Q: I read in Back Issue magazine where you and [Shooter] had a difference of opinion on the wedding of Spider-Man.

A: As a matter of fact, we did. I got along well with Jim... Anyway, I had heard these horror stories about Secret Wars. Mike Zeck was a very good artist; I liked his work. And I found out almost third-hand, so it may be wrong, that Mike almost had a nervous breakdown because of what Jim had put him through. That got me a little bit leery.

But that wasn't the big problem. When I got the script from Jim, he had all kinds of parameters he had painted for me, all sorts of restrictions. "Don't do this. I want the panels done this way. I want them laid out this way." Essentially, the next step would have been for him to hold my hand and push the pencil around on the paper. I had read the note that came along with the script and thought, "I can't work this way. I just cannot give it my best."

And that's essentially what I wrote in a letter to Jim... I told him that under the circumstances, what he was asking was more than I could give him. That I could not do my best work working under these circumstances. That he was just giving me too many parameters, and sort of painting me into a corner or putting me in a box, and I just could not work that way. I asked him to please understand, because I'd been used to working for so many years in this manner, and all of a sudden he was asking me [to] do something diametrically opposed to the way I'd been working. "I can't do my best work for you. Thank you for the opportunity." I thought it was a very pleasant and tactful letter. I said, "I'm sure you can find somebody else who can give you what you want, and thereby do a much better job than I would be able to do for you under the circumstances."

It was a few days later that I got a letter back from Jim that just ripped me up one side and down the other. He told me they were paying me the big bucks to do what I was told. The letter was longer than that, and it was abusive. I didn't appreciate it one bit, because the letter I had sent to him was very tactful and very, very friendly. I certainly didn't get that in return, and that's the way it ended. As far as I was concerned the case was closed. It was over with. I didn't appreciate the letter, but there was nothing I could do about it.

Q: From what I understand, he was going into such detail that he was telling you what the houses were supposed to look like, what the people were supposed to be wearing - that level of minutiae.

A: He even went into panel layout. He said, "For instance, if Spider-Man is shooting his web at somebody, I don't want to see him shooting the web in one panel and the web hitting the guy in the next panel. I want that to be happening in one panel." I'm thinking, "If the circumstances call for it, if the design of the book calls for it, you can't work that way." How are you supposed to work at your creative best when somebody is damn near hanging over your shoulder telling you how to draw everything that you're supposed to draw. I can't work that way. I'm not sure anybody could. And I wasn't about to get a nervous breakdown the way Mike Zeck did, so I decided - and I hated to do it, believe me, because I knew I was giving up a lot of money - to write that letter.

While Stan Lee was the editor, from 1941 till Roy Thomas took over as Marvel’s first Editor in Chief in 1972, Marvel Comics was run like a mom’n’pop operation. Stan was the boss, and did or governed all things creative. For a while during the 1950’s, and again from the early 1960’s through the early 1970’s, his “right hand man” was Sol Brodsky, Production Manager. Besides overseeing the mechanics of getting the books created and printed, Sol handled anything legal, financial, technical or complicated, that is, anything Stan didn’t want to be bothered with.

In 1972, Roy Thomas took over from Stan, who had been made President. That didn’t work out. The bureaucratic crap and administrative duties involved didn’t suit him, so Stan became Publisher instead. By then, Sol had left for a while to start ill-fated Skywald Publications, which promptly failed. Sol needed a job, and approached Stan, but a new Production Manager had been hired in Sol’s absence—John Verpoorten. Stan convinced the Cadence Board to create a new position for Sol, “V.P. of Operations.” Essentially, he was Stan’s right hand man again. More on that later.

Though there were new people at the helm, the operating system remained mom ‘n’ pop. Roy and subsequent EIC’s: Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, Gerry Conway, and Archie Goodwin, like Stan left the real management of the making and printing of the comics to Production Manager John Verpoorten. What did the EIC do? Well, not much in the way of editing.

Each freelance writer was essentially a writer-editor. A writer was assigned a book, sometimes by the EIC, but often by John. He or she would plot the book. John Verpoorten, in almost every case, would assign the plot to a penciler, and the writer would send the plot directly to the penciler! No one in editorial saw the plot! The penciler would send the finished pencils directly back to the writer, who would write the dialogue. The dialogued pages, with balloon placement indications, were sent directly to the letterer John assigned. The lettered pages were sent directly to an inker, assigned by John. The inker sent the finished, all-but-colored pages to the office. To John.

So the first time an issue of a Marvel comic book was seen by anyone in editorial was when it was given by John to the EIC or one of his troops for “proofreading.” The thin Marvel editorial staff consisted of a few “assistant editors” who did things like put together letter columns and the “proofreading” of books delivered finished. Chaos ensued. A few of the books were basically okay, and after coloring, plus some minor spelling, grammar and art correx were done, were good to go. Way too many were train wrecks. Full of mistakes. Egregious continuity gaffs. Immense stupidities. Inappropriate crap.

One writer (whom Shooter later identifies as Bill Mantlo - RB) had a rocket failing to take off because the launch pad had been slid out from underneath it, causing the rocket to fall into a pit below. The explanation? The rocket’s blast had “nothing to push against.” One writer (Gerry Conway, though Shooter didn't say so -RB) had Hercules towing Manhattan out to sea, as if the island were afloat—forget that it wouldn’t fit through the Verrazano Straits. Don’t worry, it was towed back using the same chain, which was anchored in the Battery, which, ever thereafter, one would suppose, must be next to the Bronx. Another writer (Tony Isabella, not named by Shooter, was actually Roman Catholic and probably wouldn't use the Protestant term "born again" to describe his religious piety -RB) became born again and decided that his character should be too. Jesus became a regular guest star.

The “proofreaders” had as much fixed as they could. Not much. Sometimes when a book was even later than all books almost always were, John would simply refuse to have the art production people make corrections, and the book shipped as is. Ever notice in seventies Marvel comics the occasional panel or character that’s clearly a Marie Severin or John Romita or John Tartaglione drawing in the middle of a story drawn by somebody else? That would be a correction called for by the “proofreaders.”

So, what did the EIC do? Design covers with John Romita or a freelancer. Write the bullpen Bulletin. Mediate disputes. Very little in the way of management, or, certainly editorial direction and oversight. EIC’s were more like head writers in those days. They had enough clout with John Verpoorten to get the best pencilers, inkers, letterers and colorists assigned to the titles they wrote freelance. I guess the idea was to create good books and lead by example.

Roy was probably the most active manager of the bunch. He engaged the über-weasels upstairs and won sometimes. He actually got them to allow the return of current artwork, among other things. He policed the creative work to some extent. He was, in some ways, an iron-fisted ruler. People think I was. Nah. I was a softie compared to Roy. Fear of angering Roy kept a lot of creators from being as self-indulgent, crazy or sloppy as they might have been.

The rest of the EIC’s pretty much kept their heads low. They wrote their own freelance, a couple of them on company time. Did they ever consult with John about which artists should be assigned to which books? Did they ever participate in the process? Of course. But by and large, what I have described above was the norm. They let John handle most of the heavy lifting as far as managing the books and the business.

Which gave rise to an interesting circumstance. John accepted the vouchers from the freelancers when they delivered the work and John also distributed the freelance checks, along with the hard copies of the vouchers for which the checks were payment. I can sense the hairs standing up on the backs of the necks of all of you out there with any accounting or financial background….

Around the beginning of December, 1977, Marvel President Jim Galton offered me the Editor in Chief job, replacing Archie Goodwin. (How that came to pass is another wondrous strange tale, coming soon.) Archie was going to step down as EIC and become a contract writer-editor. The plan was for Archie to finish out the month and for me to begin on the first working day of January, 1978. Stan thought it would be best not to announce the change until just before it went into effect.

The month of December, 1977 was a traumatic time for Marvel. John Romita resigned as Art Director to work full time on the Spider-Man syndicated strip. And, Production Manager John Verpoorten died at the age of 37. Sol Brodsky quickly arranged for the promotion of Marie Severin from staff artist to Art Director, to replace Romita. He also arranged for Lenny Grow, who was sort of the production department staff sergeant to be promoted to Production Manager to replace Verpoorten. And, he hired his son-in-law as assistant production manager.

The above was a little odd, since Sol had NO AUTHORITY WHATSOEVER to do all of the above. Those should have been my hires, or, conceivably, Archie’s, though he was on his way out. My promotion was in stealth mode at the time, at Stan’s request, and I didn’t want to blow my cover by making objections, so I said nothing, didn’t question it. There was some trouble later caused by Sol’s actions, but that part of the tale will wait.

New Year’s Day 1978 fell on a Sunday, so we might have had Monday off. But, either Monday, January 2, or Tuesday January 3 was my first day as EIC. One of my first acts was to change the vouchering and payment system. All work and all vouchers were to be delivered to the editor. Only the editor, or me, the EIC, could approve a voucher. Of course, because before my promotion took effect the only editor, or reasonable facsimile thereof had been “associate editor” me, and I hadn’t yet filled the spot I had just vacated, that meant all work and vouchers came to my desk. At first, so did the checks. My plan was to have the accounting department distribute the checks, but I had more than a few fires to put out during those first few weeks, so I didn’t have time to arrange that right away.

After a couple of weeks, the person upstairs who processed the vouchers, Mille Shuriff, caught a double voucher—someone vouchering for payment for a job that had already been paid for. The culprit? Me. I had written, and vouchered for Spectacular Spider-Man #3. However, Millie said that Gerry Conway had already been paid for it! I insisted that I was the writer. Millie insisted that Gerry was. Then, double vouchers started turning up in droves. Chris Claremont. Doug Moench. Bill Mantlo. Not just writers. A few pencilers. Many inkers. And solid citizens all, at least voucher wise. Claremont? No way. Moench? Never. Mantlo? Nebres? Janson? Give me a break.

Informed by accounting that they had double vouchered and weren’t getting paid, these creators were unhappy. Unhappy as in mad as hell.  I sat down with Millie, who was sure at that point that we were all a bunch of lying, stealing weasels, to try to figure out what was going on. We went through all the recent, current and pending vouchers. We found Gerry Conway’s voucher for Spectacular Spider-Man #3, which, indeed, he had been supposed to write—but he’d left and gone to DC before doing so. Nonetheless, on the strength of that voucher, he’d been paid for the issue. But my check for SSM #3 had come with my voucher’s hard copy stapled to it! I showed it to Millie. Curiouser and curiouser.

We found among Millie’s voucher batches a Spectacular Spider-Man voucher of mine for issue #7. Which I hadn’t written. In fact, at that point, I don’t think it had yet been written. But “my” #7 voucher was in John Verpoorten’s handwriting. Hmm. We made similar finds for the other alleged culprits. Vouchers for issues far ahead in John’s handwriting. Finally, Millie and I grokked. Here’s what had been going on. John would let a creator voucher a job in advance. He’d put their voucher through, as he did with Gerry’s voucher for SSM #3. They’d get paid. Then, for some reason, they didn’t deliver.

So, someone had to actually write a script for SSM #3. In that case, me. I dutifully delivered the job and my voucher to John. John tucked my voucher for #3 in his desk drawer and wrote out a new voucher for a future issue, in my case, SSM #7. When the check for SSM #7, made out to me, came down from accounting to John, he removed the hard copy of the voucher for #7 he’d filled out and put it in his drawer. He pulled out the voucher I’d filled out for SSM #3, stapled the hard copy to the check and delivered the check to me. It was for the right amount and had the right hard copy attached. The only indication of what the check was for was on the hard copy. No such info appeared on the check itself.

John would have repeated the process when someone actually wrote #7. This, in accounting parlance, is called LAPPING. He did it a lot. Eventually, John would move the non-existent jobs into inventory. Eventually, he would designate the non-existent inventory jobs as “obsolete inventory.” Then, they were written off.

So, what was in this for John? Nothing. He was a soft touch. Creators would come to him with a sob story. He’d let them voucher a job in advance. They’d swear that they’d deliver. Once in a while someone did, but most were lying, or they’d simply fail. A few got so far behind with John they went to DC for work to escape having to make up all that ground. A few, especially one studio that represented a group of Filipino artists, exploited John’s kindness then callously screwed him over. They’d had a lot of practice screwing people over, especially the artists who worked for them.

If the advance-voucherer was an inker, on a number of occasions John inked jobs himself in their names, for no pay, to cover their shortfall! John pitched in a couple of times on Frank Giacoia’s behalf, for instance. Frank was, in my opinion, brilliant, but he was slow. John had a lot of sympathy for him.

It is important to note, here, that in those days, the mid-1970’s, comic book work paid very little. Also, it was page rate only. No royalties, no incentives, no benefits. And the page rates were pathetic. One more thing—though Roy had initiated an artwork return program, the market for originals had yet to take off. Most originals were worthless. Example: Early in his career, Frank Miller approached an art dealer trying to sell some originals to make a few bucks and was offered FIFTY CENTS A PAGE. Everybody was struggling to survive.

John had too big a heart. What he did was wrong, but there was no malice in that man. He erred on the side of humanity. A gruff Production Manager who was secretly channeling Brother Juniper. John was privy to the fact that I was coming in as EIC, and he knew that I intended to change the system. It must have been very stressful just keeping all the balls in the air anyway. How much did the stress increase when he found out he was certain to be found out?

John was a huge guy. Almost as tall as me and easily double my weight. You could fit three Archies inside the space John took up and still have room for a Roy. He had a sedentary lifestyle, as so many of us do. He probably didn’t have the healthiest diet. He smoked. But 37 is too young to go.

I’ve thought about it a lot. I think that if John had been alive when I took over as EIC, and the truth came out, as it surely would have, I think I would have fought to keep John right where he was. Defended him to the best of my ability. He was terrific at what he did—the Production Manager part, I mean. He was loved and admired. People like that don’t come along often. We could have made up the difference. We could have made it right.

Coda: When Millie and I presented our findings to Financial V.P. Barry Kaplan he was sure he was going to be fired over the mess. Especially, given the scale—hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars. It was, after all, his responsibility to prevent such things from happening. I suggested that he tell the President and the board that he had reviewed the voucher procedures (set up long before Barry came to Marvel) because of the new editorial/production regime coming in and that HE had discovered the scam. I didn’t need a forensic accounting notch on my belt. He was grateful, and I think it kept him from getting in too much trouble. P.S. Barry’s the one who taught me the word “lapping.”

A note: If you’re wondering, the Production Manager and Art Director reported to the EIC, even though it didn’t appear that way before me. John certainly appeared to be running the place, and any outside observer would have guessed that he was the boss, at least during the time that Len, Marv, Gerry and Archie were Editors in Chief.

Important note: Though Gerry Conway had, indeed, fallen behind on his quota, and had been a beneficiary of John’s lapping scam, Gerry did the right thing. When he left Marvel to go back to DC, he informed DC that he owed Marvel some scripts. Rather than have Gerry work off the debt writing for Marvel, DC sent Marvel a check for the arrears and worked out some payment plan with Gerry.

Addition to the Important Note: DC’s check was delivered to Marvel’s accounting department. Barry Kaplan had no clue, at that point (before the scam came to light) what it was for, assumed it was a mistake and sent it back! DC then sent the check to John Verpoorten, probably at Gerry’s suggestion. The five figure check was found in Verpoorten’s drawer after he died. Of course. How could he deliver the check to accounting without explaining what he’d been doing?

Chris, Moench and the other victims got paid. So did I. With Barry’s help, I set up a system by which the editors who handled the vouchers never handled the checks. Accounting people handled the checks. Guess what? Somebody still found a way to beat the system.