Number 1011





Reptisaurus and the jungle love triangle





This entertaining Charlton comic is new to me, even though it was published in '63, when I was visiting the comic book spinner rack in my local drug store every week. I missed a monster book where the monster, Reptisaurus, is almost a bit player in the story, and the main plot involves a love triangle. Rich man, his blonde fiancée, and a white hunter who bags the babe! Oh yeah...they also figured in some Aztecs who worship Reptisaurus.



The artwork is by Montes and Bache. I don't know the work of Bill Montes at all, and what I know about Ernie Bache is that he worked with Dick Ayers during Ayers' original 1950's Ghost Rider days. A quick search of the internet didn't turn up any information on Bill Montes, and all I found about Bache is what I already knew. If anyone knows if these two men are still around please let me know.



A criticism I have is of the ashen gray the colorist made the Aztecs. I know this portrait I found online is heroic, glorified artwork, but it's probably closer to the real Aztecs than Charlton's colorist made them.



There were 6 issues of a Reptisaurus comic in 1962; Montes and Bache drew the last two issues, preceding this "special edition." From Reptisaurus Special Edition #1, 1963:













































Ernie Bache also inked this four-page humor strip from Charlton's Abbott and Costello #5, penciled by Grass Green. Grass was an early member of comics fandom, one of the first fans to attempt to turn pro. Most comics companies were by then closed shops, and what work he got was sporadic at best. I think the Steve Skeates script is funny, and Grass' artwork with Bache's inks serves it well.

More about →

Number 206

Grass Green's American Man

There were a few superstars in comics fandom, circa the early 1960s. Richard "Grass" (for "Grasshoppa") Green was one of the top fan artists of the day. After being discharged from military service, he lived with fellow artist, Ronn Foss, and Ronn's then-wife, Myra, in Northern California. I don't think the arrangement lasted long, maybe less than a year. In that time they were known as Triad, and took over publishing The Comicollector and Alter Ego from founder Jerry Bails.

Grass and Ronn had gone to high school together in the 1950s, and were budding artists of their time. In his fan art, Ronn seemed more influenced by Joe Kubert, and Grass by Jack Kirby. Grass told me years later in a letter he wanted to be the "black Jack Kirby." He had sporadic success over the years, but he never achieved what I believe he wanted. Grass had the talent, but at the time he and Ronn tried to break into pro comics in the 1960s, the comic book industry was a closed shop. There was enough work to keep the established artists busy, but newcomers just didn't have a chance. Later on when the field opened up and older artists retired Grass and Ronn's styles were superseded by a new generation of artists.

Grass was African-American. In a moment of candor, he told me he had been discriminated against by comic book editors. I have no way of knowing if that's true. Over the years many African-American artists have worked in comics, and some have been extremely successful, but in retrospect, during the time of the early 1960s the comics do appear to have been a white man's industry.

Grass Green did some pro comics, some underground comix, some self-published comics. He kept himself busy over the years with his appealing art style and had the advantage of a great sense of humor, which made his work a lot of fun to read.

"American Man" appeared in The Comicollector #7, dated September, 1962. It's printed by an old-fashioned spirit duplicator, just like the tests and worksheets our teachers handed out in school. It required drawing same-size on a stencil. This particular strip was redrawn from a story he had done during his high school days. It's Kirby-styled, influenced by Grass' favorite, Fighting American. If you'll notice, the hero, whose real name is Buff Freedom (!) has two kid sidekicks, one of whom is African-American. Both of the boys are artists doing comic strips for a magazine. Ronn and Grass?

I scanned this from its source over a year ago and had to bump up the contrast to make it readable. The bumping brought out a horizontal line, the fold of the fanzine when it went through the mail. I tried some ways to get rid of the line. In looking at it recently I thought it gave it more of the feel of how it looked to me when I read it originally over 45 years ago. There is a funky charm to those old crummy-looking dittoed fanzines, and this is a good example of their appeal.

Grass Green died of cancer in 2002 at age 63. His lifelong friend, Ronn Foss, preceded him in death by six months.

Page 1 / Page 2 / Page 3 / Page 4 / Page 5 / Page 6 / Page 7

More about →

Number 175

Bill Spicer's Fantasy Illustrated

Comics fandom was still in its infancy in 1963; while youthful fan editors were attempting to put out fanzines on crude spirit duplicators, other more mature fans were setting the course that fandom would follow. Bill Spicer was one of those innovative editors. He's been a fan for a long time, predating modern comics fandom for several years with EC fandom. He was also one of the fans responsible for thrusting artist/writer Carl Barks out of his anonymous work for Dell-Disney.

In 1963 his fanzine Fantasy Illustrated was published. It was printed, not in the purple ditto or crude mimeo form of most fanzines, but as a professional offset-printed magazine, with color covers and black and white interiors. Offset printing wasn't exactly new: Ronn Foss had published Alter Ego #5 in offset a year earlier. Comic strips in fanzines weren't new either. Roy Thomas wrote and drew the satire "Bestest League Of America," which ran in Alter Ego #1-3, and numerous other super-hero pastiches were published in the fanzines of the day, usually laboriously drawn in ballpoint pens on ditto masters. What was new with Fantasy Illustrated was publishing fan-produced comic strips much like the professional artists and writers produced theirs, with professional production and editorial direction from Spicer.

Despite its professional production, Fantasy Illustrated #1 showed the birth pains of most fanzines. Artwork varied in quality from amateurish to professional. Three of the four stories were drawn from pulp writing of the 1930s and '40s. For some reason Spicer didn't have artwork for a back cover and padded his editorial to fit in three pages which would otherwise have been blank, but the feeling was there…something new had arrived.

Landon Chesney produced the first cover, in my opinion the best of any of the subsequent issues.


For the contents, Alan Weiss' first printed offset job was very amateurish, drawn in pen with scratchy lines. It was a Jon Jarl story, "The Ancient Secret," written originally by Otto Binder as the text feature for an issue of Captain Marvel Adventures. Richard "Grass" Green, who went on to do professional comics, underground and fanzine work until his death in 2002, contributed "Will The Real Lance Lightning Please Sit Down!", a funny superhero parody suited for his cartoony style.


The third feature was the crudely drawn "Moon Ants" by Buddy Saunders, another pulp story attributed to "Thornecliff Herrick," an old Planet Comics pen-name. Finally, part 1 of "Adam Link's Vengeance," from the classic story by Otto Binder, rounded out the issue. D. Bruce Berry did the artwork. Parts 1 and 2 were reprinted in full in Spicer's Graphic Story Magazine #13 a few years later.


Future issues did some improving, especially issue #2.


It opened with "The Life Battery," taken from yet another Binder story, and illustrated by Landon Chesney. It was later reprinted in color in Spicer's underground comic, Weird Fantasies. I prefer this original printing, however, which was drawn to be printed in black and white.


Issue #3 has a cover by Chesney inspired by EC's science fiction titles.


Number 3 opened with Edgar Rice Burroughs illustrator Harry Habblitz' version of "The End Of Bukawai," a story from Jungle Tales Of Tarzan. While not drawn in a real comic book style, it is an outstanding story from this issue.


Chesney did a collaboration with Comic Book Price Guide publisher Bob Overstreet, "A Study In Horror," similar to, and done better by Harvey Kurtzman as "House Of Horror" in Tales From The Crypt #21. Overstreet soloed on a story called "March 25th" which showed that as an artist his future destiny definitely lay in publishing. The back cover of #3, done by the late Russ Manning, used color overlays to beautiful effect in a surrealistic fantasy illustration. You can see it at the top of this page.

Fantasy Illustrated begat Graphic Story Magazine which begat Fanfare, and then at some point I lost track of Spicer's publishing career. When I saw these early issues as they originally appeared I felt that they were a new direction for comics fandom, toward producing a more professional, albeit alternative, comic book. When underground comix came out a couple of years later their format didn't surprise me, because I'd already seen it with Fantasy Illustrated.

(This article is adapted and edited from an unpublished article I wrote in the early 1980s. It also covered FI issues 4-6, which I no longer own, and for which I have no scans.)

More about →