Few young minds of any recent generation have been untouched by Mad, the satiric magazine that became an instant institution upon its founding in 1952. Al Feldstein edited Mad from 1955 to 1984, establishing the wacky template it follows to this day. But his roots in the comics industry stretch to the early '40s, when his career began in the studio of the legendary Will Eisner. From there, he worked his way up to Mad's original publisher, William Gaines' notorious EC, where he co-created, edited, wrote, and drew some of the best comics ever made, including classics like Tales From The Crypt and Weird Science. EC collapsed in the '50s after Senate hearings that accused comic books—EC's in particular—of causing juvenile delinquency. That witch-hunt led to the creation of the Comics Code, a system of self-censorship that strangled the creativity of the comics industry until the advent of the direct market in the '80s. Now 81, outspoken as ever, and enjoying a new career as a popular wildlife painter, Feldstein recently talked with The A.V. Club about his cultural legacy.
The A.V. Club: You started out in Will Eisner's studio as a teenager in the '40s. How did that come about?
Al Feldstein: Actually, it was called Eisner & Iger. I was 15, going through the High School Of Music & Art in New York, and I was looking for some extra work. My folks were in the depth of the Depression, and they didn't even have a dime to send me to school. I heard that some kid was making 20 bucks a page drawing comic books. Wow, that was a lot of money, and I thought, "What the hell, I can do that." I never read a comic book, because I never had the dime to spend on one. I really had not had a formal education in Superman and the rest, so I borrowed a couple comic books and made page samples, and I naïvely went around to some publishers. Some laughed me out of the place. One guy, though, was very kind, and said, "Why don't you get a job at a studio, and see if you can started as an apprentice." So I went to this Eisner & Iger studio.
AVC: Did you ever get to work with Eisner himself?
AF: Eisner had left; he was no longer there. I think he was in the army when I got there. I showed my portfolio to Jerry Iger, and he said, "Oh, yeah, okay, you've got potential, but you need to be trained. What are you looking for?" I said, "I'm looking for a job after school." And he said, "Okay, you run errands and clean up the pages, and I'll pay you $3 a week."
AVC: How did that lead to drawing your own comic books?
AF: I was sitting among what are now legends in the comic-book industry, guys like Lou Fine, Jack Kamen, Bob Wood. Bob Wood was doing Sheena, and my desk was next to his. One day, he said, "How would you like to do some artwork that'll get published, instead of just running errands?" And I said, "Gee, great." So my first artwork was painting the leopard spots on Sheena's brassiere and loincloth. [Laughs.] I went from that to doing backgrounds for Bob, and then eventually I began to ink figures, and I worked my way up until I was a full-fledged, full-page artist.
AVC: The whole perception of comics was very different back then. How did people react when you told them you were a professional comic-book artist?
AF: Oh, they thought it was great. In those days, there were 600 comic-book titles on the stands. It was the visual entertainment; you could stick it in your back pocket. This was before television really got strong. There were some television sets back in the '50s, but they were expensive. People would gather at the rich guy's apartment down the hall to watch Milton Berle on his 10-inch black-and-white screen. [Laughs.] The comic-book industry today is not what it was back then, unfortunately. Kids are no longer interested in reading comic books; they've got television and the electronic games that they can bury themselves in like ostriches. They don't have to pay attention to what's going on in the world around them.
AVC: People talk about violent video games the way they used to talk about EC Comics, saying that they corrupt kids. Do you think that argument is valid in any way?
AF: Today, I go around singing a parody: "Where Have All The Flower Children Gone?" Where are all these people who were protesting the Vietnam War and the inadequacies and problems of our culture, the racial and religious intolerance? We finally got people out from the back of the bus and started integrating schools, and that was progress. But where are the young people today? Why are they allowing some of the things that are happening in their country? I am really upset about that. I feel that they are burying their heads in the sand of electronic games and television. They don't want to know. Maybe they realize that their yuppie parents who protested Vietnam have turned on their ideals and are now struggling to buy a Lexus or whatever. These kids don't know what to revolt against, so they just completely ignore it, which is a very frightening thing.
AVC: How did you wind up doing horror comics for EC?
AF: I was working for a publisher named Victor Fox, and my letterer told me, "Be careful; this guy has ties to the Mob, and I think he's in financial difficulty. You ought not to put all your eggs in one basket." I just heard that M.C. Gaines—who was the inventor of the comic book—had been killed in a speedboat crash. His wife was forcing his son to take over the business and learn it, so I went down to meet this nerd with horn-rimmed glasses and a crew-cut, named Bill Gaines. And I was with him for 35 years after that.
AVC: How did you and Bill Gaines formulate the EC style, the horror and war and science-fiction titles?
AF: When M.C. Gaines started the company, it was called Educational Comics, picture stories from the Bible and world history and science. He was losing his shirt, so he had to start putting out crime books and Western books. That's what Bill inherited. I started working on those books, and when [Joe] Simon and [Jack] Kirby invented the romance comics, we came out with our own. Saddle Justice became Saddle Romance. [Laughs.] I used to plead with Bill, "We're imitating crime and romance books. Why do we follow? Let's be innovators instead of imitators. Let's start our own trends; let them follow us." And he said, "Well, what do you have in mind?" And I said, "How about horror?" When I was a kid, I used to sneak down the stairs when my folks were listening to The Witch's Tale and Inner Sanctum on the radio. I went to see Frankenstein in the movie theater and got the pants scared off of me. I said, "Why don't we try this in comics, and scare the pants off the kids?" And Bill said, "Okay, let's try it." So I created The Crypt Of Terror with The Crypt Keeper as the narrator and host, much like The Old Witch was the host on The Witch's Tale.
AVC: EC wound up having a host called The Old Witch, too.
AF: Yeah, I really did a direct swipe there; I was so desperate. [Laughs.] She was the hostess of The Haunt Of Fear, which was our third horror title. I was doing them all myself. The sales were promising, so we changed all the crime books over to horror. That's when we started to get some noise from wholesalers; this was a time when juvenile delinquency was stirring the country. People were concerned with what their kids were reading, and some of the wholesalers suggested that The Crypt Of Terror was too scary, so we changed it to Tales From The Crypt.
AVC: Did you write all those early stories yourself?
AF: I was, because I wanted to get that extra $6 or $7 a page in addition to the artwork I was doing. Bill liked the way I wrote, and he wanted me to write for the rest of the artists. I told him, "The problem is, I don't know if I can plot all those stories," and he said, " Don't worry; I've got insomnia, and I do an awful lot of reading. I will bring plot ideas, and we will make variations together." He always had a weight problem, so he used to take an appetite suppressant that had Dexedrine in it. You could get it over the counter back then. He'd take it before dinner, and he'd be wired all night. He would come in the next day with all these springboards for plot ideas, then I'd go up and develop the ideas with all the characters and everything.
One day he came in and slapped two pulp magazines on my desk, and he said, "What do you know about science fiction?" I said, "Absolutely nothing." And he said, "Well, I love it. Take this home and read it." I came back to Bill—greedy little me, I was a whore—and said, "I can write this stuff." [Laughs.] So we started putting out Weird Science and Weird Fantasy. Then we got into the political aspect of our society at the time: the fact that we had racial intolerance, anti-Semitism. What we went to World War II for, at least in my mind, was not getting taken care of. It was supposed to be a brave new world, but we were getting back into the old ruts, and we were in a cold war with Russia. We started this title called Shock SuspenStories, because it had these shock endings. Bill labeled them "preachies"—they were stories that had to do with racial intolerance, politicians, corruption.
- Comments