Flash Comics (the Flash), Sensation Comics (Wonder Woman), All-Star Comics (The Justice Society of America) and Comic Cavalcade (a fatter 15¢ anthology of his superheroes).

But these were conventional commercial comic books of their day and, in essence, copies of DC’s Action Comics (Superman), Detective Comics (Batman) and World’s Finest (15¢ anthology), identical in formatting. Although successful, none (perhaps excepting Wonder Woman’s titles) matched the success of DC’s Superman and Batman titles. All were published under the DC imprint and the children who read them probably saw little difference among them.

These comics were forthrightly aimed at kids — the-oretically an 8-year-old. Although comics were hugely popular and widely read by World War II and Korean War GIs, the fiction was maintained throughout the ’50s that the average comic-book reader was still only 8 years old.

From their inception, comic books were looked down upon by much of American society. They cost only 10¢ and were often thrown away after reading. Many teach-ers regarded comic-book reading as a detriment to gen-uine literacy. The theory was that kids who read comic books would never go on to read “real” literature — they would demand pictures with their prose.

Gaines thought that the comic-book medium could be much more than just throwaway entertainment and he set out to prove it, first with Picture Stories from the Bible. Its first issue was published in September, 1942, and there were four issues covering the Old Testament published quarterly under the DC imprint in 1942 and 1943.

These were war years, with paper-rationing restric-tions, and every published comic book was guaranteed to sell out. But Picture Stories from the Bible was an anom-aly. It was earnestly done and intended to be educational rather than entertaining. Despite the best intentions of Gaines, his editors, writers and artist (Don Cameron), it was pretty dull going for a comic book, and it did not sell out. But Gaines believed in it and pushed it.

Other matters were transpiring behind the scenes and Gaines parted ways with DC in 1945, selling them all his titles except Picture Stories from the Bible.

Gaines began a new publishing imprint for his Picture Stories comics — Educational Comics, or “EC.” In addition to Picture Stories from the Bible, he published Picture Stories from American History, Picture Stories from Science, and Pictures Stories from World History. And more were planned: Picture Stories from Geography, Picture Stories from Mythology, Picture Stories from Natural History and Picture Stories from Shakespeare.

These were clearly intended to be sold in or through schools, and to be used with appropriate curricula. They were an idealistic venture, akin to Classics Illustrated, designed to prove that the lowly comic book could attain loftier goals of enlightenment.

But, like Classics Illustrated, they made no dent on academia. To teachers and other figures of author-ity over children, they were still “just comic books,” and dismissed out of hand. And to the kids — their putative audience — they were dull stuff, lacking the excitement and panache of any superhero comic. They were not a commercial success.

Gaines knew he had to broaden his new comics line, so he also launched a line of “wholesome,” if less “educational,” comics for younger kids: Tiny Tot Comics, Land of the Lost Comics (based on a popular Saturday-morning radio show), Animal Fables, Dandy Comics, Animated Comics, Happy Houlihans and Fat and Slat (Ed Wheelan’s Fat and Slat strips had a long history of appearances in Gaines’ DC comics). There was one anomalous title in 1947. Blackstone (“The

AN INTRODUCTION TO EC COMICSby Ted White

8 The Comics Journal Library Volume 8: THE EC ARTISTS

Magician Detective Fights Crime!”), a suggestion of what was to come.

When Gaines had left DC to found EC, he took one DC employee with him to be his business manager: Sol Cohen, whose first job as a teenager had been for DC, checking Manhattan comic-book racks for sales movement during Superman’s launch in 1938. Cohen had worked his way up through sales and distribution (DC and Independent News, an increasingly important distributor, had interlinking ownership) and he had a promising career at DC. But when Gaines asked Cohen to join him in his fledgling new company, Cohen accepted.

This proved to be a significant move for a reason no one anticipated. Because in 1947 M.C. Gaines and a friend, Sam Irwin, lost their lives in a boating accident on Lake Placid in New York. Gaines’ final act was to save the life of his friend’s 8-year-old son by throwing the boy to safety.

Gaines’ son, William M. Gaines, inherited the com-pany. But Bill was distant from his father, didn’t care for comics, and was attending New York University with plans to become a chemistry teacher. Although entreated by his mother to take over the reins at EC, Bill was reluctant and for the first year did little but show up at the office periodically to sign checks.

Into this vacuum stepped Sol Cohen, EC’s business manager. As he told me, years later, “the company was going down the toilet. The Picture Stories comics weren’t selling and neither were the kiddy comics. I had to do something just to save my job.”

His first act was to change “Educational Comics” to “Entertaining Comics.”

“‘Educational’ was a word no comic-buying kid wanted to see. It was a kiss of death on any comic book,” he told me.

His second act was to dump the Picture Stories titles and change the kiddy titles to crime, romance, and Western titles. (Due to postal regulations concerning second-class mailing privileges — crucial for distribution purposes — it was financially wiser to change titles, continuing the previ-ous numbering, than to drop one title and start a new one.) Thus Fat and Slat became Gunfighter (a Western), Happy Houlihans became Saddle Justice (anotherWestern), which in turn became Saddle Romances, while International Comics (begun in 1947) became International Crime Patrol and then just Crime Patrol.

1947 was a decisive turning point, although most of Cohen’s changes occurred in 1948. In the late summer of 1947, Moon Girl and the Prince was launched. Moon Girl appears to have been a Wonder Woman copy. It went through two title changes before becoming A Moon, A Girl … Romance.

In early 1948, EC launched War Against Crime! It lasted 11 issues before becoming The Vault of Horror.

By 1949 Bill Gaines had become interested in com-ics. Sol Cohen moved on (to Avon Books) and Bill fully took over the company. He began bringing in the artists

and editor/writers who would become known for their subsequent EC work.

Al Feldstein was hired as a romance artist, although his first work for EC was for the Western title, Saddle Justice in 1948.

Johnny Craig may have preceded Feldstein with work in the first Gunfighter, which also used Graham Ingels.

Harry Harrison and Wally Wood (as collaborators) made their first appearance at EC in two Western titles that appeared at the end of 1949, Gunfighter and Saddle Romances (where Harrison, solo, had appeared in a pre-vious issue).

The evolution of EC from 1947 to 1950 is one full of hints of the forthcoming “New Trend” titles. But fans of the latter titles may not find a lot to like in the ear-lier comics from EC. The quality was spotty and there was not yet any focus on a unique style or approach to comics. The EC comics of 1947-49 were not unlike their contemporaries of that era, like Prize Western, where other subsequent EC creators like Harvey Kurtzman, Bill Elder and John Severin were then working. (Severin continued to draw American Eagle for Prize Western throughout his career at EC.)

1950 was the year it all came together for EC. That spring saw the transformation of War Against Crime! into The Vault of Horror, Crime Patrol into The Crypt of Terror (and later, Tales from the Crypt), and Gunfighter into The Haunt of Fear, thus successfully establishing EC’s horror-title trio.

The same month Haunt of Fear made its debut, so did two science-fiction titles, Weird Science (with #12, previously Saddle Romances), and Weird Fantasy (with #13, previously A Moon, A Girl … Romance).

In the fall of 1950, Two-Fisted Tales made its debut, taking over the numbering of Haunt of Fear, so its first issue was designated #18. This was done to satisfy — or dodge — those postal regulations. Haunt of Fear itself continued, renumbered, with #4. It confused the fans but made the business office happy. Crime SuspenStories made its premiere about the same time (starting with #1), thus setting in place EC’s basic New Trend stable of titles.

Two-Fisted Tales was Harvey Kurtzman’s first title, and it brought a sense of realism, irony and anti-ro-mance to war stories. Frontline Combat would join it half a year later.

Crime SuspenStories was Johnny Craig’s title (as was, to a lesser degree, Vault of Horror; Al Feldstein was the overall SF and horror editor).

By 1951, the classic EC lineup was almost in place, lacking only Shock SuspenStories (1952) and Mad (1952).

The first half of the ’50s was EC’s glory time — for better and for worse. For us comics fans, it was the best of times — crowned by superlative art and provocative stories — while for those who watched sternly over us, tut-tutting, it was the worst of times, a triumph of gore and disgust.

9Introduction

As Gaines put it, discussing sales, “It fell just about the way you could predict: The most shocking books sold the best, and then the next most shocking book sold the next best, and so on. Really, what we considered our class act, the science fiction, sold the worst. Then Mad came along, and Mad had its peak as a comic [that was] better than the horror comics.”

EC’s basic “crime” was that its comics were not edited for that 8-year-old kid. They aimed higher, at a somewhat older, more mature audience. I was 13 when I discovered ECs and I had by then mostly given up on other comics.)

The naysayers won, in the short-term. There were state and federal inquiries (inquisitions?), local comic-book bonfires, and ultimately Seduction of the Innocent and the Comics Code. The “New Trend” comics were shelved in favor of a “New Direction” and new titles — horror and crime conspicuous by their absence.

But the tide had turned against EC. Its competi-tors wanted it put out of business (and many claim the Comics Code Authority was formed for that purpose).

In 1956 Bill Gaines gave up a losing fight and folded all his titles except Mad — which outlived him and sur-vives wrapped in its decades-old formula to this day.

However, in the long term, EC has survived. There have been countless reprints of the comics themselves, as both comic books and as hardcover books. There have been TV shows and movies based on Tales from the Crypt. And now there are new collections from Fantagraphics, showcasing for the first time the individual artists whose works personified EC.

Theirs was a magical time — a time when young ambitious artists decided for themselves to take com-ic-book art to heights never previously dreamed of, heights that equaled the best work of the greatest of the newspaper strip artists of the 20th century.

As John Severin put it, “I think that every kind of work that was being done up at EC was done with a lot more thought and care. They were all interested in get-ting a good job done, whether it was the lettering, the art, the layout, whatever. It was done with thought and care.”

It started with Bill Gaines, who read prodigiously, and who fed plot ideas to his writer-editors. He was a friendly, gregarious man, who set the tone for those who worked at EC. He collaborated closely with Al Feldstein, batting story ideas back and forth. (But Feldstein insists that Gaines only suggested plot ideas, and never actu-ally did any of the writing.)

Al was EC’s first real editor, writing nearly all the stories in the titles he edited — the horror, crime and sci-ence-fiction comics. He worked closely with the artists, being originally an artist himself. His own art was, he admitted, a bit “stiff,” but he excelled as a writer-editor.

And he treasured the individuality of the artists. He told Gaines, “Bill, we don’t want any artists to be

imitating other artists. Just because Simon and Kirby are doing well doesn’t mean we should have everybody drawing like Kirby, or we should not have everybody drawing like X or Y or Z. We should have each guy doing his own signature [style].”

Harvey Kurtzman was EC’s second editor, origi-nally of only two titles, Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat, war and adventure comics. He too wrote vir-tually all the stories in the titles he edited — but he went a step further, actually breaking them down into page layouts, with stick-figures correctly positioned in each panel. Some artists had a problem with this but others, like Severin, appreciated it. All acknowledged that Kurtzman was a master story-teller and his layouts were hard, if not impossible, to improve upon.

Both Feldstein and Kurtzman brought to their comics a level of dedication and professionalism rarely found in the field, then or now. Kurtzman was famous for researching military history and details, both in libraries and “in the field,” once sending an assistant on a subma-rine. Feldstein wrote Bradbury adaptations with sensi-tivity to the originals, winning Bradbury’s appreciation.

I visited the EC offices in late 1955, met both Bill and Al, and enjoyed several long conversations with each (transcribed in Tales of Terror!). I found both men friendly and outgoing, an experience I believe I shared with most of the EC fans of that era who visited the EC offices.

As a high-school student and EC enthusiast I was impressed by EC’s willingness to interact with its fans, to send us acknowledgments of our letters, to print excerpts of those letters in their comics (at a time when no other comics were running letters pages) and, ulti-mately, to start an official fan club, the EC Fan-Addicts. And every once in a while a story in one of Al’s comics would include appearances by both Bill and Al, usually in humorous counterpoint to the main story.

The overall feeling was that EC comics were created by real people, who took pride in their work and had fun doing it.

Some of them went on to major successes in com-mercial art — book covers, movie posters, TV Guide cov-ers — while others lived and eventually died in poverty.

No one told them then that what they were doing was a waste of time and ambition. We are all better off for their accomplishments and we celebrate their work.

Ted White has been a comics fan for most of his life and, with Larry Stark, Bhob Stewart and Fred von Bernewitz, was a seminal EC fan in the early ’50s. He has been a (still-quoted) jazz critic, a science-fiction writer and edi-tor, and a radio DJ. He wrote the Captain America novel, The Great Gold Steal, in 1966 and edited Heavy Metal in 1980.

WILL ELDERConducted in 2002 by Gary Groth

First published TCJ #254

Will Elder was born in the Bronx in 1921. As a child, he was known as a comic, a prankster, a class clown. He loved physical humor and imi-

tated exemplars of the genre such as the Marx Brothers and Buster Keaton well into adulthood. (I once viewed a sketch he and Kurtzman did, circa the late 1950s, in which they both demonstrated remarkable physical comedic skills — more Jonathan Winters or Red Skelton than Keaton or Chaplin, demonstrating a subtle, antic elegance that would have been perfect for TV at the time.) But he was also a skillful artist and, after gradu-ating from the famous High School of Music and Art, he segued into commercial art and comics.

He learned the ropes by inking his pal Johnny Severin on Western material for Prize Comics in the late ’40s, continued inking Severin’s war stories (written by Kurtzman) at EC and, as we all know now, came full circle, finding his métier illustrating stories for Mad and Panic from 1952 to 1956 — four years of some of the most inspired work in the history of comics.

When Kurtzman left Mad, Elder left with him and followed him into three noble failures: Trump, Humbug and Help!. Trump was the realiza-tion of Kurtzman’s dream to produce a slick, upscale humor magazine — and Elder’s contributions show a quantum leap forward into breathtakingly detailed painting and intricate black-and-white line work that even surpasses the advertising parodies he had done for Mad (themselves a huge leap in technique from his earlier comics). After Trump folded with its second issue — publisher Hugh Hefner had to pull the plug due to his bank calling in loans unexpectedly — one of the contributors, Arnold Roth, cheered everyone up and suggested that they try again. So, they did. Roth, Kurtzman, Elder, Al Jaffee and production man Harry Chester all ponied up some money and started Humbug, which they owned equally (along with Jack Davis, who ponied up art instead of money). The idea behind the magazine was that each artist would own his own work as well as a stake in the magazine, and that each artist would benefit if the magazine took off. This lasted 11 glorious issues and failed for numer-ous reasons, most of which boil down to the fact that they were great artists and lousy businessmen. The artists lost their shirts. (Some of them even lost their art.) Elder continued to refine his technique, which he applied to television and movie parodies and the occa-sional illustration.

After Humbug, there was a lull, during which Elder drew illustrations for a variety of magazines, such as Pageant. Although many of these are stunning, most of them weren’t of a humorous nature, and you can tell that his technique was in it but his heart wasn’t. In the early ’60s, Kurtzman started yet another humor magazine, Help!, that Jim Warren published. Kurtzman and Elder once again collaborated on a series of strips starring the Candide-like hero, Goodman Beaver, which

represented some of Elder’s best work to date. In 1962, Kurtzman and Elder began a 26-year collaboration for Playboy: Little Annie Fanny which was entirely painted in watercolor and tempera — the first and surely the most virtuosic of its kind.

Will Elder is most widely known as Harvey Kurtzman’s lifelong collaborator. True enough. But he was, in his own way, an autonomous artist — not unlike Jack Kirby during his most creatively fecund collabora-tions with Stan Lee. Elder’s parodic work for EC holds up almost irrespective of the writing, which would fluc-tuate wildly. For example, Kurtzman, who wrote the Mad stories, was far more sensitive to the graphic rhythms of visual storytelling than Al Feldstein or Jack Mendelsohn, who wrote the Panic stories, but it’s a testament to the immanent hilarity of Elder’s drawings that there’s so little qualitative difference between the stories in the two comics. Elder obviously reveled in the outrageous and added immeasurably to the stories proper with jokes, gags, signs, all imbedded in the background, as well as just plain drawing funny. While researching Elder’s work, I paged through the Russ Cochran reprints flagging Elder’s stories and I discovered that the quickest way to spot an Elder story was by what I would call an absence of style. Wally Wood’s, Jack Davis’ and John Severin’s work could be spotted a mile away— Wood’s lush, sensual brushwork, Davis’ angular figures and flailing limbs, Severin’s rangy figure drawing — but Elder’s work was characterized by an imitative approach in which what few stylistic mannerisms there are (exaggerated lips on the female characters, for example) were subsumed into the unique approach each strip required and hidden beneath a meticulous, almost anonymous graphic approach.

Will Elder’s originsdepicted in Mad #22’s WillElder tribute/roast.

11The WILL ELDER Interview


Elder continued to refine his inking technique throughout his collaborative work in Trump, Humbug and the Goodman Beaver strips in Help! even as the intrinsic humor of the drawing continued unabated. I have to admit that slogging through 26 years of Little Annie Fanny became a chore — the satirical quality is intermittent at best — but interest was maintained mostly due to the lushness of the painting and what Kurtzman called Elder’s “eye-pops,” the details, nuances and gags hidden in the backgrounds of the panels. Remarkable too is how Elder is able to maintain the essentially exaggerated cartoony quality of the drawing with his meticulous, painterly technique.

Elder, at 83, is mentally alert, although some-what physically frail; he underwent triple bypass surgery in 1999. Journal interview introductions always refer to the interview subject’s modesty, generosity, decency, charm and hospitality. This one won’t be any different — except that in this case it happens to be true (my first and last attempt at Elderesque humor). This interview was conducted over the course of two months in late 2002. The first interview was conducted in Elder’s home in New Jersey, the four subsequent sessions over the phone. We have tried to retain as much of Elder’s spontaneous and absurdist sense of humor as we could on the printed page. It was a real privilege to get to know and talk to Will, one I hope will continue for quite some time to come.

— GARY GROTH

GARY GROTH: The Bronx in the 1920s must have been pretty rural.WILL ELDER: Yeah, I’d say. It was the slums, but we never knew it. We never knew there was anything out-side of the slums. It kept us from doing wrong — at

least, what we thought was wrong. We had our own set of rules that we lived by. Apparently it worked for all of us. There weren’t too many criminals, if that’s how you gauge a neighborhood. There was nothing to steal. The people who had garbage were rich; they had something to throw out.GROTH: So you grew up, obviously, during the Great Depression.ELDER: Yeah. We moved from address to address to avoid the landlord. He went crazy looking for us. We lived with family, in-laws, that sort of thing, till my father got a steady job. And the work brought us back to one whole family again.GROTH: What did your father do?ELDER: He worked in a big clothing factory, pressing the suits, that sort of thing. It was the only type of work he could get through the department stores.GROTH: Were your parents immigrants?ELDER: They were immigrants, yeah. They were born in Poland. They came here through the Canadian border, down through Canada. My brother and my sister were born in England. And I and my other brother were born in the United States.GROTH: Your mother was a homekeeper?ELDER: She was, but she never showed any affection toward me, because I was always wasting my time. I was a little nutty. I would make my own toys. I couldn’t buy any, so I’d buy the cheapest thing possible, and that was a clay set, and I could mold it into any shape I wished, and bang it and destroy it. I used to sculpt a menagerie of animals and figures out of kids’ clay. We didn’t have all the things kids have today, there were no video games or Gameboys or DVDs or videotapes, so you had to use your imagination. I was lucky; I always had a good imagination. But when you have nothing you can make a lump of clay go a long way! That was the beginning of being curious how to do things with your hands, working with your hands.GROTH: You made your own toys?ELDER: Yeah, I’d make a sculpture of an animal, any animal. A deer. Speaking of deer: I used to paint a deer on a canvas board. The boards — not the plain canvas that you roll up. This was in the summertime, and the weather was hot outside; I figured it was better to stay indoors in the shade and paint this deer. The forest looked very cool. So I carried that a little further. I began to see into the fall, autumn, and the leaves began to fall and turn colors, so I had to erase all the green leaves I had drawn before and replace them with the red- and orange-colored trees. Al Jaffee thought that was funny. Well, that’s nothing. Wait until winter comes. I never touched the deer, except in wintertime. There was snow all around. Snow on his antlers; snow on his back. He said, “What are you doing here?” Al would come over to my house and always correct me and criticize me. He said, “This deer hasn’t moved. He must be dead.” Then comes the spring, and I start making green leaves


again. The deer, I hadn’t touched too much. So the deer was actually flat with the canvas, and the scenery around was about an inch high, built up over the sea-sons. He thought it was crazy. I said, “Al, the reason I’m doing it is because I can’t afford a new board with every season. I have to make one board work for me,” because that’s all we could afford.GROTH: How old would you have been?ELDER: About 13, 14, junior high. My early boyhood was made up of Al and my friends. I hardly was at home; we had nothing to be at home for. I think my dad figured I was the only hope, if not money-wise, then showing some kind of talent. And he promoted me wherever he went: “My son could do that with no sweat,” he’d say when he’d see something in a window that was painted by someone else. “He’s very good at it, and I try to encourage him to do that. Maybe he’ll work for Walter Disney.” He’d never say “Walt Disney.” Always “Walter Disney.” Very proper, my dad. And lo and behold, I wrote to Disney and I got a nice rejection note. It says, “Please get a little older and we’ll try to understand your request. Why do you want to work for Disney?” Because I love cartoons. “That’s good. You and a few thousands of kids would love to be Walt Disney.” So nothing ever came of it.

I started doing work for my school, and luckily Mayor Laguardia had promoted this ordinary system of uncovering talent through the city. He said, “I think we need a special high school for that, and perhaps we can do that.” Lo and behold, the High School of Music and Art was born. And that culled from the city all the people who were talented in music and in art, plus the regular curriculum. And it seemed to work, because I met some very interesting people and they inspired me. There’s also a tremendous feeling of competition. Competition was good in a case like that. You want to be better than your friends, show them that you can do as good or better than they. It worked. It made me stand out in class. I was drawing cartoons on the blackboard, and the teacher would see my work and she thought I would be a good example for some of the other kids who refused to draw. She would display my work for the rest of the class to see. It was ego-build-ing in the most positive way.GROTH: You had siblings.ELDER: I had a two brothers and a sister.GROTH: Where did you fit into the hierarchy?ELDER: No place. My nearest older brother, who was nine years older than me, was my friend. He’d put me on his shoulders and we’d go to a movie. He’d come out of the movie and he says, “I’d like to see this picture with the Marx Brothers.” They were a big influence. And he’d say, “Let’s go again!” Same day, he’d take me to the movies twice. Six hours of the day at the movie house. I came out, I thought I was blind.GROTH: Which brother was this?ELDER: Irving. He just lost his wife last week. My

oldest brother, Sam, was out of the house before I knew him. He got married and lived apart from all of us. Sam died young of a heart attack. And of course, my sister got married very young, so I didn’t see much of her growing up — except when she would watch me, but she couldn’t take that! She’s in her 90s now, living in Florida. My friends saw more of me than my family. Lucky for me, I got along with them.

We would play stickball. My career would start with stickball. I was kind of a runty kid. I wasn’t tall or heavy or muscular. I was simply a smallish kid with a big fat mouth. And they would never put me on their roster to play stickball, and I really wanted to play. I said, “Why not me? I know something about stickball. I’m pretty good, I think, I’m pretty good. You should give me a tryout.”

They said, “Well, we’ll do something else. We’ll let you score.” So I kept score and my chalk was mightier than their sticks because before you knew it, they would gather around me like chickens at feeding time because I drew their caricatures as they played. I would get bored between innings and start to draw. I made guys score 14 runs in one inning. [Laughter.] On the other team, they got back with 20 runs in the next inning. Of course, I’m exaggerating. It’s actually 15 runs. And in between innings when they came to see what the score was, one guy would say, “Hey, that’s Philip! How’d you do that?” I had a lot of power. I didn’t think I had so much power. And influence. The guys were thrilled. And I made my overnight friendship right there and then. That’s pretty much how it all started. They encouraged me to do more.GROTH: So, drawing with chalk on the blacktop and having that effect fueled your motivation?ELDER: Yeah, only because I kept score. I was bored and I thought that didn’t give me any kind of out for feeling

Elder’s illustration for “A Night at the Castle” (with Groucho as D’Israeli) in Humbug #2 (collected in Humbug Book One © 2009 Fantagraphics Books).


good or doing something worthwhile. In this case I kind of put it on myself to go one step further. You got chalk? Do it like they do in school. Draw a diagram, but in this case make a caricature so these kids can recognize what you can do. So I did that.GROTH: How old would you have been during the time you’re describing?ELDER: I would say around 9 or 10.GROTH: Stickball is essentially baseball with a stick played in the street, right?ELDER: A broomstick, without the bristles at the other end. It was about six feet in length.GROTH: Let me skip back a little bit. You were the last of the four children?ELDER: Yeah.GROTH: And your father was proud of your skill?ELDER: I was my father’s wunderkind. He would brag about me to his buddies, he was so proud of what I could do with a pencil or chalk or anything that was handy, actually, that he would go on about me. If he was at work and one of the workers would show someone a print or a sketch he would chime in, “Oh my boy could do that ... only better!” He was very proud of me.GROTH: Your siblings weren’t like that?ELDER: Well, I never had a chance to find out because they left the house pretty much before I was growing up.GROTH: You said that your mother didn’t give you much affection. Were you kidding?ELDER: No. She loved me, I don’t want to give you the wrong impression, but she was just a little cool and distant. She never showed me that much affection. I mean she was a typical mother: When I got hurt, she tended to me. She loved me too, but don’t forget that her youngest before me was nine years older than me. I think she was tired.GROTH: Did that bother you?ELDER: It affected me, only because she wasn’t like my father.GROTH: Who was more affectionate, in his way.ELDER: I think my father was a man I couldn’t disap-point because he had all this faith in me.GROTH: You sort of indicated that you were poor, but your father had a full-time job.ELDER: When he finally got one. Yes, he had a full-time job. It didn’t pay much, but it kept the wolves at bay, so to speak. And I had a good time because of him.GROTH: Did the crash in ’29 affect your family?ELDER: We were just as poor, before, during and after.

[Laughter.] No change.GROTH: You couldn’t go down any more ...ELDER: No, I was down. My only way was up.GROTH: So, the High School of Music and Art: you would have started there when you were 14 or 15.ELDER: Correct. That was a unique high school. I didn’t know it at the time. When it’s happening, there’s very little you know about anything. It’s only after I grad-uated — and I did graduate; that’s the miracle — it would show that you really accomplished something. It’s a wonderful feeling, especially in the field of educa-tion. It was hard for me because I never had books or libraries. Now I had libraries whether I needed them or not; they just have them around. If I wanted something, I could look it up.GROTH: What was your childhood like before the High School of Music and Art?ELDER: At public school, I used to have fights in the school yard — nothing dangerous, just kids pushing each other around. I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. If someone irritated me, I let them know. That caused

me some problems early on. The school was about a block and a half from where I lived. It was very convenient. But then, when we moved, and I went to another school, that was a pain.GROTH: Do you remem-ber what schools you went to?ELDER: Not really. I remember the neighbor-hood; I can almost see it in my mind’s eye.

GROTH: What did it look like?ELDER: Well, it was next to a church, and the schoolyard was adjoined to the churchyard, and when I’d pick a fight, I’d make sure I wasn’t in the churchyard. I’d make sure that somebody was on my side. But anyway, it was just a matter of egos pushing each other around.GROTH: Did you have a lot of friends?ELDER: Yeah, I did because I could make people laugh. When the bullies came after me I could usually stop them with a quip or a crazy face or some crazy thing that I would think up on the spot. I just knew I could make the bad guys laugh and the other kids, who were more like me, appreciated that and were drawn to me because of it, I think.

Once I got into Music and Art we played association football — touch football. Al would throw me passes — Al Jaffee. He had a very good arm. He’d throw very high and far, and I’d go catch ’em. He used to scratch his head: How does a skinny lump like me catch those passes? Well, it was coming at me; what am I going to do? It was so easy. Just stick my hands out

When the bullies came after me I could usually

stop them with a quip or a crazy face or some crazy

thing that I would think up on the spot.


and grab it. We played in a lot, and on one side of the lot there was a pile of junk: old tires and car tires, steering wheels, wagon wheels, cans of soup — empty, of course. Jaffee would throw a pass to me, and point to where it was going to go. I was going to go to the junk pile. No one would go there to chase me, to follow me. And I’d dive into the junk pile and catch the football. He was amazed because, he said, “You’d risk your life to catch a pass? You’re crazy!” I know. That’s what makes me go.GROTH: Were you a gregarious kid?ELDER: Yeah, I used to go to parties, and I’d always be invited. I would turn them down, and of course they would say “You’re a snob! Turn me down?” I’d say, “Well, if you were invited to five parties in one night you’d also be a snob.”GROTH: At least four times over.

THE FUNNY PAPERS

GROTH: What were you interested in as a child?ELDER: I was captivated by the Saturday matinees and the funny papers. I would try to copy the things I was attracted to and my father always made a big deal. He would pick up the comics. He didn’t read English too well.GROTH: What were your favorites growing up in the late ’20s, early ’30s?ELDER: Katzenjammer Kids. I loved them because they were so mischievous. I saw myself in that damn strip. What else? Smokey Stover was one of my favorites, Wash Tubbs...GROTH: You had an affinity for the newspaper strips?ELDER: Yeah, because during the week, they were black and white, and in the Sunday paper, it would be color. And the colors were beautiful. It was beautiful! It was like a hand-painted film. It’s like the colorful scene in Phantom of the Opera with Lon Chaney. There’s the scene at the ball, did you ever see that? The Phantom comes down dressed as Death in a red robe. That was a hand-tinted scene. And what was the other one? I think, the pirate with Douglas Fairbanks — The Black Pirate. Anyway, the insertion of color added so much to the strip; it was like a blind man seeing for the first time. That’s the feeling I got.GROTH: There was much less media available back then to compete for your attention.ELDER: I didn’t know it, but now that I look back, you’re right.GROTH: So, you had radio?ELDER: Radio was my life. I used to come home every day just to listen to my programs, The Witch’s Tale and Chandu the Magician. I used to sing the intro-ductory music that goes with those episodes. Like Chandu the Magician: How does it go? I forgot. It was a lot of fun, and a few chapters of Sherlock Holmes was one of my favorites.

GROTH: Dramatized on the radio?ELDER: Yeah. And then I Love a Mystery. The author of I Love a Mystery lived outside of San Francisco. When [Elder’s wife] Jean and I went to San Francisco a num-ber of years ago we passed his house on a tour, I was impressed. The bus driver thought he was funny, but he wasn’t. That was a great trip, very picturesque. I painted Jean near a tree in Carmel by the sea. It was fun.

SC HOOL DAYS

GROTH: You told me you’d go on trips sponsored by the school.ELDER: Yeah, we’d go to Westchester, and we’d sort of stand in line and shake hands with Eleanor Roosevelt. That was the highlight of my life. I thought she was somebody special.GROTH: So you entered the High School of Music and Art, and was it there that you developed your passion for ...ELDER: The High School for Music and Art at one time was called the Wadleigh Junior College for Women where they had a two-year course for teachers. We were the first graduating class in Music and Art — if you stuck it out, of course, or weren’t thrown out, like some friends I know. If I mention his name, I’m afraid you might repeat it, so I won’t say anything.GROTH: You know I would.ELDER: I was thrilled to be in that school and had so much mischievous fun that I nearly didn’t make it through myself. But it was a real turning point in my life, that school. My life and many other kids too. If you look at the people who have graduated from that school it reads like a Who’s Who of American cultural icons, musicians, artists, amazing people. Anyway, it was a junior high school and it was in a park. It was a lovely location. They had to destroy a baseball field to put the

From Mad #20 (© 2013 DC Comics).


school there. I thought that was a mockery of education. But it wasn’t. It was a good thing it happened, because I wouldn’t have gone there and been entitled to a schol-arship in music and art. So, little things, little nuances of society kind of change your life. You don’t know when it’s happening, but when it does, you appreciate it.GROTH: How long was Music and Art’s program?ELDER: Four years. And the teachers were special too. They were culled from the neighborhood and they showed their talent. They were very good; they made you feel like you were part of a big, very important movement.GROTH: Is it at the School of Music and Art that you developed your passion for drawing?ELDER: Yeah, I’d say so. We had the typical live models and still lifes. It was the place where I found myself. It was the first time I visited a museum and was exposed to the art of the masters and that really opened my eyes.GROTH: Tell me about the curriculum and the atmosphere.ELDER: We had a long, long, long day in school because we had both music and art. If you were an art student, you’d have a course in music and vise-versa, or versa-vise. You had five hours of regular studies and you had the rest, three hours or so of music and art. An hour and a half of music and an hour and a half of art. Both areas were covered pretty well. The only thing that I missed was in music; they didn’t have enough opera singing and I thought I wanted to cover the field entirely. But otherwise it was an inspiration.GROTH: What were the music courses like?ELDER: Well, the lighter classical stuff: Music by Mendelssohn, the “Spring Song.” [Sings “Spring Song.”] Very appealing. In fact, we were bathed, so to speak, in classical music. We had no chance to listen to jazz; only when you went home and did it on your own. At least I have the taste of having both possible worlds flung at me. I learned to play the mandolin there.GROTH: Did this open up a world of art for you?ELDER: Yeah. I didn’t think these things existed. I came from a poor neighborhood and the only thing we played on the block was stickball, and it doesn’t take much brains to do that. This was a way of telling me there’s more to the world than appears on the surface.GROTH: Was it exhilarating?ELDER: Oh, sure. I enjoyed it. It was one of those things that everybody’s not going to feel the same. We’re all made of different stuff.GROTH: Now, at some point during those four years, you obviously moved more passionately in the direction of visual art than music.

ELDER: Yeah. Anything that’s creative was something I envied very much.GROTH: How did it happen that you focused more on art and drawing?ELDER: Because I would go to the museum, more often than most of the other kids. That surprises people. But I found something that really resonated in me and I felt that I could paint and draw, so here I saw that there might be something I could do with this ability I had. I think that I had been drawing for a long time, but I never thought much about it. You know, drawing carica-tures on the street never struck me as a real talent! But, I always knew I had this ability — talent I guess you would call it — but I never had the idea that it meant anything or I could really make something of myself by using that ability, until I got to Music and Art and was exposed to all these people throughout history who really made a mark. Plus all the other kids there could draw, paint or play instruments incredibly well and I thought, maybe in a small way I could do something

with my art. And that’s how I got my first feelings for music and art. It was a great move for me. It really was. Turned my whole life around.GROTH: Now, you referred to the Museum of Natural History. That wasn’t in the Bronx, was it?ELDER: Manhattan. It was off of one of the wings of Central Park. There were

stuffed animals, like bears. They looked very real to me. I’d never seen a bear before in my life.GROTH: Can you tell me a little about the curriculum? They taught you drawing and painting techniques?ELDER: Yeah, they gave you a variety of media to work with. You pick your own. Choose whatever comes easy to you, whatever seems to be effective. A lot of simple freedom. If you start piling things on a kid and he’s trying to prove he can do things, they’re under some kind of pressure. It doesn’t work. They rebel against such stuff. It should be fun. That’s the way I started out.GROTH: At the time you were drawing and learning how to draw, did you know that you wanted to become a professional artist?ELDER: After a while I did. After a while the drawing became, not an obsession, but a very strong desire to do something further. I took out my sketchpad and started sketching bears, the stuffed bears, on a mountain. Or a fox in the woods. These things remain in my memory. It’s a backlog of things that you’ve seen and digested intellectually. It works for me.GROTH: Now, you must have graduated from high school in ’38 —ELDER: No, ’40. A long time ago. We had a 50th

Yes, she was a Miss America and she got in a lot of trouble, which I can’t go into because it wouldn’t be etiquette.


anniversary 10 years ago, I think. We got some of the teachers. Some of them in wheel chairs. They’re still around.GROTH: Did you have any other notable classmates?ELDER: Yeah, but they are gone. That’s notable. Well, there was Jaffee, and Jaffee’s brother went to the same school. He died rather young. Al and I and another friend, who’s no longer with us, also gone. There was one or two of Al’s friends at his birthday party, at the Society of Illustrators.

Bess Meyerson graduated the same year as me. After the war I was back in New York with some of my buddies, and Bess Meyerson was at Radio City Music Hall for some event or something tied in with being Miss America. We went past there and I said to my friends, “Oh Bess Meyerson, I went to school with her.” None of them believed me, so I had to prove it to them: I went to the stage door and whispered into the guard’s ear “Tell Bess that Wolf Eisenberg is here.” We stood there for a few minutes and the guys really thought I was up to my old stuff, so they said “C’mon, let’s go,” when Bess came running to the door yelling at the top of her lungs “Wolfie, Wolfie, Wolfie Eisenberg!” She threw herself onto me giv-ing me a big hug — you know it had been a while. The guys’ mouths dropped open, I think they were saying, “Who’s Wolfie?” But they got a big kick out of that. They couldn’t believe it. But, yes, she was a Miss America and she got in a lot of trouble, which I can’t go into because it wouldn’t be etiquette.

PRANKS

GROTH: You shouldn’t be a Miss America unless you get into trouble. [Laughter.] Weren’t you a real wiseacre in high school?ELDER: I was a likeable guy.GROTH: A practical joker?ELDER: Yeah, I’m telling you, the only way to equalize the pressures on a young kid like me was to make them laugh. And that was the great equalizer. They enjoyed it; so did I. It saved my life.GROTH: So you were theatrically funny in high school.ELDER: If you can call it that. I tried to be pleasant all the time. It didn’t always work out, but it was my intention.GROTH: I have a great story here that I —ELDER: Is it related to what I’m talking about?GROTH: Yes.ELDER: Tear it up, quick!GROTH: I understand you had a penchant for zany stunts, one of which was that ...ELDER: I was a practical joker. I didn’t walk around with a pistol on my hip or a knife in my belt. I wasn’t a deadly person. I loved to have fun, at someone else’s expense. But not to harm anybody. I wasn’t a criminally minded person.

GROTH: No. But one of your stunts was that you dressed up some raw meat in old clothes and slung them around the railroad tracks. After a train had gone through, you would start screaming at the top of your lungs that someone had been run over by the train.ELDER: That’s the gist of it, yeah. Screaming for this boy who I thought had been cut into mincemeat, and I had all this stuff put into a shirt that was hanging from a clothesline drying. The shirt was dripping blood and broken bones sticking out of the sleeve, and it looked like a massacre had happened recently. And I kept yelling and screaming, “Oh, he shouldn’t have gone on that track! He didn’t listen to me! He’s dead now!” And suddenly the windows would open up and the women’s heads would peek out. “Is my Frankie there? Where’s my Frankie?” They’d all start getting hysterical.GROTH: And these horrified teachers walked by.ELDER: Not teachers. They were the neighborhood people that lived there. They’d look in everyone’s back yard. Everything was accessible in those days: the fire escapes, the rear windows, the roofs. How do you pro-nounce that? Roofs or rooves?GROTH: Roofs, I think. So where do you think this prankish nature of yours came from?ELDER: Well, it was like a living cartoon. Cartoons walk off a cliff and they never get killed. I thought that would be the same with me. But of course I knew better than that. I just loved to see embarrassment on the other person’s face. It gave me some kind of pleasure. It gave me a sadistic pleasure, but it was fun.GROTH: Were you inspired by the Marx Brothers?ELDER: Partially. But, I later learned that Hollywood movies are all pre-fab, and it’s all figured out before-hand, so I stopped doing them. The lesson I learned.GROTH: You stopped doing —ELDER: Pranks that would hurt somebody. I would put it on paper. Years later, Harvey [Kurtzman] came to me and said, “How’d you like to put all your crazies on paper? I think we would be able to start a comic book that’s funny like you, Will.” Harvey knew of all my antics from Music and Art and I think he thought it would be very advantageous to him to have me doing some work on Mad. You know, I was just starting to draw a little more at EC; most of the guys there knew me as Severin’s inker, but I was starting to draw some more in a couple of the other EC crime and horror books. Harvey knew I could take on the funny stuff, so I think that’s where all my pranks went — into the work.

GOING TO WORK

GROTH: What did you do after graduating?ELDER: I went to work. I had a couple of strange jobs, like dressing windows with a very strange guy in one of the department stores. Then I went on to the Academy of Design in Manhattan. I was there for about a year,


maybe a little less, I don’t remember, but then Uncle Sam called. I just collected my 52-20. For 52 weeks I got $20 a week.GROTH: You went in the Army. How soon after graduat-ing were you drafted?ELDER: About a year and a half later. I was in the National Academy of Design for almost a year. It was a private school, but you have to pass some kind of a test.GROTH: How could you afford that?ELDER: Little by little. It wasn’t so bad. Part of it was on money I had saved. I always tried to save some money. I did some work for somebody. I didn’t do very much. My folks would supply most of the money. The Academy taught me how to provide composition correctly. Perspectives. The intricacies of art. Without them, it didn’t look like much, unless you’re an abstract painter.GROTH: Was that an industrial orientation?ELDER: No. It was a fine art and model painting.GROTH: I see. In 1941, you evidently worked for a place called the Decal Company doing design and cartoons?ELDER: That’s correct.GROTH: And you would have been approximately 19 when you worked for them?ELDER: Yeah. I was out of school for about a year before.GROTH: Tell me what that place was like and how you got a job there and what you did.ELDER: Well, they liked some of my cartoons and they thought that I could apply my skill to some of their stick-ers you put on the back of cars and plates and whatnot. Their mascots were once the Dartmouth Indians. I’d make a decal about an Indian with Dartmouth written all over its chest. I would start doing a lot of college insignias. It was NYU and four of those universities.GROTH: How long did you work there?ELDER: Oh, roughly, I would say about three months. I wanted to find something better. I thought I’d be get-ting something better.GROTH: So mostly what you did was hand-drawn?ELDER: Yeah. And they turned these things out. It was sort of a light, supple plastic.

GROTH: I assume you were pretty happy to get a job there during the Depression?ELDER: Yeah. It was something I always liked. I love car-tooning and drawing in general, so this was a job that gave me some kind of pleasure. Not much money, but it was fun working at it.GROTH: Was that in Manhattan?ELDER: That was in Manhattan.GROTH: Would you have gotten into making the rounds of the comic publishers right after that?ELDER: I went into some of the agencies, the big adver-tising agencies. They promised me the moon, but I never heard from them.

WARTIME

GROTH: Shortly thereafter, in 1942, you were drafted into the Army.ELDER: Pretty good. In the Army. Yeah. And we went out to Governors Island. That was your admission into the army. They’d give you your uniform, that sort of thing.GROTH: Did you get out of the Army immediately after the war?ELDER: Yeah, and I started looking for work.GROTH: What was your experience in the Army like?ELDER: Well, I was a young little hero. I saved a man’s life. I was proud of that. I came home two hours late from a pass. I think it was two o’clock in the morning. Midnight was the deadline. And I saw smoke coming out of this tent, which suddenly ignited into flame. I reacted out of instinct, not even thinking whether I’d get hurt or not; I dashed into the tent, took the guy and threw his cot and him out, right through the flames. We both dived through it. I started pounding on him. He was drunk. He was a chef and he must have drank. And I kept beating the flames out, and he says, “What are you hitting me for? You could have let me fry instead.” “I’m hitting you to put the fire out, you idiot.” And then the next day he found out what I did, he gave me extra potatoes. [Laughter.] Got more spinach. He’d take another pork chop, “Go ahead, Will. It’s on me.” I never forgot that. It’s a great feeling.GROTH: It’s good you didn’t rescue somebody who cleaned out the latrines.ELDER: It’s a good thing it was in the United States. If it was in Europe, I’d be dead by now.GROTH: So, what did you train as? Did they give you a specialty of some sort?ELDER: Yeah, I used to do VD posters. I would draw some of them, showing a G.I. that looks like he’s going to fall apart. I did a few propaganda posters for the Army: “Loose Lips Sink Ships,” a couple of patriotic type of posters but that was just the beginning. I was actually put into the photo-mapping section of my platoon, and we did maps of the Normandy beachhead. And, what was it now, from the neck of the attack? One of the beaches...GROTH: Omaha?


ELDER: Omaha. That’s good. Omaha beach. There were several others, but that one I remember. I remember that one. We came in D-Day plus six, so it wasn’t that terrible.GROTH: So you actually landed at Normandy after it had been secured?ELDER: Yeah. The Germans were on the run. Of course they gave us a good pasting, and then they went on the run. It was the beginning of the end for the Germans. I got caught up in the Battle of the Bulge and I went in with the shock troops that stormed Cologne. We were some of the first American troops that crossed the Rhine.GROTH: So, you saw some fighting over there?ELDER: Oh, yeah. There’s no way out. You had to fight for your life. I’m trying to think of the name of the place... It took place during the snow and the foggy weather. And they couldn’t drop any food and rations for us from the air because you were blinded to everything out there. Anyway, that’s when they demanded we surrender and the American General told them “Nuts!”GROTH: Oh! Sure, sure. That was Bastogne.ELDER: Yeah, well, I was in part of it. I didn’t pick up a rifle. I just was standing around and didn’t know which door to go through. It was chaotic.GROTH: How long were you in the European Theater?ELDER: About a year, a year and a half, something like that.GROTH: You were in France?ELDER: I was there three and a half years, in France, Cherbourg, Paris ... Didn’t get into Germany. Got into Czechoslovakia, which is close by. Pilsen — that’s where the little underground barrels of beer, pilsner beer — nothing like it, coming out of big barrels. We were sta-tioned there for about a month.GROTH: What is photo-mapping?ELDER: It’s taking aerial photos of the area that’s about to be attacked. It worked very well, because there was 60 percent overlap stereo, so it looked like the real thing. You started seeing it in three dimensions. It was just a wonderful experience, as long as you came out of it alive. Luckily, we did a major job in keeping back the enemy. A lot of it’s faith. A lot of it is faith.GROTH: How much did you know about what was going on over there?ELDER: I knew quite a bit, because I was in photo-map-ping and the engineering department, 668 Engineer Corps, and we saw the big wigs. Not staying for a min-ute, but just walk right through.GROTH: Were you aware of the concentration camps?ELDER: Oh, yeah. I’d been to one or two of them. One of them was a sorry sight. The other was paperwork. But the sorry sight is pretty much what you see on TV. You don’t want to bring that up all the time. People would always ask me what it was like. I mean, they know already, but they want to get a fresh take.GROTH: Did you spend your entire stint in the Army in Europe?

ELDER: I’d say most of it. Most of my army days were in the European theater. And I was just hoping they weren’t sending us over to Japan.GROTH: No one wanted to go to Japan. So, you weren’t sent to the Pacific theater?ELDER: No. No Pacific theater.GROTH: So you got back to the States, and you got out of the Army in ’45 or ’46?ELDER: The end of ’45. Levittown was in full bloom. I thought perhaps someday I could move there, but I’m glad I didn’t.

RUFUS DE BREE

GROTH: In ’46 you started writing and drawing a backup feature in Toy Town called Rufus De Bree. Can you tell me how that came about?ELDER: Well, I had a cartoon that I was fooling with, and this friend of mine who lived down in St. Lawrence, Richard Bruskin, who now, as I said to you earlier, has his own ad agency in Florida. Rufus De Bree was a play on words: refuse and debris, Rufus De Bree. He was a garbage man. One day he was walking the street and he bent down and then back up again and got smacked in the head by one of those wooden arms that sticks out giving you directions. And the drunk driver was a little short guy like Sancho Panza. This old gentleman, he was a little decrepit looking, and he gets smacked in the head by this truck that was driven by Sancho, and he wakes up the next day in a strange land. There’s a guy in an armored suit looking at him as he wakes up. The guy in the armored suit is a Don Quixote type, Rufus De Bree. And he says, “Come with me. We’re surrounded by a bunch of crazy armored people. We’re living in a strange age.” So the idea was to have a story written like King Arthur’s Court. It was a direct swipe from that — just changed the characters around. I thought that would be good for a young reader. And being it was a comic book, I had to make sure it was tasteful, some-thing they would learn by.GROTH: I know you read comic strips, but had you at one point started reading comic books?ELDER: Yeah, I started reading comic books when Walt Kelly drew comics. He had a great technique. I loved his technique. It was very attractive to me.GROTH: Did you read comics before you went into the Army or during your stint?ELDER: It was after.GROTH: Well, it couldn’t have been much after, because if you were working on a strip for comic books, you must have been aware of comic books at the time.ELDER: I was aware of the comic books produced by Max Gaines. And I had read those when they first came out, I guess in the mid to late 1930s. You know, the first ones that were just reprints of the Sunday comics. I remem-ber that. I’m not sure what came next, but I was always

From Elder’s Rufus De Bree strip in Toytown Comics #4



drawn — there’s a pun — to them. I was ... attracted — is that better? — to any kind of illustrated strip whether it was a comic book or a strip or whatever. So I knew about them, but I always liked Walt Kelly’s work and when his stuff was put out I remember seeing that.GROTH: What prompted you to try to draw comic books?ELDER: I thought it would be an easy way to make a living. It was simple drawing. It was for children. They don’t get technical about how this or that should be. And they were pretty good on deciding what’s wrong and what’s right.GROTH: So, how did you go about trying to sell Rufus De Bree?ELDER: I heard through a friend of mine — I’ve forgot-ten who now, honestly — that there was a woman pub-lisher, one of the very first. What was her name again? Rae Herman. She was open for a lot of these fairy-tale types of things.GROTH: What company was this?ELDER: She had her own publishing company. [Toy Town Publications.] The strip’s kind of awkward and not done very well. I can look back and see the things I used to do.GROTH: Did you go to her office?ELDER: Yeah. She looked at it, and she held it for a day or two, then she called me and said she’d like to go ahead and publish the story. But, she wanted to change it, put him on a horse, something decorative. I go, “What in Sam Hill?” I don’t know what’s in Sam Hill. Her office was not too far from Columbus Circle — a few companies were around there. Might have been Broadway, I’m not sure. My affiliation with her was limited.GROTH: How old was she?ELDER: I have no idea. Might have been in her 40s. She wasn’t a young whippersnapper. She said, “Work up something for me and bring it in. We’ll see what we can do.” I did three stories for her, until I did some freelance outside of that place for Simon and Kirby. I was doing some love stories, that sort of thing.GROTH: First time in Kirby’s shop?ELDER: Yeah. And then Johnny Severin came around and got jobs for the two of us. Severin could draw very well. He had a good memory for mechanical things. And I could ink really well. I could ink fast; he drew fast. We were both the opposites of each other. I couldn’t draw as fast as him. To make money in that business, you

have to be pretty fast and turn out a lot of material. We turned out the best we could at that stage of the game. We hit it off with the few samples that we showed Simon and Kirby.GROTH: How did you get hooked up with Joe Simon’s shop?ELDER: Through Kirby, because Kirby was the artist and Simon was the businessman.GROTH: How did you know Kirby?ELDER: Well, through some of the artists. We came up to his office and we saw some of the work that was being done, and I said, “We can do it.” John Severin was the same way.GROTH: Well, how did you discover the Simon/Kirby shop?ELDER: It’s hard to put my finger on. I can’t know exactly when that happened.GROTH: And you went up to Simon’s shop, and he gave

you some work...ELDER: He gave us some work. It worked out pretty well. We weren’t getting paid very much, but that was the reason we got the work.GROTH: Who did you deal with, Simon or Kirby?ELDER: Simon. No, no, no, no, Kirby. Kirby was the shorter one. There was a guy in the office who was very funny. I wonder if you know who I’m talking about if I mention what happened. This guy would follow us down the stairs, get out in the middle of the street and start directing

traffic. Severin and I looked at each other: See any cops around? I look at this guy, directing traffic. I think he had a nervous breakdown; I found out later. Couldn’t stand the traffic. I couldn’t blame him for that. But to direct it?GROTH: Probably just some poor cartoonist. So, when they gave you work, what does that mean? They gave you scripts that you illustrated?ELDER: No, he said, “If you have any ideas, let me know.” Then we got the scripts because we pretty much relied upon scripts. We were doing well enough to follow a script.GROTH: I see. How much work were you doing for Simon and Kirby?ELDER: Not much. I’d say about maybe a half a year’s worth. Then we did it for another outfit — a guy who lived up in Westchester. I forgot his name. Typical Irish name: McSomething. McDormott? But this guy liked our work. He said, “We have some material that you can give me a finished product.” And Johnny, this is Johnny

This is Johnny Severin’s greatest skill, to draw

these mechanical devices: railroad trains, airplanes, tanks in war, the GIs out

there. He knew it all. I was just a sidekick, inking as well as I could. I tried to dramatize the picture.


Severin’s greatest skill, to draw these mechanical devices: railroad trains, airplanes, tanks in war, the GIs out there. He knew it all. I was just a sidekick, inking as well as I could. I tried to dramatize the picture, you know the black-and-white content.GROTH: Tell me how you met Severin.ELDER: Well, I knew him from school; he was in my class. I didn’t know him that well, but I’d see him occasionally, and we’d talk about what we would do when we got out.GROTH: So, how did you hook back up with him when you got out of the Army?ELDER: I really couldn’t tell you.

C HARLES WILLIAM HARVEY

GROTH: Well, in 1946 or 1947 you started the Charles William Harvey Studio. How did that come about?ELDER: Harry Jaffee and I were walking down the street, as usual, and I see a friend of mine who I recognize was Charlie Stern. Charlie and I knew each other. I used to go over to their house. Along with Charlie Stern was a fellow by the name of Harvey Kurtzman. I knew that later. I’d seen him around, but I didn’t know his name was Harvey Kurtzman. And he would laugh at some of my jokes and I said, “This guy is for me!” He says, “You looking for work?” He says, “Yeah, we are, too.” Harvey had just finished with Scientific American, something like that, and he had a friend who gave Harvey work. He was coming from that [Scientific American] building, or going toward it, I don’t know which way. We met, and he and I got together and he said, “Let’s draw up some things.”GROTH: But that was a little bit later. You started the Charles William Harvey Studio prior to that.ELDER: That’s right. It was a little later.GROTH: So the first time you met Harvey was in 1947.ELDER: Yeah. I was on the street in New York, minding my own business. That worked out well for us.GROTH: Did Harvey know John Severin?ELDER: Oh, yeah. We all knew Johnny. Harvey didn’t get along with Johnny. There were conflicts. Not for me to go into. He may see this and come after me with a shotgun. [Laughter.]GROTH: And who could blame him? You knew Harry Jaffee. What was he like?ELDER: Al’s brother was doing very well. He was doing airplanes and knocking them out maybe a dozen at a time; these Kitty Hawks or whatever they were called. He’d put them in the window of Brentano’s in New York, a very popular and famous souvenir store or bookstore. I think it was selling something like that.GROTH: These were replicas of the Wright Bros. airplane?ELDER: No. They were later than that. I would say that they were like Piper Cubs. They were about a foot in diameter. He handmade them by the dozen. He had a system. I would help him. I would do the tracings on the

illustration board. He would dip his brush into some kind of egg tempera paint. He’d go over it as if he were some kind of machine or something. He had some kind of a system that worked really well, and he made a lot of money doing it.GROTH: And then he sold them directly to stores?ELDER: Well, he worked through Brentanos. They’d pay him per job and they’d sell them. And then he’d pay me. He paid me very little.GROTH: And that would have been in the early ’40s, before you —ELDER: I think it was somewhere in 1938.GROTH: Is Jaffee older than you are?ELDER: Al’s about a year older and Harry was a little younger than I was. Harry died a number of years ago.GROTH: You started the Charles William Harvey Studio I think in 1947?ELDER: Yeah. That was Fiasco Incorporated.GROTH: [Joking.] Well, I’m sure you had nothing to do with that part of it.ELDER: Well, I was part of it. That’s the idea. We were on the second or third floor. I’m not quite sure. But I’d make paper airplanes and throw them out of the window into the street. And of course on the paper air-planes was written in beautiful block letters, “Charles William Harvey Studio is now open.”GROTH: Did you get arrested for doing that?ELDER: No. It was just people picking up papers and throwing them into the gutter.Of course, we experienced a fire. Somebody was fooling around on some other floor and there was a fire. Smoke was billowing into the rest of the hallway and we had to evacuate the building.GROTH: Let me back up a little bit. Who was Charlie Stern, the Charles of Charles William Harvey?ELDER: Charlie was another Music and Art-er. We had that in common. We had a few laughs when we met in the streets of New York retelling the stories about Music and Art, talking about teachers and episodes with some of our classmates who were kind of freakish. We thought it was fun and that we ought to get together more often and maybe as a team we could pick up some work and the public won’t know the difference.GROTH: So you guys just eventually got together and decided that you could do better as a studio than you could individually?ELDER: That’s right. I knew somebody in the movie business. Her father worked as an executive for 20th Century Fox’s Manhattan branch. She also was a Music and Art-er. That school turned out some very interest-ing people and some well-dressed people.GROTH: Didn’t you do work for a movie featuring Ernie Tubbs and the Singing Cowboys?ELDER: That’s right. Your memory is very good. That was one of those grade B-movies.GROTH: What would you have done on it? A movie poster or something like that?


ELDER: It was a press book. The kind of thing that was sent around to theater owners, I guess, advertising this new movie coming out. I would try to capture the expression on his face. He would sing with a guitar in his hands, I think. There was a montage of other people in the background, riding horses. It was just chock full of photos and lettering. I think Charlie would letter. We all would undertake various jobs doing it and turning it out.GROTH: You were essentially doing commercial work?ELDER: Yeah, ’cause that’s where we could pay the rent.GROTH: Did you work together or was it always individually?ELDER: If there was enough work we’d work individu-ally. [Telephone beep.] Hello? I must have pressed the wrong button here or something.

GROTH: No button pressing.ELDER: Only pants pressed.GROTH: Right. So did you ever work together on a proj-ect where you would all draw on the same project?ELDER: Well, if we had enough work we’d work individ-ually. Somehow we were kind of confused in who was running the show, who was president of the agency. Here’s a classic example of what happened. And Harvey and I would always retell this at conventions. Being a business without a president doesn’t work too well. Someone has to be in charge. So we took a vote, but everyone voted for himself. That’s what we wanted to avoid. The idea was to put these tabs in a hat, pick it out and that’s how we finally got ourselves straightened out as to whose name is first mentioned in the organization.

GROTH: So that’s how you decided that? I was wonder-ing how you chose the order of the names.ELDER: It could have been something out of a hat or a bowl or something like that.GROTH: How long was the studio in business?ELDER: I’d say six or seven months, maybe eight months. I think it was less than a year.GROTH: Wasn’t John Severin involved in it for a while?ELDER: He’d come up and visit. We had other guys in the business who would come up and visit. They’d shoot the breeze, sit around. They’d bring up some lunch once in a while — a sandwich, a Coke. I would fool around and they would kibbitz around. We had a lot of guys ... One fellow — Jahorson? Leon Gehorsin? — I’ve never gotten the spelling of his name but he was the architect that designed some of the main buildings at Farleigh Dickensen University, he was an architect, also a Music and Art-er. We were all from Music and Art. We had that in common. We could relate stories and get a lot of chuckles and laughs as if we were old schoolmates.

HIGH SC HOOL PRANKS

GROTH: My impression is that you didn’t really know Kurtzman in high school even though you both went to the same school.ELDER: But he’d seen me many times. I was oblivious to a lot of people because I was only interested in making them laugh and getting along with my fellow students.GROTH: It sounds like he was aware of you because you were quite a prankster.ELDER: A prankster and a class clown looking for popu-larity of some sort. Yeah.GROTH: But you weren’t aware of him?ELDER: No. I’d seen him. I saw him but I never even spoke to him. He was an underclassmate of mine by one year.GROTH: So you really met him for the first time on the street eventually and shortly thereafter ...ELDER: He brought up the fact that he saw me in the telephone booth the other week and he thought I was very funny. He had a remarkable memory.GROTH: Do you want to tell me what the telephone booth prank was?ELDER: Well, I would try to capture the attention of my classmates, who would sit at this one favorite table of ours. I would fool around, make some strange things with my food. I’ve forgotten at this point what it was but it had them laughing. Then I sneaked into this tele-phone booth at the end of the lunchroom. I’d take this hat. It was in the winter. There was cold weather like it is around here now. I’d take this cap, button it on the bottom. It was like the old-fashioned Fokker German Ace, Baron Von Richthofen type of German Ace. I’d but-ton it on the bottom of my chin, and I had this dribble of catsup dribbling from the corner of my mouth. And

The teacher opened this closet door, and there I

was hanging from one of the hooks, my face pale as a ghost. I’d rubbed some chalk on my face. And the teacher screamed and ran down the hall. Before he could come back I was

all cleaned up and sitting in my desk like it never

happened.


I’d take a pack of cigarettes, light a few, and drop them on the floor of the phone booth and then stomp on them so the smoke would rise and that was the plane going down in flames. And I would be hanging out crawling on the floor and taking some of the forks and knives and making a clatter of some sort. And they looked and they’d say, “My God, it looks like a Grade-B movie.”GROTH: I’m collecting these anecdotes about the crazy stunts you would pull.ELDER: Well, another one was about the closet.GROTH: Yes. The closet in the schoolroom.ELDER: I never showed up to class on time and the teacher would ask where I was. And one day someone said they saw me in the building. They knew that I was in school. And the teacher says, Where did you see him last? And he says, pretty much on this floor, somewhere down the hall. And the period was over. The teacher opened this closet door, and there I was hanging from one of the hooks, my face pale as a ghost. I’d rubbed some chalk on my face. And the teacher screamed and ran down the hall. Before he could come back I was all cleaned up and sitting in my desk like it never happened.GROTH: What prompted you to go to such lengths?ELDER: Well, I was supposed to hand something in and I didn’t have it. I didn’t have my assignment and I thought it would be better putting it off a day or two rather than getting a zero.GROTH: But I mean in general. You did a lot of these intricate stunts. What prompted them?

ELDER: It was attention-getting, to be very honest with you. And having fun doing it and making friends who admired that sort of thing because I had the guts to go ahead and do those kinds of things.GROTH: Harvey Kurtzman said once, “Many years later Willy told me he resented his clown period because he realized, as many clowns do, that they are clowns because they want desperately to be loved.”ELDER: Yeah. I think that’s the dilemma of most clowns. They want your sympathy. And they do it by painstak-ing moves, by sacrificing their own health and happi-ness so that others can be happy and healthy. That’s the way most clowns work.GROTH: Do you regret having done all of that?ELDER: No, because it gave me a background of how it felt to be liked and admired and simpatico. Harvey analyzed it quite correctly when he said that I should put that stuff on paper. That I should put it down, write it down. All the exploits that I’d gone through should be written on paper. If not written, at least drawn in a cartoon style. Which I eventually did.GROTH: Now, back then, that would have been mid to late ’30s when you were probably doing a lot of that stuff in high school. Were there comedians you liked? You mentioned the Marx Brothers.ELDER: The Marx Brothers, of course. They were the wackos of the day. Laurel and Hardy — very subtle but two beautifully committed guys who I loved very much. Harold Lloyd — this goes way back. I would go to these

From “Ganefs!” in Mad #1 (© 2013 DC Comics).


film festivals. Not that I was there when it first played. I’d go to a film festival and see all of the Harold Lloyd films. Chaplin. Buster Keaton. All of these classic come-dians. They wrote their own material and did their own stunts. It never ceases to amaze me.GROTH: So you had a real affinity with those physical comedians.ELDER: Yeah, physical and it was mentally done on the screen, too. The ideas were put there, too. I thought it was all the physical myself, but eventually I found out that they thought of these things. They were their own producers, writers, directors — all in one man.GROTH: It also occurs to me that a lot of their humor — Keaton, Chaplin, the Marx Brothers — was very intricately thought through. It occurs to me that a lot of your humor drawing is very intricately thought through as well.ELDER: That’s true. I would apply these characters to a situation. The situation had to absorb these people and become something like a fiasco. They fail at what they do, and that’s very human. If you fail at what you’re doing after thinking about making some creative beauty out of anything, and you fail at it, whatever it is, you gain the sympathy of many people. You find out that you certainly have a lot of friends.GROTH: This is getting ahead of myself, but let me just ask you this question because it seems appropriate: A lot of your humor work has a spontaneous quality to it, but it’s also obviously very calculated, very thought through.ELDER: Well, I use a mirror and I use myself as a model. And I get that feeling. The trick is to feel like the char-acter might feel in any situation. If something saddens me, I will let you know by giving the classic expression of a person who is sad: mouth turned down, the eye sloping downwards toward a point, eyes half open, half closed. Whatever. The clown. The clown is always looking sad. Either sad or extremely happy. Both extremes are exposed by a clown.GROTH: And I guess that’s the reason for his profundity.ELDER: That’s true.

BAC K TO THE CWH STUDIO

GROTH: Let me get back to my chronology. The Charles William Harvey Studio lasted six months or so —ELDER: We moved to another building that was over a restaurant. I think the proprietor, the owner of the restaurant, resented the fact that we had friends com-ing up there at will. There was like all of these people, potential customers, but they’re not going to my shop, they’re going upstairs. It was all of the fellows from Music and Art that I mentioned earlier.GROTH: Not clients.ELDER: Not clients. No. People like Dave Berg, Leon Georhsin, Jules Feiffer, René Goscinny and other ne’er do wells!

GROTH: I assume both of these locations were in Manhattan?ELDER: Yeah.GROTH: I assume it didn’t last longer because you weren’t successful?ELDER: Correct.GROTH: That’s why I am where I am today. So you just weren’t getting the work?ELDER: That’s exactly right. Any work at all would inter-est me. I felt anything I did added to the experience of just getting around and proving my way.GROTH: Learning the ropes.ELDER: Learning the ropes is right.GROTH: You don’t strike me as a real hustler type.ELDER: Well, I was too busy. I would never brag. I was rather timid. I felt my work should do the speaking for me.GROTH: I was going to say, by temperament you don’t strike me as being a hustler. Was there a hustler in the studio who could go out and try to get work?ELDER: Stern. And Harvey more so than me but not too much more. We were too busy knocking out some stories and we thought that we had no time or place for feeling sorry for ourselves.GROTH: So after the Charles William Harvey Studio ended, which would have been in ’48, did you start working at EC, inking John Severin’s work?ELDER: Yeah. Well, John Severin was tied up with Simon and Kirby. It was through the organization of Charles William Harvey that it came to fruition. Harvey had worked for Stan Lee at Marvel. And he’d always do his work at the Charles William Harvey Studio. I saw the work that he did. I said, “Is there any chance that I can find some work up there myself?” Harvey says, “Yeah. Go up. Call Stan Lee or go up and see somebody there and see what they have,” which I did. And I got something. I don’t remember what it was, but it was something. And through that, people began to know me, and vice versa. I think it’s who you know in this business as well as what you know.GROTH: Now you started off inking Severin’s work at EC? The war books?ELDER: Yeah. I felt that I could work on a finished prod-uct much better than if I was working at it day to day.GROTH: Do you mean better or faster?ELDER: Faster and better. For some reason or other I had the ability to do that. I couldn’t explain it, but per-haps it’s because the pencils gave me all the guidance I needed. The inking came very natural. I started with American Eagle. I think it was about an Indian who was very loyal to our country.GROTH: And you inked that?ELDER: I inked it.GROTH: And Severin penciled. Then, you went on to ink the war stories at EC that Harvey wrote?ELDER: Yeah. Correct. Two-Fisted Tales. That sort of thing.

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The Comics Journal Library Vol. 8: The EC Artists - preview