The Marvel Bullpen, March, 1979. 575 Madison Ave, NYC– between 56th and 57th Streets. Marvel had much of the floor, the stat rooms, storage closets and “Stan’s Closet” were all in the back end of the space. Fellow Stat Man Robbie Carosella and I were located right next to the Service Elevator. These shots were taken over a period of time. By which I mean that the film was usually left in the camera for a while. I would try to space out my use of photographic supplies because I was a poor but hard-working Stat Man. So, I would save them up and process the film myself in Marvel’s slop sink. There was a supply closet that was nearly totally dark and a good place to load a film developing tank. I could do that and wander out to the sink to run chemistry in and fool around with the sink. There was also an old office desk in that closet– on it I set up print developing trays and an enlarger. Add some safe-lights and Marvel Photographic Services was on the job.
One reason I was taking pictures was to have them used in a Marvel Calendar. I got several shots in a 1979 Calendar (or was it 1980?) but they seemed to have done away with that, I never saw another actual hang-on-the-wall calendar. So this is just me, walking around taking “grab shots.” A random day.
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- Marv Wolfman. Marv was one of the “Creator Editors” who essentially wrote their own stuff and also had an office at Marvel. Marv did a pretty good job on Crazy Magazine but was super famous for his Dracula work. He was such a mild-mannered guy, but isn’t that the way?
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- Legendary X-Men writer, Chris Claremont
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- John Romita, Sr. talking to Morrie Kuramoto
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- Jim Salicrup writer and editor. Jim’s one of the fellows who, during editorial meetings, always seemed to have a dozen ideas, none bad; some perfect. Jim is still producing comics! He is doing indie work for some high-profile projects like the Creepy Magazine endeavor.
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- Nel Yomtov, paste-up artist. Moved up a bit into marketting and then left Marvel. But he came back as an editor– in fact, he was instrumental in producing my own Iron Manual comic– the first one, back in 1994!
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- Dave Cockrum, willing to hold still for several shots!
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- Dave Cockrum, penciler, inker. He was the on-staff art correction person. Truly one of the nicest guys in the business.
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- Marvel’s Evil Gigantic Robot
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- Al Milgrom, penciler, inker, writer and, I’m not sure he’s an editor at this point in 1979, but if he was not, he soon became one. Of interest is the note on the wall, which was a cry– by Mark Rogan, paste-up artist– asking for ski trip down payments. This is one lucky shot that allows one to pin down the date accurately. I was pretty bad at noting just when I took these pics…
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- A better shot of the Mighty Marvel Mailroom Men!
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- Marvel generated a LOT of mail. These guys made it all move. L-R: John Galvin, Poppy Lopez, Mike Kudzinowski and Tony Cerniglia.
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- I wish I could remember Cliff’s last name– he was one of the fellows who worked with these “proof rolls.” You can see some flat packages on the desk in the foreground, and some small black rectangles. The small rectangles are individual pages of film that add up to a whole comic book. The large package indicates the overall size of the assembled negatives that make up a “flat” that is used to make the metal plates that prints the comic pages. Cliff was one of the fellows that took the big negative flat apart into the individual pages. They were collected and stored. It was a bigger job than it sounds because each page had a total of 4 negatives, the b&w artwork plus three colors. The proof rolls are prints of the large flats. The b&w proof is used for reprints… and that is why there are so many… It’s what has always made Marvel a little extra money over time!
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- Stu Schwartzberg, Statman! Stu had a bone-dry humor that really snuck up on you. He occassionally did cartoons for some of the “adult” humor booklets back in the day. At one time, Marvel Comics was part of Magazine Management, a large company that published many things including adventure magazines. There were gag books, that had tales of scantily-clad show-girls, chorines and secretaries interacting with the men in their lives or the men doing what men do– joke about women. Pretty tame stuff these days. Stu’s stuff was pretty good.
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- Stu Schwartzberg– mythical for his love of Entenman’s baked goods! I took advantage of a coffee mug deal and got him one. I think I detected a glimmer in the eye– could’a been the lights. Stu was Marvel’s photostat camera operator– that’s what he’s leaning on– for many years. A “stat camera” could make copies of artwork or type/lettering in high contrast, clean copies and variable size within minutes. The resulting stat was on a tough paper that could be handled many times before it was stuck down as artwork.
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- Danny Crespi and Lenny Grow. These two gentlemen were in charge of the flow of work to all freelancers. Very different from the Editor System still in place. At this time, March of 1979, Jim Shooter was the Editor in Chief and then there was a host of assistant editors. None of whom assigned work. It was all up to Lenny and Danny. These guys had been freelancers and professionals in and around comics for decades. Soon, the system was changed into the Editor and Assistant Editor system employed today, wherein the Editor decides what freelancer gets the assignment. Danny was from old Marvel– back when it was known as Timely. Lenny came from publishing and pretty much knew everything about an art department, publishing and the technical side of printing. (AND he gave me my first Bullpen job!)
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All these photos are © by Eliot R. Brown. Don’t copy them and don’t use them. Written permission may be granted. Ask.