With the publication of my latest book on September 9, “Atlas at War” brings some of the hardest-hitting Atlas war stories of the 1950’s back into print for the first time in nearly 70 years. The book is published by Dead Reckoning, the graphic novel imprint of the Naval Institute Press, done in conjunction with Marvel Comics. At 256 pages, this hardcover anthology consists of 50 stories of my choice, comprising 23 different artists, scanned in high resolution by myself and meticulously restored by Allan Harvey. The result is a moment frozen in time, when the Korean War launched a genre in the comic book industry to supplement the rackspace on newsstands already crowded with war-themed men's adventure magazines.
As this book was being prepared, and as immersed as I was in the collective artistic oeuvre of my favorite comic creators of all time, I contemplated as to how many of these 23 artists were still with us today. The answer was exactly three, Joe Sinnott, Allen Bellman and Mort Drucker. I took the opportunity to try to speak at length with these surviving creators, all now in their nineties, and get their comments, thoughts and recollections about their work in the genre. I reached out to Allen Bellman and Joe Sinnott first, interviews you will see below. Mort Ducker passed away before I could arrange to speak to him, and sadly, both Allen and Joe would pass away within 6 months of our conversations, neither able to see the final product that was unfortunately pushed back from June to September because of the worldwide pandemic. My deepest condolences to both their families. What I present below are the final words of both Allen Bellman and Joe Sinnott on record. I’ve also appended below at the end, part of a correspondence I had years ago with artist Sam Kweskin, where he discusses one of his war stories in a letter to me. Also note that both introductory paragraphs below were written while the creators were still with us
ALLEN BELLMAN
A whirlwind of energy at the age of 95, Allen Bellman is the
last man alive to have drawn Captain America during the Second World War. He
broke into the industry at age 18 in October of 1942, joining the Timely staff
as a background artist on Syd Shores’ Captain America series, soon penciling
The Patriot and a slew of the features throughout the 1940’s. In the 1950’s
Allen freelanced for Atlas in all genres, leaving the industry in 1954. I
caught up with Allen in between convention appearances and our conversation
follows…..
[Note: As mentioned
above, as this interview was being , word came that Allen Bellman passed away on March 9, 2010, after a short illness.
Allen was looking forward to this book a great deal and very happy to know one
of his stories was included.]
MV: Allen, you
were hired at Timely at age 18, ten months after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
How did you approach Timely’s superhero stories that were steeped at that time
in frequent wartime propaganda?
AB: At the start
I was just doing backgrounds, but when I got my own feature, The Patriot, I would put myself into the
story, trying to depict the action as if I was directing a war movie. I usually
loved the scripts and put my heart and soul into my work.
MV: What about
stereotypes? During the Second World War the comics depicted the Japanese in
extremely stereotyped, exaggerated imagery. The same thing happened in the
Korean War comics of the early 1950’s. The Red Communists were drawn in a
crude, vulgar manner quite often.
AB: Well, they
were the enemy, so we didn’t think too much of it. In World War 2, we were furious at the
Japanese for Pearl Harbor. You could cut the animosity with a knife, it was so
thick. So artists often transferred that anger onto the art boards, especially
if they had friends and family fighting in the war. In fact, Timely had a series, Jap Buster Johnson, that showed a hero
who single-handedly would take on the Japanese. I drew one of those stories
written by Mickey Spillane. I remember Stan Lee calling me into his office,
handing me the script and introducing me to the writer, a crew-cut young man in
an army uniform. He was freelancing while in the service, I believe.
MV: Did you
pencil and ink the story?
AB: Yes. And I
even remember blotting the excess ink on the typed script! I wish I still had
it. Who knew that Mickey would go on to be a top crime writer? We used to throw
the scripts out!
MV: Were you in
the service?
AB: Yes, the
Navy. I served stateside at Sampson Naval Base in upstate New York. If I remember, Syd Shores served in the Army
and Stan Lee in the Signal Corps. The artists at Timely gave me a framed plaque
when I left. It said, “You’re the guy to knock the Axis for a loop, good luck
to an old pal, from your friends at the Marvel group!”, or something like that.
It was signed by everyone at Timely. It was left with my first wife and
probably ended up in the garbage, unfortunately.
MV: That’s too
bad. It would be great to see that today.
AB: You’re
telling me! I had art, I had letters from my hero, Milton Caniff, I had Scorchy Smith originals, a lot of stuff
you in particular would love to see today.
 |
| Milton Caniff |
MV: I would. They
are historical items important to help understanding comics history. The Noel
Sickles stuff was gorgeous.
AB: It was! He set the way for Milton Caniff. When I was
discharged, I went right back to work on the Timely staff. By that time, most
of the hero books had moved away from war stories, and by the end of the
1940’s, even the heroes were gone.
MV: Which brings
us to the Atlas period. It was the Korean War that started the war comics again
in the 1950’s. Now you didn’t draw too many war stories for Atlas. Do you have
any idea why?
MV: Did you know
who the writers were?
AB: Sometimes. In
the 1940’s I knew Mickey Spillane wrote the Jap Buster Johnson script I drew because he was right there in the
office. There were a lot of writers always dropping off work. But Stan did
tailor scripts to certain artists based on their styles. In the 1950’s I
probably did more crime and horror stories at this time than anything else. I
think my style lent itself to the horror stories quite well. War and Western
stories were more realistic. I could do them, and did do a bunch, but not as
many.
***[Note: The three story examples above were not drawn by Allen, nor scripted by Spillane]
MV: I always enjoyed “The Big Guns” in Men’s Adventures in 1952.
AB: I remember that story well and recall wanting to make a visually impressive splash panel.
MV: I like the
splash panel. There’s a large, off-kilter communist antagonist depicted. The
story opens in the middle of blazing action and it draws the reader in.
AB: It was a
quick story, a simple story. Us vs them, U.S.A. vs the Communists. The bad guy
got it in the end. I wanted to make it dark and moody. Milton Caniff was my artistic inspiration.
When facing a blank page, I always considered how Caniff would compose a scene.
I was a huge fan of his Terry and the
Pirates, and thought he was the best there was on adventure comics.
MV: Caniff
influenced many artists. I can’t even tell you how many artists I’ve spoken to
who echo what you just said.
AB: He was the
best. I tried to spot blacks in the story like Caniff would. I wanted to make
the communists look like the devils themselves, drawing them ugly, amidst barb
wire, in heavy winter clothes in the snow.
MV: Would you use
visual references for accuracy?
AB: Oh sure. I
would go to the library on 5th Avenue and 42nd street in
Manhattan and use their morgue for image clippings on tanks and artillery. That
was a great help to me. I always wanted to be as accurate as possible.
MV: Many of the
artists of the 1940’s and 1950’s had served during the war. Do you feel their
war-time experiences influenced their work?
AB: I’m sure some
did. My friend Syd Shores had a studio mate out in his Long Island studio named
Norman Steinberg, who did some work for Timely in the early 1950’s.
 |
| Syd & Selma Shores |
MV: Mort Lawrence worked out of that studio also. Norman has one story I chose in this book. He actually did quite a bit of war stories for Atlas, a lot of it Battle Brady stories. The Battle Brady covers were by Syd Shores. Sadly, Norman took his own life in late 1952.
Norman Steinberg
AB: He did. Maybe the war affected him, what we now would call PTSD. Back then we called it shell-shocked. Who knows? But others returned without a problem. I suppose it’s up to the individual, where they were stationed, and what they were exposed to.
MV: Steinberg was
a classmate of Joe Sinnott and both started out in the industry working for Tom
Gill in his studio, which was not far from where I live.
AB: Both were
good artists. I’ve gotten to know Joe Sinnott well over the last few years.
We’ve met at several cons and always get tables next to each other.
MV: I met the
both of you earlier in the year up in Albany.
AB: That was a
wonderful surprise, Michael!
MV: It was my
pleasure, Allen. Getting to spend the day with both of you is a gift to me
also.
AB: Well the job
you are doing, preserving these long forgotten stories we did so long ago, is
important.
MV: It is.
Additionally, shining the light back on artists like yourself, is my way of
giving back. Thank you for a wonderful conversation, Allen. I hope you like the
book!
JOE SINNOTT
(U.S. Navy Seabees WWll, MM3C Co. A, 137th
Battalion, Okinawa 1945)
One of the most beloved artists in the industry for over 60
years, Joe Sinnott had 2 distinct careers.
For Atlas he penciled and inked nearly 350 stories between late 1950 and
1959. Then in the 1960’s, after an early period penciling some Thor stories in
1963, he becomes Jack Kirby’s primary inker on the Fantastic Four with #45 and
helps launch the title into the stratosphere of cosmic greatness. Joe’s slick
line became the defining “look” of the Marvel superhero line and he brought
that class to any artist or book he was assigned to. Joe was still inking until very recently,
retiring in his early 90’s, with his last work on the now cancelled Spider-Man
Sunday page. Knowing about Joe’s Navy
career, I looked forward in what he had to say…
[Note: Joe passed away on June 25, 2020, before he could see
the final book published. I hope he would have enjoyed the results.]
MV: Joe, you were
in the Navy. What years were you in service and where were you stationed?
JS: Michael, I’ll
lay it all out for you. I was in the
US Navy Seabees during WW ll from 1944-1946. I started my boot training at
Sampson Naval Training at Geneva, N.Y. on October 13, 1944. I finished my
training a few days before Christmas and I was home for the holidays. Returning
after my boot leave, I was assigned to the Naval construction Battalion the
Seabees. I had expected to be assigned to a carrier, cruiser, destroyer of
other navy ship, but I found myself as a truck driver, which I had never driven
before. I eventually found it to be a lucky break, as the Seabees proved to be
a proud and great outfit. After drivers
training at Camp Endicott in Rhode Island, we left by troop train for Camp
Hueneme, California, for more truck training in the San Gabriel Mountains. Camp
Hueneme was a great place to have training because it allowed us to go into
Hollywood on weekends. We met many of the stars of the day – Bing Crosby, Alan
Ladd, Jimmy Durante, Errol Flynn and so many more of the greats.
Once we left
California, we passed Pearl Harbor and made stops at the Caroline Islands, the
Marshalls, and others on our way to Okinawa. The trip was memorable on an
occasion or two. One night we passed a slow moving oil tanker, and the next
morning we received a message that it had been sunk the night before by a
Japanese submarine. When we arrived at Okinawa in the latter part of June, the
battle was still raging on the lower part of the island. Okinawa is
approximately 7 miles wide and 70 miles long. I drove my truck over every muddy
mile of it, or so it seemed. Our trucks were there waiting for us when we
arrived and we went right to work that very first night, delivering hand
grenades to the Marines at the front. Naturally, this was quite scary, as we
were alone in the trucks and there were no roads, just mud, craters, and
destruction of all kinds. Our battalion, the 137th Seabees, was
compromised of 90 eighteen year old teenagers. We had to grow up fast!
Fortunately, we were behind the lines and only ventured towards the front when
ammo was needed. At other times, we were delivering supplies to the north of
Okinawa, an area already captured. These were used for construction of camps, roads, housing and
feeding of the Okinawa natives.
I certainly
have many memories, both good and bad,
of my service in Okinawa during the war. The complete devastation of its cities
and farms, the beautiful shrines destroyed, nothing left standing. There were two devastating typhoons, with
winds over 140 mph, that completely wiped out our camp and most other military
installations. The loss of the commanding general of the 10th army,
two days before the battle ended, and the death of America’s most beloved war
correspondent, Ernie Pyle by a sniper’s bullet.
The last
stepping stone in our advance on Japan was costly indeed. We lost over 7000 men
killed and 31,000 wounded. Our navy had 5000 sailors killed and almost 5000
wounded; the first time the number of dead exceeded the number of wounded. This
was mute testimony to the ferocity of the fighting. Okinawa was indeed the
bloodiest battle in the Pacific war. The
carnage would stop there, however, as our decision to use the recently invented
Atomic bomb, which saved millions, both Japanese and American. I was proud of
my service there but wouldn’t want to go through it again. The night that the
war ended was a night I’ll never forget. It was August 14, 1945 and every gun
on the island, and on hundreds of ships in the bay, went off in celebration. It
was a sight to behold.
We were sent
home in May, 1946 to be discharged on the APA Monrovia, the same ship used by
General Patton during the invasion of Sicily in July, 1943. It took us 11 days
to reach the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. It had taken us 61 days to
reach Okinawa from California. The experience of sailing under the Golden Gate
Bridge into San Francisco Bay is something words cannot describe. Every sailor
cheered his heart out and countless people on the bridge did the same. We were
home, grown up, and much older than our years, thanking God and looking forward
to a new world.
MV: You started
in comics with Tom Gill. Some of your earliest stories were Spy stories in the Kent Blake book. While not particularly really war stories,
they did have war-like elements. The start of the Korean War really began the
deluge of war titles and stories. Did you feel these earlier Spy stories were
war stories or just adventure type stories.
JS: I worked for
Tom Gill while attending art school at the Cartoonist and Illustrators School
in NYC, run by Burne Hogarth and Silas Rhodes. Tom was one of my instructors at
the school. He was the artist on the Lone
Ranger, and also was working for Timely Comics doing Spy stories in their
recently begun line of Spy titles. I was ghosting Kent Blake of the Secret Service for Tom while attending school.
This is what eventually led to me getting my foot in the door there and getting
my own work. I am forever grateful to Tom for making this all possible for me.
We remained very good friends right up until his passing. I always felt those
Spy stories were really just adventure stories. I never looked at them as War
stories.
Cartoonists and Illustrators School, circa 1947 or 1948)
(Photo courtesy of artist Marion Sitton, back row, far left)
(Tom Gill in center back with bow-tie, Wally Wood far left second row from back)
(Others suspected above are Roy Krenkel, Mike Esposito and Ross Andru)
(Others suspected above are Roy Krenkel, Mike Esposito and Ross Andru)
MV: You went to school with Norman Steinberg, didn't you?
JS: Yes, I knew Norman quite well. We went to school together at The Cartoonists and Illustrators School and we both assisted Tom Gill. I would see Norman every week when I went to Tom's studio to drop off my work. They were great times. Norman was in the Army, at The Battle of the Bulge. He was a fine artist and I remember that he drew great horses. I was shocked when I heard he committed suicide. I think it was probably PTSD. (Clippings below courtesy of Steve Thompson)
MV: Did your service experience influence your approach to your War stories in any way?
JS: Oh yes, it
certainly did. I always enjoyed drawing them even more than the Westerns of
Sci-Fi or Horror. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed drawing all of these types of
stories, however, as I experienced this first hand while serving in the U.S.
Navy, doing these stories came quite natural to me. It was as if I was living
this first hand, so to speak. I took great pride in doing these war stories.
MV: What type of
War story did you enjoy drawing best? You did many personality and campaign
stories (Fidel Castro, Kiska, etc.), did you actively ask for that type or was
it the luck of the draw?
JS: As I said, I really enjoyed doing any War story. I did so many of them for Timely during the 1950’s and I have favorites. Kiska and The Man with the Beard, which you are publishing in this book, were two of my all-time favorite stories I ever drew, and I’m very happy and looking forward to seeing them in print again in this book!
MV: And I’m happy
to have included them! I began the process by looking for the best of the best,
and these two visually were stunning examples of your beautiful, precision
pencils. How did you approach the violence that was inherent in a War story,
particularly in the pre-code stories, where violence was allowed?
JS: I tried to
make each story as realistic as I possibly could. The fear was real, the anger,
the expressions reflected on the faces were real. As an artist who served, I
tried to make every story I worked on as close to realistic as possible, to
make the reader feel as if they were experiencing the powerful impact that was
happening.
MV: How did the
comics code change the Atlas War story? Artists and writers were sailing along,
doing whatever they wanted, and then in late 1953 all of a sudden, graphic
violence was taboo, yet you were still able to do War stories. In fact, the
Comics Code didn’t stop publisher Martin Goodman in the least, he just added
more titles to replace titles being cancelled when the Korean War ended.
Interestingly, many of the combat-type titles were replaced with Navy-themed
titles.
JS: It seemed
that with the Comics Code, we were still able to do the War stories, although
toned down. I think it had a much bigger effect on the Horror and Crime
stories.
MV: Crime stories
just about vanished overnight. Horror changed to the milder “fantasy” story.
JS: The War
stories were definitely toned down quite a bit from what we had drawn and
depicted earlier on, during the Korean War. But we were still telling the story
as it should be, just at a more refined art level. The visuals began to take
precedent over the content, a bit.
MV: Which
explains why the post-code stories, while bland, were some of the most
beautiful drawn of all! Do you feel that
the writers had trouble adapting to the Code?
JS: I would think
they had to. They were telling stories a certain way for years, with gruesome,
realistic content that they now had to tweak to make the Code people happy. I’m
sure, at the onset, this wasn’t easy for a writer to do, as they wouldn’t be
writing this story the way they initially intended it to be. As an artist, it
would be the same. We couldn’t draw the violent action the way we really
visualized it.
MV: In the Western books it led to funny moments
where already drawn art had to be modified to conform to the Code. Panels where
a Native American may have been holding a tomahawk or a knife were replaced
with an upright hand holding nothing! Cowboys now shot guns out of their
opponents’ hands, rather than shooting at their opponents.
JS: The same
happened to one of my Horror stories, “Sarah”,
published in Uncanny Tales in 1955. I
originally drew an ugly old witch in that story and the Code caused them to
completely change her face from that of an old hag to a less frightening
appearance.
MV: That was just
plain silly!
JS: It was, but it became the norm we had to conform to. A little earlier Stan and I did a story to mock the entire idea of what Dr. Wertham was trying to accomplish. We did "The Witch in the Woods" in an issue of Menace, a story showing that violence was always inherent in children's literature like Grimm's Fairy Tales, which was much more violent than anything we were doing in the comic books!
MV: Do you recall any of the writers who wrote the War stories you drew? To jog your memory, some of the known writers at the time at Atlas were Hank Chapman, Carl Wessler, Paul S. Newman, Don Rico, Robert Bernstein, perhaps even Jack Oleck. Who wrote the Kent Blake stories? Did Tom Gill write them of did the scripts come from Timely? Stan Lee did not write any large amounts of stories in the genre, no more than 2 or 3.
JS: Other than the name Stan Lee, the name of Hank Chapman is familiar to me. It seems I may have worked on some stories Chapman wrote.
MV: Good memory! Chapman wrote the 3 stories printed in the very first issue of Kent Blake. As Chapman usually signed his stories, it allows me to match up artists and writers. Those three, and one other in the title War Combat, are the only known Chapman war stories you drew, that I could find. You drew a few Carl Wessler and Paul S. Newman war scripts as well, but the vast majority of your writers are still unidentified.
JS: I'm sure there were others as well, but I would deal directly with Stan Lee. I would go into Stan's office once a week and he would give me a script directly. Other than the Hank Chapman scripts for the first issue of Kent Blake that you mentioned, I don't know whether Tom Gill wrote the rest of them that I worked on. Probably not, as the scripts, as I mentioned, always came from Stan at Timely.
MV: What about research? Did you do research when you drew a particular story? Did you use photo reference to get details as correct as possible?
JS: Oh yes. I'm a stickler for details. Even to this day, everything I draw has to be as true to form as it is. I'm a perfectionist when it comes to my art. If there are medals or ribbons on a uniform, I make sure they are the correct ones. It is so easy for an artist to just add a rifle or boots, etc., to make the art look good, and to the reader, this is fine. They would never know. But to me, it has to be perfect. I have a filing cabinet filled with reference that I had cut out of magazines through the years, from uniforms, guns, etc., to stagecoaches, saddles, etc., if doing a Western. I often purchased magazines and books just for the specific reference material they contained. You get the picture. Today, I'm sure there are no more reference files, as the artist can just pull the material up on the computer.
MV: Joe, why did you only draw a tiny handful of covers for Atlas, and only two War covers?
JS: I managed to do a few covers during the Atlas era, but not quite as many as I thought. Most were in the later years at Atlas, when the work re-started again. They were mostly in the science fiction books. I think the main reason I did so few was due to the fact that I worked from home. I would pick up my scripts from Stan Lee once a week, go home and pencil and ink the stories, return them to Stan the following wek, and then take another batch of scripts home with me. I would think the covers were probably done by the artists that were around the office each day. I know that Stan loved Joe Maneely's work. I'm quite sure that he got to do a good number of covers. Stan thought that Joe was the next Jack Kirby. Such a shame we lost him at such a young age.
MV: Any stories, anecdotes or other recollections you have about working on these War stories that we haven't mentioned? Not only the six stories of yours in the book, just the War genre in general?
JS: As I said before, I enjoyed working on all types of stories. The War, Horror, Sc-Fi, Westerns, Romance, whatever it was, I always took pride in every page that I worked on, but quite honestly, being a U.S. Navy veteran, and having worked on so many war stories, it seems that I always added that little something extra to those stories. I was so proud to have served, and to have my art reflect that.
MV: Thanks, Joe!
One final note:
Sam Kweskin
Years ago I corresponded with artist Sam Kweskin, who drew 2 stories presented in this book. One
of the stories, “City of Slaves”,
published in Battlefield #9 (Mar/53)
depicted the concentration camp Dachau. I sent Sam a copy of the story in June
of 2004 and he wrote me back this message…
Sam: Michael,
where oh where do you find these things? I haven’t seen it in 50 years! I must
have been still living in Chicago when I drew this story for Timely/Atlas. I
had quite forgotten that I had done it. I WAS at Dachau as a soldier – one of
our battalion companies entered Dachau to free its inhabitants, and the guys
couldn’t believe the intolerance to mankind practiced there. Outside the walls
I engaged in conversation an elderly lady trimming her hedges, in a garden of
the initial building across the road from the walled jail. There was, across
the street from her, an old French “40 & 8” railroad car (40 men or 8
horses), and one could still see lying within it the grey and blue striped
clothes of the prisoners inside. At the corner of her house was a sign, a
carved wooden-and-shellacked painting of two German soldiers holding by the
back of the collar a stereotypical Jew who was being led away in the direction
of the sign. Another sign, equally rendered with care, read “SS Barraken” (to
the SS barracks). Yet, when I asked her,
in German, such questions as, “Did you see people marched from the railroad
cars through that (I pointed) gate into the camp?” She said, “Ich Weiss nichts” (I know
nothing). I said, “from 1933 to the present (1945) you had no idea what those
signs meant, or what the military was doing in that camp?” She answered, “Ich
Weiss nichts.” All of her answers were
in the negative.
SOURCES:
- Interview with Allen Bellman on December 30, 2019.
- Interview with Joe Sinnott during February, 2020.
- Inverviews with Sam Kweskin, both correspondence and in-person, 2002-2003.
- Cartoonists & Illustrators School photo courtesy of artist Marion Sitton
- Norman Steinberg suicide newspaper clippings courtesy of Steve Thompson
- Sam Kweskin army photos courtesy of Jean Kweskin-Siegel
