Super Stuff in the Bronze Age: Norman Saunders

Showing posts with label Norman Saunders. Show all posts

Thursday, August 26, 2021

Batman Trading Card Stories #2 : To The Batcave!

One of the first Batman trading cards I ever owned was this one - “Black Bat” set # 38 - of the Dynamic Duo posing outside the entrance to the Batcave from within Wayne Manor. This is interesting because:

The Batcave entrance had been replaced by an elevator in the comics two years earlier in 1964
Access to the Batcave was by a sliding bookcase to the famed Batpoles in the current TV series
The Batman trading card shows a laboratory room beyond - not stairs, nor a cave nor steps to a cave
It asks the question "Why are they in costume within Wayne Manor?"

As previously mentioned on this blog, Norman Saunders usually (but not always) painted the trading cards based on pencil drawings supplied by Bob Powell. Saunders then included additional details not present in Powell’s pencils, so the paintings were always likely to have some deviation from comics canon.

I thought I’d take a deep dive into the history of the grandfather clock as the entrance to the Batcave, and see if I could locate any earlier material that might have inspired the specific elements of the painting by Norman Saunders.

The text on the back of the card by Larry Ivie gave no clue, so I decided to go back to the beginning, to the first time that the Batcave’s origin was documented in the Batman "dailies" on October 29, 1943, in a strip entitled "The Bat Cave!”.

As you can see, the entrance to the cave in this strip was by a sliding bookcase.

However, that same year 1943, the first Batman & Robin movie serial was released, which featured a large grandfather clock as the entrance to the cave from within Wayne Manor. Bob Kane was so taken by the idea that he passed it on to writer Bill Finger for subsequent incorporation into the comic. [Interestingly, the conceit of a large grandfather clock covering the entrance of a secret room was lifted from the 1920s silent film “The Mark of Zorro”.]

Note that in the 1943 serial, the clock is about 8’ tall, and the dynamic duo squeeze through the front of the clock, past the pendulum to gain access. The clock appears to be in the library.

The serial also features a sequence when Batman and Robin enter the manor in costume, and the pass through the clock to the Batcave beyond.

And furthermore, the serial featured a crime lab for the first time.

It was five years later that the clock was incorporated into DC canon in 1948’s Batman #48 “1,000 Secrets of the Batcave”. (Editor Jack Schiff, Artist Sheldon Moldoff, Writer Bill Finger) when burglar Wolf Brando enters Wayne Manor and accidentally stumbles against the clock, triggering a switch that opens the clock and reveals the Batcave beyond.

The clock was then to be featured in 25 stories across the next 19 years across the three comics Batman, Detective and World’s Finest, even past the time when until Julie Schwartz took over Batman and Detective Comics editorship in 1964 and replaced the stairs with an elevator.

What emerges within those comic stories are two distinct versions of the clock:

1. A clock around 6’ in height which swings open (usually hinged on the left hand side to the wall) to reveal a flight of descending stairs in the subsequent panel

2. A much larger clock - presumably 8’ in height and wider - which enables our heroes to open the glass front and pass through (generally run through) the clock onto the stairs beyond.

Regardless of the design of the clock, all comics and the 1943 movie serial showed an immediate drop to the stairs beyond.

But the subsequent 1949 Batman & Robin movie serial starring Robert Lowrey had no stairs beyond the large grandfather lock.

Throughout these comic stories, our heroes never go through the clock in costume, with one partial exception, which I cover below.

Bill Finger was to write the majority (13) of the Batman stories featuring the grandfather clock (closely followed by Edmond Hamilton with a tally of 9 tales) , but the decisions on how the clock was portrayed fell to the artists themselves.

If the stories were drawn by Sheldon Moldoff , the clock was depicted as about 6’ tall and swung out to reveal the entrance to the Batcave ; if drawn by Dick Sprang (the “good” Bob Kane ghost), the clock was much larger with a door on the front that our heroes passed through.

Looking at the list of stories, the appearance of the clock seemed to almost alternate between issues. In Batman #110, in the same issue, Sprang and Moldoff draw the clock completely differently in subsequent stories. Editor Jack Schiff did not seem to care about lack of continuity, despite editing all three comics featuring Batman during the entire period.

List of all stories with the grandfather clock

Although Jack Schiff was editor of World’s Finest during this entire period, it was not until World’s Finest #109 in 1960 that the clock appeared in a story drawn by an artist other than Sheldon Moldoff or Dick Sprang. (Neither Jerry Robinson nor Lew Sayre Schwartz ever drew the clock, for example). World’s Finest #109 was drawn by Curt Swan and written by Jerry Coleman. In this story (Street date 3/3/60), “The Bewitched Batman” , Robin and Superman in costume walk through the larger clock onto the stairs beyond, and being the only instance of costumed heroes using the entrance.

I’m inclined to believe that Curt Swan was influenced by Dick Sprang’s larger clock approach than with Sheldon Moldoff’s movable clock. [Sprang was a friend of Curt Swan , referring to him by first name only in an AlterEgo #107 interview]

Swan was to draw the clock twice more, in 1964 and 1965 (this time in stories written by Edmond Hamlilton) and in each appearance drew the clock as an 8’ tall clock, but variously had the clock swing or slide aside to reveal the stairs to the cave.

The final rendition of the clock was by Al Plastino (World’s Finest #165 - street Jan 26th 1967) showing a smaller 6’ clock being simply moved to the right.

By this time, Mort Weisinger had taken on editorship of World’s Finest, and seemed completely unaware that Julie Schwartz had replaced the grandfather clock with an elevator three years earlier back in 1964!

[Unlike Marvel of this period, editorships of DC comics were run like personal fiefdoms, which explains the lack of continuity between Batman/Detective, World’s Finest and Brave & Bold during the 1960s.]

So back to the Batman trading card origins: if there was any influences at all on Norman Saunders, it was the 1943 movie serial and the comics imagery of Dick Sprang. The 1943 movie serial was the only example of Batman and Robin in costume outside the clock in Wayne Manor. This scene was most likely the source of the idea for the trading card, but Saunders or Powell may have been influenced by Curt Swan’s rendition of Robin and Superman passing through the clock.

The 1949 movie serial however provided the concept that the clock led directly to the crime lab on the same level.

More recently, there has been much retconning of the grandfather clock’s importance in the Batman mythos, with the hands of the clock being set variously to 10:47pm or 10:48pm as the time of Bruce’s parents' death. ( Batman vol. 3, #69 (March 2019))

Friday, August 6, 2021

Batman ‘66 trading card oddities #1 - "Out On A Limb"

A while back on this blog I argued that Norman Saunders brought a pulp cover sensibility to Batman within the paintings he made for the first 3 sets of Batman trading cards issued by Topps in 1966.

One of the less lurid, but memorable, cards for me was from the second series of cards - Red Bat #13A “Out On A Limb”.

[This is memorable because I first set my eyes on the original painting over 40 years ago, during a fly-drive holiday that my pal Geoff Cousins and I did in California in the summer of 1979. The small Bristol-board image was on display under glass at American Comic Book Company, 106 N Harbor Blvd, Fullerton, CA which was one of many stores which specialized in Comics-related magazines, pulps, adventure novels, gum cards in the Los Angeles area at that time. (A shop long since gone). It was around 11am on the morning of July 10th 1979.]

American Comic Book Company site in 2021

With regard to the production of the Batman cards, the arrangement was for Bob Powell to provide the pencil layouts that Norm Saunders would subsequently use as the basis for the finished paintings. This was similar to the previous freelance arrangement that Powell had with Topps in regard to the creation of 1961’s Civil War News trading card set and 1962’s Mars Attacks set. The difference with the Mars Attacks set was that Powell did the final pencil art based on early pencil roughs (“concept roughs”) developed by Wally Wood; Norman Saunders then did the final painted art.

However, in the case of the painting of “Out on A Limb”, the image is a rendition based on the cover of the cover of DC comic Batman #57 (Feb/March 1950, on sale Dec 9th 1949), originally drawn by Win Mortimer. (J. Winslow Mortimer).

So how did the selection of this cover come about?

Bob Powell had never worked for DC. During the early 1960s Powell did draw a handful of stories for Marvel Comics featuring the superheroes Daredevil, Giant-Man, the Hulk and the Human Torch, his last comics pencilling work being for Marvel on Daredevil #11 cover dated Dec 1965.

Win Mortimer, conversely, had only ever worked for DC up until this time, and there is no evidence that Mortimer or Powell knew each other, or that Win Mortimer had any involvement in the development of the Topps cards.

A clue to the answer may lie within the text on the back of the card itself, written by the mystery third collaborator with Powell and Saunders. The text reads:

“Vicky Vale will go anywhere to get a story. When the lovely lady of the press found out too much about the Comino Gang, Vicky was thrown off a cliff. She managed to grab a limb and hold onto it until Batman came to her aid with the Batcopter.”

This text is Interesting because:

(1) Vicki Vale does not feature in the Batman TV series at all, so mentioning her seems “off-message”

(2) Vicki Vale first appeared in Batman #81, on sale a full four years after the comic cover being copied was published. The woman on the cover is not Vicki Vale.

(3) The comic book on which the painting is based contains no story linked to the cover image.

(4) The Comino Gang mentioned in the text has never featured in any Batman story, with or without Vicki Vale. Nor has the “Camino” gang, as an alternative spelling.

(5) Batman is using the Batplane, not the Batcopter, to rescue Vicki (Let’s forget the likelihood of Batman and Vicki being smashed into the side of the hillside at 500 mph).

(6) "Vicki" is misspelled as "Vicky"

So who was the mystery writer? According to Alter Ego #152, Larry Ivie wrote the text for the Batman cards illustrated by Norm Saunders.

I understand that Larry Ivie was well known in the late 1950s/early 1960s comics community primarily as a comics fan, but in fact he latterly became a comics pro, writer and illustrator, although his mark on the industry consciousness has been faint. According to Roy Thomas, Ivie was famed in fandom for his big comic collection since the 1940s, and subsequently worked for Marvel, Charlton, Archie, DC , EC, Dell and Warren plus others over the years.

According to www.bailsproject.com, Ivie ghost-wrote some Batman stories at DC around 1965, and as per writer Sandy Plunkett in Alter Ego 152, Ivie also wrote the scripts for “mini-comics” featuring Batman that were included as premiums inside boxes of Pop Tarts in the US in 1966.

Ivie was engaged on these Batman comic projects at the same time that he was doing freelance work for Wally Wood at his studio. My guess is that based on Ivie’s concurrent Batman work and the common knowledge of Ivie as having a large DC comic collection, is that Wally Wood recommended Ivie to Topps to write the text on the trading cards.

Powell was suffering from health issues at this time, and Ivie may well have chosen the cover of Batman 57, not Powell. The reference to Vicki Vale and the Comino Gang may well have been that no-one was checking the card narrative against the TV series “bible”, and Ivie relied on his knowledge of past Batman comics to develop the text.

Ivie’s mention of “Batcopter” is interesting. Perhaps Ivie’s idea was to substitute the Batcopter for the plane but Saunders’ direction to use the Batman #57 cover as a template missed-out that suggestion.

Of course, this is all conjecture. I’m not aware of any detailed history of the development of the Batman cards (can anyone point me to one?), but I’m sure there are stories behind many of the cards. Certainly some of the “Black Bat“ set seem to have been painted by someone other than Norm Saunders, for example.