Interview conducted by Blake Bell for "I Have To Live With This Guy!" TwoMorrows Publishing, 2002 Part 2: The 1960s Comics Scene BB: So, how were comics involved in your life at this time? JE: When I was in college in the mid-1960s, Davey was a pop culture kind of guy, too. We were always buying every kind of book. One day we were in a drugstore—a Thrifty’s—they had a rack of comics and I picked up an issue of X-Men. It was #8 or something like that. I think the reason I was interested was that it reminded me of the Metal Men. I had read some Metal Men comics and liked them. I took that home and really liked it and went and bought some more comics off the rack. Before long Davey and I became totally immersed in the comics world at that point. We started subscribing to all the fanzines, getting back issues of things. BB: Was this strictly Marvel at the time, or everything? JE: At one point we would go to the newsstand twice a week to buy every comic that came out. BB: What kind of comics were making it out to San Diego? Was the distribution good enough that everything from Archie to DC to Dell to Charlton- JE: Yeah. We were getting the Charltons, the Dells. We didn’t buy much in the way of Archie, but we bought all the DCs, all the Marvels. BB: What about that X-Men book specifically connected with you? Why did that one make you go back and buy more? JE: It was fun to read because it wasn’t a kid’s comic. It was like a teen thing, where all the characters were interacting and each one had a different personality and they were having personal conflicts and not just fighting bad guys. BB: So you fell under that spell—The Marvel Age of Comics, if you will? JE: Yeah. What we did, every six months we’d drive up to Los Angeles to hit all the bookstores along and near Hollywood Boulevard, places like Larry Edmund’s and Collectors Bookshop. At that time Cherokee Bookstore was the place in L.A. to get old comics. You went into this bookstore on Hollywood Boulevard and you went back to the back and up little stairs and up to a little door and that was Burt Blum’s inner sanctum, where he had his comics in boxes along the walls surrounding his desk. When we first started going in the mid-1960s, he had bins outside the door filled with comics for 10¢ each, three for 25¢. We would buy hundreds of those and they were Barks comics, Little Lulu comics, lots of Dells—just tons. Sometimes they were coverless. We’d buy all kinds of funny animal stuff, adventure stuff. BB: What stood out at that time in your reading? What were your main attractions? JE: We got all wrapped up in the Carl Barks duck comics, John Stanley’s Little Lulu, anything by Walt Kelly, whether it was Our Gang or Pogo or Animal Comics, or- BB: What attracted you to Walt Kelly? JE: I’d always been a fan of Kelly but I never really understood the Pogo strips until I was old enough to really appreciate the humor in them. I have every Kelly paperback book that collects all of the daily and Sunday strips. I also have all of the first 16 issues of the Pogo comic book and several issues of Animal Comics. We just had tons of comics. When we got married in 1968, it was the merging of two great collections. We ended up with a room in our apartment that was just comics. (laughter) BB: What about the impact of the undergrounds in that era? Were you into underground comics during that time at all? JE: Not really. BB: Did you feel them out? Did you know about them? JE: Davey was interested in them and picked them up. I’d look at most of them and go "ewww!" (laughter) S. Clay Wilson—no! Sorry, not interested. BB: What specifically didn’t interest you, the vulgarity? Was it the mindset that it wasn’t’ obviously… JE: It was sex, drugs, and violence because we can. (laughter) But as undergrounds progressed, they branched out into other topics and more interesting creators. So I got Pudge, Girl Blimp by Lee Marrs. I read Zap, I read Arcade. I still have Spiegelman’s Breakdowns book. I liked the Freak Brothers, I thought "Fat Freddy’s Cat" was really funny. Some of our friends started doing things that were in undergrounds—not the most famous ones, but it was a way to break into cartooning at the time. Scott Shaw!, for instance, started out doing stuff in undergrounds and ended up being a professional. We would also go to downtown San Diego every week to to do our rounds of the used bookstores. I amassed a lot of science fiction and fantasy books, a lot of mystery trade paperbacks, like the map-back Dell paperbacks, and just about every Agatha Christie book ever published. We then would go to Ye Olde Magazine Shoppe, where they had shopping bags full of early Marvels at 35¢ a comic. You would say, "Can I have the Avengers bag?" They would pull out the paper bag and we’d go through it with our list and maybe grab a #17 and #22. Then it was, "Give me the Fantastic Four bag." We had tons of comics that had "35¢" written in grease pen across the cover. We’d also go across the street to Mrs. Lanning’s dingy used magazine store. She would have a shopping cart full of coverless comics out front. Many of these were Golden Age titles. We got to read a lot of classic books by picking those up—Captain Marvel, Boy, Walt Disney’s Comics & Stories—things that would cost a fortune to buy today. BB: You’ve mentioned to me before that you had a correspondence with Steve Ditko back in those days. How did that first come about? You were obviously aware, I would imagine, of Spider-Man. Did you find out about his Rand material and that’s how you ended up with a connection? JE: After we first got married, Davey had had an idea to do a fanzine. We were subscribing to everything that came out—Newfangles, Graphic Story Magazine, Witzend, Rocket’s Blast Comic Collector, you name it. So we got the idea of doing our own. Davey started writing letters to all sorts of people about contributing. He wrote a fan letter to Ditko and asked if he might let us print some of his work, and that’s what started the correspondence.One of the letters from him—all are handwritten, by the way—is ten pages long and answers all sorts of questions we had asked him. He was obviously pleased that we were not only fans of his personal work like The Question and Mr. A but were also Objectivists. BB: Did you correspond with any other professionals in those days? JE: I wrote a letter to Steranko and he sent me a drawing. I still have it up on my wall. It’s Nick Fury. BB: For a fanzine you wrote for or he just drew it for… JE: He drew it because I sent him a fan letter. It says, "To Jackie from Nick Fury’s alter ego." Later, after I’d met him, he said, "You better not let anybody see that, it’s a really bad drawing." (laughter) BB: Did anything come out of trying to start a fanzine? JE: No. Nothing ever happened with that. We corresponded a lot with Don and Maggie Thompson and some of the other fanzine folks. We had letters in some of the zines. But then other things we I were doing took precedence, especially The University Under Siege, and the magazine went on the back burner. In retrospect it was a very ambitious project so it’s no surprise that we didn’t pursue it.
				Above, an envelope for one of the many letters Dave and Jackie received from Steve Ditko. At right, The drawing Jim Steranko sent Jackie in response to a fan letter.
				It’s the 1970s—It Must Be Comic-Con! BB: When does the San Diego Convention kick in? When did that start up? Was it ’70? JE: I went to the first one in 1970. BB: Okay. What was that like, the first one? JE: About 300 people came. It was a two-day event but I only went for about four hours. It was in the basement of the U.S. Grant Hotel. They had Jack Kirby, Ray Bradbury, a display of editorial cartoons from the San Diego Union, and a little tiny dealers’ room. BB: How many tables? JE: Something like 15 tables. I went in, wandered around. I think I went and heard Kirby’s talk. BB: That’s right after he left Marvel? JE: He had just moved to California. I was 23 at the time, I was a female by myself, and I kept getting all these looks from all these guys. One teenager actually came up to me and said, "So, what are you doing here?" (laughter) Somehow I didn’t fit the stereotype of the comic fan of the time. BB: What was the stereotype back then? JE: There were a lot of really heavy-set guys, a lot of disabled guys in wheelchairs … BB: Did you know a lot of comic fans at the time you and Dave were- JE: No, I didn’t know any. BB: This was your first exposure to any kind of fandom beyond the fanzines? JE: Right. And Davey didn’t even go with me to that first con. BB: Why not? JE: He was doing something else that day, I don’t know. He wasn’t much of a social person. BB: Was there any kind of buzz in the room at all? Was it an eye opener to you? JE: It was an event where comics people could all be in the same place. That’s pretty cool by itself, and the most famous comics artist was there, plus Ray Bradbury, who was a hero of everybody. From the beginning, the San Diego Comic-Con was a multimedia, pop culture thing, because it had a science fiction author, it had an editorial cartoonist. So, it wasn’t just comic books. It wasn’t that the convention started out as strictly comics and then the organizers said, "Well, we have to bring more people in, so we’ll have other kinds of stuff too." BB: From that first convention, how do you get involved with San Diego or volunteer? JE: I went to the cons from ’71 to ’75 as a fan. By that time, the attendance had really grown, and part of the experience of going to the con was standing in line waiting for the doors to open on the first day—talking to people around you in line and being all excited about everything. I was still writing magazine articles at the time, and I wanted to talk to the people involved in the con to see if I could do an article about the con. I was invited to come to a committee meeting so that I could see who the people were who were involved and how they ran things. BB: I seem to remember some story that I read recently about you standing in line or something and somebody coming up to you and saying, "Here, look after this." JE: That comes next. (laughter) I think it was at the ’75 con, Davey and I were walking by the art show, which was in its own separate room at the El Cortez Hotel. As I recall, Shel Dorf came up to us and said that the guy who was in charge of the room had to go do something, and could we just watch the art show for a minute and make sure no one stole anything. So we said, "Sure, why not?" Now earlier that day Davey had asked Theodore Sturgeon for his autograph, and the only paper he had on him at the time was his convention badge. So he had taken his badge out of the holder and had Sturgeon sign the back of the badge. He then put it back in the badge holder, but now the badge had Sturgeon’s name scrawled on it. When the art show coordinator came back (he was a kid named Clayton Moore), he looked at Davey’s badge and went, "Oh, Theodore Sturgeon! Oh, I love your work! You’re just my favorite author!" (laughter) Now here’s Davey, a guy who’s in his early 20s, short, and looks nothing like Theodore Sturgeon. And Clayton was gushing over him—it was really embarrassing. BB: This thing about writing the magazine article came the year before? JE: That was after the 1975 con. I had taken a lot of notes at the convention. I had actually gotten a go-ahead from an editor at Rolling Stone to write something. After the convention, I said, "How can I talk to the people involved to get more information so I can have an angle for my article?" They said, "Come to our meeting." I went to the meeting, I talked to some people on the phone, and I ended up helping out with the program book for the next year. BB: Who was running the convention at the time? JE: Shel Dorf was the "founder," and a guy named Richard Butner was the chairman. Shel was the meet- and-greet type guy. He was the figurehead who showed people around, especially the celebrity guests. Richard was the guy who made the arrangements with the hotel, handled the bank account, ran the meetings, did all of the necessary behind-the-scenes stuff that an executive has to do. There was a committee of people to handle each of the different areas, and a lot of the same roles are still around over 30 years later—somebody is in charge of the films room, somebody’s in charge of the dealer’s room, somebody’s in charge of the programs, somebody’s in charge of the art show, somebody handles registration. Interestingly enough, at that point Dave Stevens was one of the art show coordinators. This was past the time that Scott Shaw! had been working on the con. He was on the original committee and had worked on it from ’70 to ‘73 or something like that. A lot of people who ended up as professionals later in their lives passed through working on the Comic Con. Jim Valentino, who’s now publisher at Image Comics, worked on the Comic-Con in the late 1970s. So did David Scroggy, who’s now an executive at Dark Horse. Greg Bear, who’s a best-selling science fiction author, was on the first committee. BB: What was it like putting together the program book back then? JE: When I started helping out, I was just writing biographies of the guests and tracking down photos of them and stuff like that. That was in 1976, when I was also in charge of running the information department and also did some of the publicity. Then in 1977, I took over doing the program book completely. That meant taking the articles, which were typewritten, to a compositor to be typeset, then pasting the type and the art down on boards. All very primitive by today’s desktop publishing standards. BB: Back in the ’70s, how much time did doing the program book take out of your life? JE: The books were much smaller in those days. They consisted primarily of the biographies of the guests and maybe two or three articles, plus some ads. Everything else was pin-ups and artwork. Shel contacted a lot of strip artists to send contribute cartoons. So a lot of the work was simply contacting artists to ask them to send something in. That was the fun part—I even got Ditko to contribute. BB: What was the toughest one to get? JE: We didn’t really worry that much if art came in or not. We just invited people to contribute. If it came, it was fine, since they were doing it for free. And we had stuff from lots of big names—Charles Schulz, Carl Barks, Harvey Kurtzman, Milton Caniff, C. C. Beck, Joe Kubert, Will Eisner, and of course Jack Kirby every year. I got to know lots of artists in the field through doing the book. BB: All this time, you had a regular job, I’m assuming? JE: Yes. When I got out of college, I just could not find a job that fit. There was no magazine publishing in San Diego. There were advertising jobs that were pitifully paid. I finally took a job working for a bank. My title was "editor," but I was doing reports on what would be a good locations for new branches. So it was really boring. Within six months they ran out of things for me to do. That was just before Christmas in 1968. In January of 1969 I answered an ad that said something like "Help Researcher Write Book." I don’t know why the ad said that, because when I went to the interview it was for an editorial position with a new textbook publishing company, called CRM Books, being started by Psychology Today magazine. The folks at PT had gone to New York and raided six or seven top people from Random House’s college textbook department, I was the first person to be hired locally. From 1969 to 1975, I worked at CRM and learned everything there is to know about book publishing. I went from editorial assistant to assistant editor to developmental editor. When the company was bought in 1975, I was in charge of the copyediting department. Ironically, our division was acquired by Random House. I ended up working as a freelancer for RH for the next few years. In fact, I’ve been a freelance editor, mostly of college textrbooks, ever since then. BB: What’s the difference between being a freelance editor and being a regular one? You prefer being a freelance after all this time? JE: Yes. Your hours are your own. So, if you want to be a night person and not get up till 11… BB: But you’re always responsible for making sure there’s always a gig. JE: Yes, it’s the feast or famine thing, because in publishing, especially textbook publishing, everything goes in cycles. So half of the year, you’re trying to work 24 hours a day just to keep on schedule, and the other half you’re saying, "Please, give me work." (laughter) BB: What was Dave doing at this time? JE: He was working at my dad’s music store and organizing and compiling and keep track of all of our stuff. (laughter) BB: The comics room—the vault? JE: He had very meticulous methods of keeping track of what comics we had, which ones we needed, what books we had, what we needed, what record albums we had, our 45s, movie stills, all kinds of collections. BB: What are some of the crazy experiences of the ’70s with creators and working on that convention? Is there anything that sticks out? JE: It was really great because the convention was small enough and it was all in one place, at the El Cortez. All the guests who came were just there to hang out and have a good time. 1977 really sticks out in my mind because of the incredible lineup of guests. We had Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Bob Kane, Carl Barks, B. Kliban, Harvey Kurtzman, Steranko, Bob Clampett, Rick Griffin, Michael Kaluta, Stan Lee, Ted Sturgeon, Walter Gibson (who created The Shadow for the pulps), Bill Scott from Rocky & Bullwinkle, Steranko and the great Robert Heinlein. BB: Who is Robert Heinlein? JE: The famous science fiction author, who wrote Stranger in a Strange Land and Starship Troopers, and who was a Randian author, a very libertarian author. He rarely did public appearances. But in 1975 or so he had a life-threatening illness and had to have massive blood transfusions that saved his life. As a result of that, he became a big supporter of blood donation. In 1976, the World Science Fiction Convention was held in Heinlein’s hometown of Kansas City. He said, "I’ll will appear at this convention and be your guest of honor on one condition: that you have a blood drive there. The only way people will get my autograph is if they donate blood." World Con was so eager to get him as a guest that they said, "Sure." Around the time we heard that Heinlein would be at World Con, we had just finished reading Calvin Trillin’s book American Fried, in which he claimed that the best food in the world was in Kansas City We looked at each other and said, "We’re going to Kansas City!" So we went and had good food and met Heinlein. I introduced myself as representing the San Diego Con and asked him, "If San Diego had a blood drive, would you come to our convention?" And he said, "Sure." So in 1977 we had the first Robert A. Heinlein Blood Drive. After people donated blood, they could go over to a table where Heinlein and Sturgeon were sitting and get their autographs. Sturgeon donated a book of his called Some of My Blood. BB: Could you get away with that now? Could you imagine somebody coming and saying, "You know if you donate blood, you can have my autograph." JE: Now it’s evolved so that donors get a packet of comics and book and toys and other goodies when they donate. BB: Oh, so that’s still going on? JE: Yes. That was the first one in ‘77 and it’s still going on. Heinlein died several years ago. So now it’s the Robert A. Heinlein Memorial Blood Drive. Robert was a guy who had been in the military. When you saw him at events, he was always wearing beautiful suits, a very uptight looking guy. When he was at the World Con, he had guards assigned to him. He didn’t even go through the public hallways, they took him through the back ways of the hotel. But when he came to San Diego, he put on a Hawaiian shirt and just had a ball hanging out with everybody. He even did a drawing on stage during our annual Comic-Con Sunday brunch. BB: It was the ‘75 program book, I think it was, that had Eisner on the cover, sitting there sun tanning himself, I guess. When was your first experience meeting him? JE: Well, the cover actually had an Eisner drawing of The Spirit tanning himself by the pool. I met Will a few times in the ’70s and ’80s when he came to the con. It was pretty much on the basis of helping him with hotel arrangements and stuff like that. It wasn’t really socializing or anything, it was more on a professional basis. Since then, of course, I’ve gotten to know both Will and Ann much better. Back then, because the con had no office and no employees and the officers all had full-time jobs, I was the one person who could be reached during the day. Since I was a freelancer, I was always home, and I often ended up being the one who dealt with all the guests just because they could get ahold of me. I became the one who invited guests and helped with their arrangements. BB: So guys like Shel and Richard had actual day jobs, and you were left to be the de facto leader? JE: Not really the leader; I was just the contact. I was the one that people knew. I got a call one morning at 6 a.m. from Buster Crabbe, who had already been out exercising and was surprised I wasn’t up yet. (laughter) He wanted to know what would be involved in being a guest. He never did come. And another time Clarence Nash called me—in his Donald Duck voice! I never knew who I’d get calls from. BB: So that’s really the genesis of your networking. JE: I ended up being the one who dealt with a lot of these people. They were the ones who said, "We need something." "Call Jackie." (laughter) BB: Were you guys aware of Phil Seuling’s East Coast conventions? Did you feed off each other? Did you get ideas, or was it two completely separate entities? JE: I think it was complete separate. We thought, "the more cons the better." We were not competing. In fact, Phil used to come to our con and be a dealer. Geographically, they had their set of pros they could draw on and we had ours. We also had such cheap costs for hotel rooms, like $25 a night at the El Cortez. So we always tried to have some big names from the East Coast every year. like a Joe Kubert or a Will Eisner. We’d also have tons of L.A .guests who would come, including lots of animation folks. BB: Did you run into problems getting New York people out there in the beginning? JE: There were some people who just didn’t want to do conventions. BB: Like whom? Who were some of the ones who didn’t want to come, like Ditko, obviously? JE: Like a Frazetta. A lot of times, if the guests got a dealer’s table, they knew they would make money at the show, so that would be an inducement to come. There’s just so many pros over the years that I dealt with who were just wonderful people, and many are still my friends. That’s really what kept me involved. Doing a con was always a great experience, although it was a headache. (laughter)
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