Letters, I Get Letters ~~ C.C. Beck ~~ Part One of a "Comical Wednesday" Post

Comic "god" Sheldon Mayer (For more info on Mr. Mayer, click here and scroll down a bit!) drew the above illustration to send to those readers who wrote fan letters to his remarkable Sugar and Spike comic, published by DC Comics from 1956-1971.

Sheldon Mayer died in 1991, and I wish I could say that I met the man, or that I owned something autographed by him. Or both. But I can't.

However, I do have several personal letters that I've received from various comic book professionals, and for the next few "Comical Wednesday" posts, I'll be bragging about them telling you about them.

I wrote a two-part post last summer about my attending TerrifiCon 2017 in Connecticut. Here, I told of meeting writer Marv Wolfman and artist Jerry Ordway, and here, I told you how I met writers Steve Englehart and the great Roy Thomas. But I only got signatures from them, not actual letters.

C.C. Beck, co-creator and initial artist of the original Captain Marvel (Yeah, that's right, the "Shazam" dude.), drew Cap from his first appearance until 1953.

And as for other comic work by Beck... Circa 1943, a character called Captain Tootsie started appearing in full-page comic book advertisements for Tootsie Rolls. The Captain's stories were supplied by the C.C. Beck Studios, and Beck had a hand in producing most of them. There was even a Captain Tootsie comic that ran for two issues in 1950, but they were not drawn by Beck. By the mid-1950s, the character was gone.

As told in detail in my post about the original Captain Marvel (linked to above), CM's adventures came to an end in 1953. In 1967, a short-lived publisher called Lightning Comics -- their only other title was called (I swear!) Super Green Beret -- came out with a character called Fatman, who starred in his own title, Fatman, the Human Flying Saucer. C.C. Beck drew the character, whose outfit pretty much resembled the original Captain Marvel's costume, only Fatman's was green instead of red, and he had a flying saucer for an emblem instead of the familiar lightning bolt.

When DC Comics licensed the rights to publish new stories about the original Captain, they hired Beck to draw him once again. However, Beck left the title after ten issues, citing "creative differences." Apparently, he felt that DC's writers were treating Captain Marvel too much like a clown.

C.C. Beck in 1982. Photo by Alan Light.

By 1988, C.C. Beck was writing a regular column for The Comics Journal called "The Crusty Curmudgeon." In it, Beck constantly lamented the tendency of modern comics artists to draw their books in styles that Beck thought were too realistic.

That summer, I wrote Mr. Beck a very nice fan letter, enclosing a copy of The Bird #1, written by me and drawn by my partner Skip Simpson in 1987. Beck's response, polite as it was, was to tell me that he thought the book's artwork was "too cartoonish" to be taken seriously. (Well, after all, it was a humor title...)

I had also asked him why The Comics Journal published his column at all, considering that their editorial viewpoint was more-or-less that comics should aspire to being great art, while Beck pretty much thought that comic books were and should remain a medium for children. He replied that the editors of the magazine and today's "yuppish liberals" were having a bit of fun at the expense of this "relic from the golden age."

His letter was typed, but at least he had hand-written the signature.

Only a few months later, I spent a couple of months with Skip Simpson and his family in Dunnellon, Florida. As it happened, C.C. Beck then lived in Gainesville, Florida, which was just an hour's drive away. Skip suggested I contact Beck and ask if we could visit him, but for whatever reason, I declined.

I wish I'd reconsidered. Charles Clarence Beck died roughly one year later, on November 22nd, 1989, at the age of seventy-nine.

Thanks for your time.