The Eye Day!

Captain Billy Joe "Biljo" White was born on this date in 1929. He is perhaps most famous for creating the term "Batmania" with the publication of his fanzine of that same name. White was a dedicated fan artist, one of the best of his time but he never broke into the pros. He created more than a few heroes but for me none match the sheer awesomeness of The Eye which he co-created with Grass Green. Wearing a spell-binding helmet the Eye was a classic crimefighter with a Golden Age gloss in a Silver Age fanzine environment. 

Biljo White co-created a hero who is one of the most fascinating superheroes I've run across. Working in a city filled with crime, this hero goes out and deals with the threats in a most direct manner. The visuals on this hero are outstanding, having instant recognizability and long-lasting memory. That impossible helmet, those jodhpurs - outstanding! The original design was dreamed up by Richard "Grass" Green who drew a single image of a strange bloke with a bizarre eye helmet. Later this was used by White to actually fashion a character from the single image. 

The Eye operated in Yorkton City. He's actually an undercover cop who uses the guise of the Eye to operate in the underworld as a seeming criminal enforcer. The character debuted in full bloom in Star-Studded Comics #3 and later in Fighting Hero #10 before graduating to his own self-titled comic. He soon became a favorite among the fanzine crowd and went on to appear ultimately in two issues of his own. The combines pulp mystery with superhero hijinks, possessed of a helmet that can hypnotize and blind his enemies. It also allows him to see behind him. 

Over that last several decades his adventures have been reprinted in various places by Hamster Press. Even new adventures written by Bill Schelly have been created with the blessing of White himself. 

(Jerry Ordway)

(Ron Frenz)

(Bill Schelly)

I got to know The Eye though the publications of the late Bill Schelly's Hamster Press. Here's a link with more on the father of the Eye -- Biljo White:

BILJO WHITE

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Charlton Premiere Presents Trio - It's...The Shape!

The Shape by Roy Thomas and the late Richard "Grass" Green in Charlton Premiere #1 is one of the strangest features ever. Created in the tradition of successful stretchy and shape-shifting heroes like

Plastic Man,

Mister Fantastic,

and Elongated Man,
the Shape was something different still.

Charlton Premiere is The Shape's sole appearance, but it's not too much to say that his wacky nature and shape-shifting ways might indeed have inspired a certain Energy Man who appeared in the Charlton line-up a few years later.

They have much in common, especially a truly wacky sense of humor.

Here from 1967 is "It's The Shape!" by Thomas and Green. Enjoy!

Now that was different. We now return your blog watching to you. We control the vertical; we control the horizontal; we control...Ah forget it! Have a nice day. 

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The Best Of Star*Studded Comics!

Star*Studded Comics was arguably the finest of the classic fanzines dedicated to just presenting amateur art and story. Fantasy Illustrated was in that class but was more catholic in the kinds of strips it offered. Star*Studded was able to get the best of the up and coming talents and get them to draw good old fashioned superhero strips with a few exceptions. The fanzine was the product of the "Texas Trio" which was primarily comprised of Harry Keltner, Larry Herndon and Buddy Saunders. In actual fact there were more than three in this "trio" with guys like Gary Accord and Howard Waldrop among others providing critical help in the practical nature of getting a zine manufactured and delivered. 

Bill Schelly's book attempts to offer up what he sees as the very finest of the work offered in Star*Studded while at the same time providing a range of the various kinds of items offered and all the while focusing on several fan artists of note. Alan Lee Weiss is interviewed and four of his stories are offered up. But I'd have to say this book is dedicated, if not literally, then practically to the compelling comics talent Richard "Grass" Green who had passed away while this volume was being composed. There are five "Grass" Green pieces included, some of his best stuff. 

The volume begins with an issue by issue breakdown of the contents of the sixteen issues of Star*Studded produced between 1963 and 1972. Then we go on to two stories which have been collected by Schelly before but which he felt were crucial to any collection hoping to represent what Star*Studded had been about. The first is the Liberty Legion story which brought together many heroes as well as top fan talents to tell a story reminiscent of a vintage Justice Society story or the more recent Justice League. Also we get a story about The Eye by Biljo White. 

After that the focus shifts to a Xal-Kor the Human Cat story by Richard "Grass" Green and then a very nice Dr. Weird story drawn by Landon Chesney. There are some splash pages and covers featuring other characters tucked in between these dandy tales as well. 

The first of several interviews is next focusing on Gary Acord, considered the "fourth member" of the Texas Trio. That is followed by another Biljo White effort, this story starring The Blade a hero in the classic swashbuckling style. Then it's the first of two Powerman stories featuring his battle with "The Transmuter" drawn by Bill DuBay and written by Dave Kirby. 

A prose story titled "The White Dragon Strikes Back" written by John Wright is included to represent the prose which did appear at times in the fanzine. This is followed by another "Grass" Green Xal-Kor story and then the second Powerman story, this one drawn by Larry Hutchinson from a Larry Herndon script. Powerman is forced to kill his opponent and this proves to be a moral dilemma for him. The second Dr. Weird story is next, but this one is really different as it's drawn by future Underground artist George Metzger. 

What follows is a big section dedicated to Alan Lee Weiss. First is an interview with Weiss about his fanzine days and then we get five stories of a wide variety. There are two more Dr. Weird stories in which the "Golden Ghost"  takes on first two mystical foes and then has to have a second bout with the scary Skullwing. That first encounter had been reprinted by Schelly in an earlier volume. My favorite piece is a western by Weiss titled "The Battle of Credibility Gap" which shows off some of Weiss's art chops to great effect. The section ends with another superhero, this one called Dragonfly. 

Following this heady section we get some more vintage "Grass" Green and his two sturdy superheroes Wildman and Rubber Boy. After that there's a Roy Thomas interview in which he discusses how he came to adapt Gardner Fox's novel Warrior Llarn. Ronn Foss was supposed to do the adaptation but dropped out when some money issues over possible overseas reprints came up clearing the way for Sam Grainger to step in. We have the entire twelve-page adaptation here in all its glory. This first section wraps with a Ron Foss story titled Excel, a truly fine yarn and one that had been reprinted by Schelly before. 

Schelly wraps up this book with some high-quality fan stories that actually did not appear in Star*Studded Comics, but in Schelly's mind were good enough and to do so and too good leave out of what proved to be his final fanzine anthology. There's a story written by Mike Vosburg featuring his hero named The Cowl as drawn by Ronn Foss who is at his finest here. Then we get more Biljo White with The Lion, a one-shot hero who had appeared in ditto form, but we get an inked version this time. There's a character named Ace of Spades with his sidekick Joker who fight crime in stories written by Mike Kelez and drawn by Mickey Schawberow. Next is a MAD-like yarn starring a vampire named only "The Count" by Steve and Dave Herring. The Spook by James and Alan Hanley calls to mind Eisner's Spirit. There's a story of Powerman drawn by Jim Starlin. 

The finale of the rich tome brings us back to Richard "Grass" Green. Green had passed away recently before this book was wrapped and as a tribute Schelly gives us one more story by him starring a hero named Crime Crusher who fights a vintage Yellow Peril type baddie dubbed the Black Dragon. And after a few closing comments that wraps up this look back at a great fanzine from which nearly spanned the entirety of the Silver Age of Comics. It's a fun read for fans of old-fashioned comic yarns.

Here the rest of the covers from that Star*Studded illustrious run. 

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Giant Labors Of Love!

Fanzines of any era are "labors of love" produced by fans who want desperately to express themselves about a hobby they love or in some measure to participate in the production of the works that make up that hobby. In the case of comics, there were scores of low-print fanzines manufactured cheaply  which were distributed to only a few hundred fellow fans at most. Fanzines of this type were well served by the antique production process of ditto or spirit duplication. 

"Ditto" copying was a standard technique for cheap duplication of documents in many smaller outfits like churches and schools and such since its invention in the 1920's. It was once standard practice to see purple-tipped fingers on many folks who made use of the process. When I first started my teaching career Ditto was still a regular way to make sufficient copies of teaching materials for distribution to students in a classroom. I've administered more than a few tests committed to the spirit duplication format. And as it turns out I used the process  when I briefly took part in comic fanzine publication in the late 70's long after most publications had switched to offset printing. I had access to that too, but much of the work developed by members of my APA (Amateur Press Association) came to me via Ditto masters. Learning to use Ditto and even to draw on it took practice and there were even some slight advantages at the time because of certain shading effects common to the technique. The smells of Spirit Duplication were distinctive and not necessarily unpleasant.  

That's the method used by all of the stories collected in Bill Schelly's Giant Labors of Love. I'm taking a look at the "Revised and Expanded Edition" released in 2000. It's the smallest of the collections Schelly published under his Hamster Press brand both in page count (112 pages) and overall dimensions (7 inches by just under 10 inches). There are ten stories and many examples of small spot art work. 

The collection leads off with not one but two stories starring the most visually iconic of the fanzine heroes -- Bijo White's The Eye. White was adept at using the Ditto process to get effective art and it shows her with two stories that first introduce the enigmatic underworld  hitman and then a second which reveals his true heroic nature. This is followed by Richard "Grass" Green's Speed Marvel a light hearted funny strip that has a hero who gets the job done and has a laugh at the same time. The art here evoked those fantastic Terrytoons character styles. 

Next up is Dimension Man by Ronn Foss and of particular note in this story is the lovely dame rendered by Foss, a fetching chick from Venus where women rule and men serve. Foss seems to be okay with that idea, forward thinking for the 60's when "feminism" was just aborning. 

The Demon by Buddy Saunders (one of the "Texas Trio") a strip in which this magical powered hero is assisted by another superhero who doesn't survive the adventure. Death and dying are all too commonplace in comics today, but to kill any character in the 60's was a huge deal. Doc Darkness by Rick  Buckler is next and this is a complete story with this Doctor Mid-Nite knockoff battling some particularly nasty villains who want to use religion to shield themselves from justice. The O'Brian Gang is by Bill Schelly himself from 1972 and in his into he indicates there is some Fourth World influence on this story. That influence is mostly seen in the face and manners of the matriarch of the gang who looks more than bit like Granny Goodness. This is a wild fracas that actually draws you in quite effectively. 

Now we turn to the "Expanded" part of the book and we kick off with The Black Scorpion, a female hero by Larry Herndon. This is followed by The Defender by Herndon and Green with inks by Howard Keltner. Both Herndon and Keltner were the other two members of the "Texas Trio" alongside Saunders. 

The Viper by Ronn Foss is almost certainly the best drawn piece in the book featuring another heroine who this time uses a great costume and a whip made from snake skin to enforce her will on a devious criminal. The book wraps up with yet another Biljo White item starring The Lion, a hero who comes into being to help save a lowly pressman's job after he conjures up the hero out of nothing. The Lion's debut is novel for certain. 

These are not the most refined examples of comic art, even among the fanzine variety but they are filled with that furious enthusiasm which makes these kinds of collections so much fun to explore. 

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Grass Green's Wildman!

I did something last week I haven't done in several years, I bought an actual back issue of a comic book. I'm mostly in the trend of getting my books out of the house and not bringing new ones in, especially vintage books, but this time I had to jump and pick up (for tiny money) the first Megaton Comics issue of Richard "Grass" Green's quixotic Wildman. It was jumbled in with a wide array of various 80's black and white comics, but this one I've wanted for a while since I first learned of its existence.

Wildman and his partner, the oddly named "Rubberoy" (that's not a typo) were created by Green many years before in the pages of fanzines, the place where much of Green's career developed. He had stints at Charlton and elsewhere, but mostly "Grass" Green was a fan artist of no small talent. He has the distinction of being considered the first black comics fan artist and did some important work in the underground press. I fell in love with is energetic style on old Charlton spoof stories and his work on his signature character Xal-Kor the Human Cat.

There is a mini-comic zero issue for this series as well as a second issue from Megaton Comics. The series was picked up by Miller Publications and ran for another ten issues or so.  Maybe I'll find some of them some day, but right now I'm pretty happy to have found at least one more treasure from the talented hand of Richard Green, may he rest in peace. 

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