Dave Kyle returns now with another autobiographical remembrance from the earliest
days of science fiction fandom. Back then, when there were relatively few fans, the
written word (in letters and fanzines) was probably the primary way they kept in
touch with each other. It was a time when there was really only one fandom;
subfandoms, such as comics fandom, did not yet exist. When you trace the beginnings
of comics fandom, to find first known amateur magazine devoted to comics, it turns
out you're inexorably led to Dave himself, who can claim to be a...
Purple flesh! The colorful stains
on my fingers (the 'branding mark' of the hectograph) inspired me to sign my letter
as 'The Purple Bat'. My 'Bat' letter was a juvenile, presumptuous one of comment to
Charlie Hornig, the editor of Wonder Stories in 1935. He printed it, all
unknowingly, in the same issue as another letter over my own name. Thus did I
continue my early playful days in fandom. I wasn't the only fan in fandom then who
had the badge of the purple ink on his skin. Or the black smudge of duplicator ink,
either.
Machines, usually trademarked
'Mimeograph', abounded then in all sizes and shapes and in all conditions. The
lucky fan was the one who had the top of the line with automatic feed and
self-inking, better than 'Speed-O-Print'. The almost impoverished fan, not an
unusual condition during the depths of the Great Depression, had a simple h
and-cranked drum. I had less than that.
My first fanzine, in black ink before
my hectograph days, was the result of a peculiar instrument of reproduction called a
'Multi-Print' that I found in my father's law offices. It was a weird, curved
stamping implement, with an inking pad and a reservoir inside. Slide the metal
cover off by its large, wooden knob handle and brush in the ink. A half of standard
sheet could be printed with a sweep of arm and hand.
Imagine hand-stamping a single
fanzine page. Cut the stencil. Wrap it around a half-drum. Lay down the paper,
line up the stamper, push down, pressing from left to right. Fifty copies. Not a
chance for many more than that, as the fragile wax stencil would soon tear apart.
And this was just for one page. Take off the stencil, re-ink the interior pad and
begin again for the second page, printing the flip side of the sheet. Sheet by
sheet, your amateur magazine takes shape. Work and turn, work and turn.
That was the way I produced fanzines
in the 1930s. My first fanzine, Fantasy World, was published in February
1936. It consisted of eight single pages, printed on both sides, roughly half of a
legal size sheet, plus an illustrated front cover. The cheap pulp paper I had used
had been cut by me from newspaper stock. The issue's contents page, subtitled
"Cartoons of the Imagination," listed two serial comic strips and two illustrated
humorous departments. The second issue had a name change to Phantasy World,
following the spelling lead of BNF Donald A. Wollheim. It's initial distribution
was at the Second Eastern science fiction convention on February 21, 1937, when the
fanzine featured my 'Phantasy Legion' national fan club and attributed its
publication to 'Phantasy Legion Guild'.
Those were the days of the truly
hard-working, dedicated fan. For many, fanzine production was tedious work and only
the enthusiast could more-or-less successfully manufacture his product. Stencil and
ink on a decent machine could produce copies in the hundreds (rarely needed), but
hectograph was limited to a half a hundred. With hectograph, however, fanzines
could be a colorful art form.
Forry Ackerman describes very well
the mysteries of hectograph: "You took a pan like you were going to bake a cake,
poured in a solution which, when it jelled, you then typed out your text and drew
your pictures on a sheet of paper, using a special typing ribbon and ink. Then you
laid this paper on top of this gelatinous material, took it off and now you could
lay sheets of paper on this and pull them off. You got about 50 legible
reproductions this way. And you'd get purple fingers!"
In the spring of 1999 an amazing, not
to say personally dumbfounding, event took place. I received, unannounced, a
package containing a large publication with an eye-popping colorful cover, The
Golden Age of Comics Fandom by Bill Schelly (Hamster Press, Seattle 1999). In
it I found, leading off the first chapter, numerous illustrations from Fantasy
World and Phantasy World. What a hard to believe but pleasant shock!
Then I read the following:
"As early as February 1936, a mimeographed fanzine devoted
entirely to comics was published by prominent sf fan, artist and photographer David
A. Kyle. Fantasy World featured original sf-themed comic strips by Kyle,
whose early art was crude yet gave evidence of nascent talent. With subsequent
issues the title was modified to Phantasy World. By the third issue (dated
April 1937), the contents included not only the nicely-drawn "One Mercutian Night"
strip, but a story by Eando Binder titled "The Sign of the Scarlet Cross" with
illustrations by Kyle. Phantasy World did not contain articles about comics,
or super-heroes -- which, in any case, hadn't made it into the new comic book medium
yet. (Superman's first appearance in Action Comics was a year way.) Still,
there is no doubt that Kyle's humble publication qualifies as the first known
amateur magazine devoted to comics."
Comics fandom, ubiquitous as it is
today, was totally non-existent in the mid 1930s. It always seemed to me that
Jerome Siegel and Joseph Shuster would have had the honor of doing "the first known
amateur magazine devoted to comics" with their 1932 mimeo-ed Science Fiction.
However, the five issues had only a few illustrations. Interestingly, the
second-ever fanzine, The Time Traveller (the very first was The Comet
in 1930), was the effort of Julius Schwartz with his best friend Mort Weisinger
(among others) in 1932 -- and Julie's legendary fame grew as the result of his years
with DC Comics as Superman's editor. By fortunate circumstances, Siegel,
Shuster, and Schwartz came together to enormously shape the comics world of the
comics hero. Even Weisinger, who steered Julie into the comics business, became
part of the comics scene as editor of Thrilling Wonder Stories by featuring a
comics strip in his magazine.
And how did it come about that I did
this pioneering comics fanzine?
Blame it on Alex Raymond, creator of
Flash Gordon. As I previously mentioned in my "Science Fiction League"
article {{ed. note: in
Mimosa 14 }}, his work enthralled me. Buck Rogers
had been around for four years, but I wasn't exposed to the strip regularly, it not
being in our newspaper. Raymond and Flash nudged me into experimenting with my
father's hand-operated machine and doing Fantasy World. My interest led
directly into art school after high school (1936-37) and professional illustrating
in the 1940s.
All this fascination with fantastic
comics, however I must confess, was before my conversion into a science fiction fan.
Before my teen-age years, exotic (for the time) books about Tarzan and John Carter
and Tom Swift had been at work on me. There had also been The American Boy
magazine with stories by Carl H. Claudy and Thomson Burtis. And most significantly,
I had become an aviation enthusiast. The Great War was barely a dozen years earlier
and Charles A. Lindbergh had captured the imagination of not just me but the entire
world by his solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean. I lived and breathed airplanes,
built models of Fokkers and Spads, and flew the flimsy lightweight balsa
stick-and-rubberband planes.
Suddenly my horizons widened, and I
found a whole new, exciting dimension of life. It was the siren call of the pulps
and the enchanting world of the magazine stand. Ah! Those wonderful pulps --
Argosy and The Shadow -- and most particularly Bill Barnes, Air
Adventurer and Wings and a host of World War One aerial war stories. My
enthusiasm was unbounded for those dashing war planes and the hair-raising dogfights.
And about this time, in 1930, most excitingly, the adventures of Buck Rogers in the
newspaper comics section began, followed by a radio dramatic show. Soon thereafter,
of much greater impact on me, was Alex Raymond's daring and sensual adventures of
Flash and Dale. For a number of years I considered myself an expert in the flashy
world of the Sunday comics. I still have dozens of full-page tear sheets saved from
those intriguing days of the 1930s, including the first ones of Flash and
Terry and the Pirates.
This germination process leading me
into the world of sf was underway as my teen-age years began. Before that
exhilarating moment when I first read a Gernsback publication, the first issue of
Science Wonder Stories, the insidious lure of fantasy fiction had been at
work within me for years. Now airplanes, everything to me up to then, were about to
give way to rocket ships as my primary passion.
We've come to accept the pioneering
Gernsback as 'The Father of Modern Science Fiction'. What we have not recognized is
another incredible aspect of his innovative entrepreneurship -- perhaps he should be
considered the seminal start of the comic book industry and comics fandom, which is
now as pervasive, widespread and popular as sf fandom.
Many people are not aware that Hugo
Gernsback's Amazing produced Tony Rogers, "Buck" to us all and the world.
The so-called "Buck Rogers" cover for Amazing Stories of August 1928 isn't
what it appears to be. The Frank R. Paul magazine cover for that issue was actually
painted to illustrate the first part of Doc Smith's Skylark of Space -- the
fellow in the anti-gravity belt is the hero Richard Seaton. So how did this
confusion come about? When the John F. Dille syndicate chose Dick Calkins to be the
artist for the new Buck Rogers strip, they gave him a copy of Philip Francis
Nowlan's story, "Armageddon, 2419 A.D." which was the story that actually
introduced Buck. That inspirational yarn was in the copy of Amazing with
Paul's Seaton cover. "Perfect!" Calkins must have thought. "That's what
Buck ought to look like!" And so, on January 7, 1929, the same day as the famous
Tarzan strip drawn by Hal Foster began its life, Buck Rogers the comic
strip appeared for the first time.
The fascinating background on the
creation of Buck Rogers might also explain the genesis of science fiction in the
comics. Could it be? Could it really be? Did Hugo Gernsback remarkably light the
spark that blazed into our pervasive comics scene of science fiction and fantasy?
I've previously mentioned
{{ed. note: in
Mimosa 20 }} having gone to art school in New York after
high school and making a very close friend of John R. Forte Jr. of Long Island who,
like me, was an Alex Raymond admirer. We were irrepressibly young, discovering new
experiences, such as cigarette smoking and stark nude life classes on Wednesday
mornings. (We were amused to observe that the outside window cleaners always came
on Wednesday mornings.) My year there was forever marked by the tragedy on
May 6, 1937. That afternoon on the open-air balcony of the Flatiron Building we
watched the zeppelin Hindenburg sail majestically over Manhattan. It seemed
remarkably near to us. It was, to me, like an illustration out of science fiction,
a futuristic liner of the air. That evening in my little room in the McBurney YMCA,
I heard the horrifying radio report of the explosion and blazing destruction of that
magnificent machine as it was landing at Lakehurst, New Jersey. It was the last of
its kind -- another dinosaur for our memories.
John came to share my apartment on
the Manhattan West Side after the war in 1948. By a remarkable but understandable
coincidence he also became an artist for DC Comics. I introduced him to Doc Lowndes,
sf editor, for whom he did illustrations and covers for Science Fiction and
Future Fiction. John's specialty at DC was as a pencil man. He would bring
work back to the apartment many evenings and I found the temptation to fiddle with
his drawings irresistible.
On one occasion he had a particularly
dramatic scene for Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. Her jungle hero, definitely
related to Tarzan but whose name I can't recall, was manacled to two savages,
stereotypically bad guys. To free himself, he knocked their heads together,
stretching them out senseless. He was, however, still attached to them by the steel
chains. What to do? Simple. He lopped off their hands. The gruesome panel that
John had drawn was much too tempting for me to ignore and not hoke up. When the
machete blow was struck, I visualized blood splattering in great gobs, so I penciled
in plenty of drops flying through the air. Then I altered the next panel. He had a
severed hand or two lying in pools of blood. In close up, the viewer saw the dead,
still clawing fingers thrusting toward him, We can do better than that, I told
John. I erase the hands, reversed their direction, and had the bloody meat and bone
now pointing at the reader. This emphasis of the carnage represented my dislike of
the brutal violence of the contemporaneous adventure comic strips. John, quite
naturally, laughed at my exaggerations -- and re-drew them much less graphically.
I am sure, however, that those flying blobs of blood were more numerous in the
actual publication than John had originally drawn. It's more than a coincidence
that this was the time that fierce protests began to rain down on the comics
industry for all its excessive, explicit violence, and it brought about the
self-censorship and self-imposed Comics Code Authority in 1954 for the industry.
Perhaps, my few extra pencil marks contributed to the shake-up in the comics
world.
I made a half-hearted stab at doing
some comic scripts, but my heart wasn't in it. Although I thought I had actually
done a script for Green Lantern, Julie Schwartz tells me I never did. At a
convention, many years after I fell out of touch with John Forte, I asked Julie how
John was. "Oh, he's dead," Julie told me. When my face registered my shock, Julie
was immediately sorry he'd given me the news so bluntly. I remember John as a
gentle, non-muscular, overgrown kid who was, unbelievably, an infantryman wounded in
the war. His humor was ever present, his laugh was loud and raucous, bags hung
under his eyes, and because of his slightly sallow skin he loved my sun lamp under
which he on one occasion almost cooked his face. Back in our art school days, just
out of high school, unfettered at last and poking around the real world, John and I
were thoroughly comics oriented and drew fantastic cartoons on our wooden drawing
boards. I still have my original board with such drawings.
A few copies of my
Fantasy/Phantasy World still exist. One is partially hand-colored,
something I did for special friends. 'Zacton of the Red Planet', my featured
cartoon character, a combination of John Carter and Tarzan, still lives in my
memory. And my imitation of Buck Rogers, 'Barry Band in the Future' shares my
nostalgia of the past. Barry Band later was drawn as a cartoon strip but I didn't
do a sufficient number and he was never marketed. Then, too, there's my imaginary
world of Tramlus Tum -- but that's another story.
Let Bill Schelly from the last
paragraph of his book sum up for me my reminiscences of the dual worlds of science
fiction and comics: "The particular innocence of the ...Golden Age of ... fandom is
gone forever, as our own. There's no passage back to the simpler time. Except,
perhaps, through the pages of the classic fanzines."
"Airplanes" and "newsstand" illustrations by Julia
Morgan-Scott
All other illustrations by Dave Kyle
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