Volume 12, Number 9

Vol. 12, No. 9
September 2001
whole number 141

2001 pages 067-074

Longtime Archie Comics artist Joe Edwards covers this issue with a nice pencil sketch of the company's title character along with the Edwards creation Li'l Jinx.  

Edwards provides a short letter about the early days at Archie as part of a long Under The Gun column.

The heart of this issue is a look at Kanigher's "Savage World" concept with editor Joe Kubert from the 1970s, an unpublished series about two naturalists who roam the world, framing stories about the various creatures they encounter (or encounter evidence of). 

Doug Wildey drew at least two issues, and this newsletter presents the Kanigher scripts for two pages of a story about elephants, along with Wildey's almost finished pages. Great stuff.

Additional letters by John Wells, Carol Newman, Marc McMurray, Daniel Tesmoingt, Jim Amash

Volume 12, Number 8

Vol. 12, No. 8
August 2001
whole number 140
2001 pages 000-xxx

Volume 12, Number 7

Vol. 12, No. 7
July 2001
whole number 139
2001 pages 000-xxx

Volume 12, Number 6

Vol. 12, No. 6
June 2001
whole number 138
2001 pages 043-050 (8 pages)

Remembering Western and Others by Tom Gill (Front page)

Under the Gun: letters from Athos Bousvaros, Matt Murphy, Gary Usher, Roy Thomas, Nick Caputo, Batton Lash, Robert Kanigher, Joe Gill, Zetta De Voe, Russ Jones, Jerry De Fuccio and Jack Burnley

Two pages of Robert Kanigher's "White Devil - Yellow Devil" script

The Romance Rondo by Robert Kanigher: RK on his work as editor/writer on romance comics (back page)

-- Indexed by: Nick Caputo

Volume 12, Number 5

Vol. 12, No. 5
May 2001
whole number 137
2001 pages 000-xxx

Volume 12, Number 4

Vol. 12, No. 4
April 2001
whole number 136
2001 pages 000-xxx

Volume 12, Number 3

Vol. 12, No. 3
March 2001
whole number 135
2001 pages 021-024 (4 pages)

The Goldbergs by Irwin Hasen Account by Hasen on getting The Goldberg's comic strip assignment. Includes a sample strip

Under the Gun: letter from Libby Titus Fagen

Spider-+ Man promo by Steve Ditko

My Best - And Why? by Jim Ivey includes three editorial cartoons (back page)

-- Indexed by: Nick Caputo

Volume 12, Number 2

Vol. 12, No. 2
February 2001
whole number 134
2001 pages 010-022  (16 pages)

Valentine's Day illo by Mort Leav (front cover)

Under the Gun: letter from Jerry De Fuccio

Promo by Steve Ditko image of a Spider and plus sign

Fortune by Mort Leav reminisce by Leav on his career. Includes many editorial illustrations, comic strips and ad art.

Editorial art by Mort Leav (back page)

-- Indexed by: Nick Caputo

Volume 12, Number 1

Vol. 12, No. 1
January 2001
whole number 133
2001 pages 001-xxx

Volume 11, Number 12

Vol. 11, No. 12
December 2000
whole number 132

2000 pages 093-098

One of the regular traditions of the newsletter is the December issue, closing out each volume, contains some work by Sheldon Mayer. That's been the case with every December issue I have access to since Volume 5, it might have started before that. 

It probably helps that two of the unpublished Mayer projects that Snyder has access to are a Rudolph the Reindeer story and the layouts to a second bible adaptation about the life of Jesus (to be finished by Nestor Redondo, like the published first Old Testament volume was). And Sugar & Spike had a lot of holiday themed stories as well.

 

This time the focus is on the unrealized THE SUGAR AND SPIKE POCKET TREASURY Mayer was working on in 1971, with a table of contents, a sample page (modified from the original publication, so a 4-page story would be a 9-page story in the reprint) and a proposed cover. There are also a few 1971 letters from Mayer to production chief Jack Adler and publisher Carmine Infantino about the project (the type of colouring he wants and the cover layout) and a short then-recent note from Infantino about shelving the book. A shame, Mayer was very much ahead of his time in terms of packaging reprints of comics.

Volume 11, Number 11

Vol. 11, No. 11
November 2000
whole number 131
2000 pages 000-xxx

Volume 11, Number 10

Vol. 11, No. 10
October 2000
whole number 130
2000 pages 000-xxx

Volume 11, Number 9

Vol. 11, No. 9
September 2000
whole number 129

2000 pages 077-084 (8 pages)

Warren Sattler is up front this issue, with a new illustration of the character he did with Joe Gill in the 1970s for Charlton, YANG. He singles that out as the work he was most satisfied with in a long career, as it harkened back to the adventure strips of his youth that made him fall in love with cartooning. 

There's also a sample of the long running Grubby comic strip Sattler did and a cute bit of super-hero art, a few samples of Barnaby from 1961 (one of the strips Sattler ghosted) and an appreciation by Jerry DeFuccio. 

Joe Simon has a short note about Red Raven and swiping.

We also get a few pages of Charlton's SUNSET CARSON comic from the 1950s, with Mario DeMarco writing about his work on the feature and other aspects of his career. 

Joe Gill also writes about the pace of writing for Charlton.

Steve Ditko closes the issue with the "The Rationalizers", the third and final part of his series on "The 'Stolen Art Page' Problem", later reprinted in Avenging World [2002].. 

"It is actually a negative claiming to be a superior positive, but endless zeroes still add up to nothing." -- Steve Ditko