Alter Ego #10 September 2001 (magazine review).
All right, I got lucky again and managed to get a paper edition of Alter Ego #10 in its odd stage where you read halfway, and then turned the book upside down and read the rest from that way up.
This also allowed it to have two covers, although the one I’m showing is the favoured one and matches in with Bob Koppany interviewing Carmine Infantino about his career and how he was accidentally thrown into the editor/publisher’s chair at DC Comics.
He also points out that he saw himself more as a designer than an artist, although he was always taking art classes over the years.
For those who remember him, Rich Morrissey was a well-known comic-book letters historian, whose life came to an end in 2001. His article on the life of comic-book writer John Broome was his last article. Well-researched, there is a focus on the revived Flash and Green Lantern which still relies on the things he put in, like the Rogue’s Gallery in the early 1960s.
Speaking of the Flash, the first one first. Roy Thomas pinpoints 30th September 1949 when DC Comics gave up on super-heroes as a genre, focusing on other genres and hoping readers would follow and lost a huge segment of readership. It also gives an interesting insight into publisher Harry Donenfeld, who didn’t know anything about his company’s readers. The Flash connection and date was his last issue.
When it comes to the second Flash, Robin Snider explores who actually created him. Reading the evidence here, Robert Kanigher worked out from the brief that the only thing he had from the Jay Garrick version was the name so I would guess he has the biggest part in this and then Carmen Infantino for illustrating and coming up with the costume and ring, although that was based on one used by the Crimson Clown. Seeing the others parlay into this seems practically an ego-boost so they aren’t left out.
Bill Schelly’s look at the seven issues of ‘Comic Art’ (1961-68), a fanzine produced by Don and Maggie Thompson. Between referencing some names who developed from them, it also covers a lot of the problems that all fanzine editors have encountered along the way, and nice to see they are common problems that we all suffered.
For the rest of ‘Alter Ego’, you have to turn the magazine upside down and start from the other side where the focus is on Vin Sullivan’s Magazine Enterprises (ME). Sullivan’s early editorial work involved getting Superman and Batman into print. Although Rich Morrissey’s video interview on his National Periodicals work is elsewhere, there were enough snippets on ME to warrant an interview here. ME’s work was not necessarily super-hero, several characters got pretty close.
Accompanying this are interviews with Fred Guardineer, Dick Ayers, and Bob Powell about their work at ME Enterprises. If you thought Marvel had the first Ghost Rider, I think you will find a surprise here.
The Mr. Monster section has a piece by Dave Sim (he of Cerebus The Aardvark) looking over the work of the original Superman artist Wayne Boring.
Finally, the Fawcett Collectors of America has an interview with Dave Cockrum about the only story he drew of Captain Marvel Jr. before editorial policies made him leave DC Comics. Looking at some of his art here, it’s a shame he never drew the Savage Land.
If you’re after paper editions of early TwoMorrows magazines, I’ve been proven how lucky I am lately so they are out there. If not, then there are always digital editions.
GF Willmetts
March 2022
(pub: TwoMorrows Publishing. 82 page illustrated magazine. Price: $ 9.95 (US). ISSN: 1932-6890. Direct from them, you can get a digital copy for $ 4.95 (US))
check out websites: www.TwoMorrows.com and https://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=98_55&products_id=497&zenid=00eh2da4ols2e8hd5ou7vurp66
