Tom Palmer, Inker & Illustrator Interview Part 1 by Alex Grand & Jim Thompson

Alex Grand and co-host Jim Thompson interview Tom Palmer about his extensive career as both inker and illustrator starting at the Frank Reilly school, learning from Jack Kamen, illustration for advertising, then inking various Marvel comic book pencilers in the Silver Age like Gene Colan, Neal Adams, John and Sal Buscema, and eventually others like Howard Chaykin, Walt Simsonson, and Ron Frenz on characters & properties like Dr. Strange, X-Men, Avengers, Dracula, Thor, Star Wars, Batman, Wonder Woman and more. Learn about his first 1968 penciling job with Stan Lee plotter, Roy Thomas writer, and inked by Dan Adkins and move forward in time to inking John Romita Jr's Kick-Ass. Tom was also friends with Stan Drake and gives interesting details of the car accident that killed Alex Raymond. Edited & Produced by Alex Grand. Interview ©Comic Book Historians 2020.

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Alex: Welcome back to the Comic Book Historians Podcast, with Alex Grand and Jim Thompson. Today we have a very special guest, inker and illustrator, Tom Palmer. Tom, thank you so much for joining us today, and talking about your history and your history in comics.

Palmer: Well, thank you for the invitation. Looking forward to it.

Alex: We're going to kind of hopscotch around different aspects of your life. Jim's going to start at the beginning. Take it away, Jim.

Jim: Tom, let's start… Actually, just even with your name, because when doing research, I would find where it would be, Tom Palmer but you… Did you change your name from your full given name? Are you Tom Palmer, legally now?

Palmer: Well, my given name is Thomas John Palmer.

Jim: Right.

Palmer: Thomas J, and in some financial or legal, I’ll sign John or J. But when I started… Well even when I was a kid, no one called me Thomas, even the nuns didn’t. But Tom, it’ll be Tom.

Jim: Let's go back to New York in 1942 - you were born. Where did you live growing up? Which part of New York?

Palmer: Queens, New York, Southwestern, I was born in Richmond Hill, Queens.

Jim: And how long did you stay in Queens?

Palmer: Probably after high school. Probably in my early 20s, is when I left, yeah.

Jim: Now, I know that you lost your father at an early age. When was that?

Palmer: It was in the ‘50s. I was young… I can’t remember the exact year anymore, because I was young.

Jim: Was it before third grade and your hip problems or after?

Palmer: Oh, you know more about me than I realize.

[chuckles]

Well, he was still alive when I had my hip problems, yeah. Go ahead…

Jim: So, how many siblings did you have?

Palmer: I have one brother that was about eight years older than me. And but I had a bunch of half brothers and sisters that were old enough to be my parents, some of them. I have nieces and a nephew that was older than me. Can you imagine having a nephew or niece older than you? I have a niece right now, [chuckle] in North Carolina. She's older than me. Because my father just had… His first two wives died, and then my mother was around, and was related to the second wife. And out of propriety and everything else, he just had a big family. I think there was eight or nine children in all, and I was the last one.

Jim: So, in the house, when you were growing up, though, how many kids were in the house? Because your brother was still there or not?

Palmer: Yeah, he was, but he was so much older. I remember I never played with him or… I got his comic books, though. I think that’s what…

Jim: I know… I was going to ask you about that, and that surprises me. So, you got his comics. Were they ones he had read when he was younger?

Palmer: Yeah, I guess so. And it was called the Green Lama I remember it’s one of the… I think I saved a few of them. He didn't have any good first issue Batman from… I don't think he bought Batman, but EC Comics. He had those.

Alex: What was it like the Mac Raboy Green Lama stuff?

Palmer: That's right.

Alex: Oh, wow. That's awesome. That's good stuff.

Palmer: Yeah, yeah. So, but I really didn't get caught up in it. I didn't go out and start buying those comics. But then when I did go out, the EC Comics would grab my eye. I was kind of a young yet but Wally Wood, Al Williamson, (Frank) Frazetta, I think that was my first really… Oh, and I get the newspaper strips. I didn’t get Flash Gordon… Yes, I did, I’m sorry. But this is after Alex Raymond. And I didn't care for it, if it wasn’t Mac Raboy, I didn’t care for it. But Hal Foster on Prince Valiant… Oh, I saved every Sunday... poof, I cut that out.

Jim: So, when you developed those problems, you were in crutches from like third grade up until almost high school, for like four years or so… We're you staying inside a lot. I know you were drawing a lot. That's when you really started to begin to draw and focus on that. And on comics because you were drawing your own comics, at that time, even as a kid, right?

Palmer: Yeah, yeah. I guess I sat around a lot because I got heavy. But I did go out. And it was good that my mother…

[00:05:02]

I don’t know if my dad was gone at that point. He passed away when I was on crutches, but it was on a few years after that. But I used to go out on crutches and walk around, get into… Not into trouble. But you know, I'd sometimes trip and fall, and people would go, “Awwh…”. But I get up. I was like a stunt man.

[chuckles]

But I was young, when you're a kid… And I got off crutches in the eighth grade, luckily, just before high school.

Jim: And so, when you were drawing while you were in crutches around there, you had this archive, basically access to, of your older brother’s comics. And you were you were getting to know, at that point, artists like Wally Wood, and which other EC artists were you drawn to?

Palmer: Jack Davis, Al Williamson, and I should say, [chuckle] the one EC artist, maybe I'm jumping here… We can always go back… The one guy that I kind of… Is Jack Kamen, I was doing him more…

One of the studios, the last studio I was in… I was bouncing around in New York, in studios, advertising studios. And there was one on Madison Avenue, and I went for a job there. And I don't know if they were going to take me or not. And I look over and I see… And the fellow that owned the studio said, “This is our illustrator Jack Kamen.” I said, “Jack Kamen? EC Comics?” He turns around, he says, “Yeah”, it's like a voice out of his past. Well, bank back and forth with the guy and he says, it was just the fact that I knew Jack Kamen. And I was there a couple years with him. Jack sat not that far away from me at the drawing board.

So, the EC comics had a big connection in my life.

Alex: Could you recognize Jack Kamen with his pipe? Is that how you recognized him?

Palmer: No. I just… Well, in the comic books, they had a biography with a photograph. I knew the photograph. But when he said, “Jack Kamen”, I said, “Are you the Jack Kamen from EC Comics?” It could have been somebody else. Because he looked like… He always looked the same, I think. Even back when he was younger. But I don't… He wasn’t smoking a pipe in the studio. I don't think they allowed smoking…

Jim: I have pages of Jack Kamen questions to ask you. So, we will get to that in a few…

Palmer: Okay, yeah.

Jim: I think he’s very important obviously, to your work, both in terms of how you got in comics, in terms of your contacts, but also in terms of molding you. I got the impression, not just as an artist, but also as a person.

Palmer: Very much so. I think in that period of time, well even before, I was always looking for a father figure, because I’d lost my father when I was like… Trying to think… How old was I…? I was young. And I… When, you really need a dad, and I didn't have one. And my brothers were older, and on their own. I have a half-brother; he had his own family.

So, Jack was somebody who I was really drawn to… And he was crippled… Not crippled, but he was laid up when he was a kid also. I think he fell off a bus or… It’s something, I don’t remember the whole story. So, there was a connection, between the both of us, and I don't know what he was doing during that time… Maybe the same thing as I was, drawing. Who knows?

Jim: And he had had kind of a mentor relationship himself, hadn't he? A person that he looked up to?

Palmer: Did he have one?

Jim: Yeah.

Palmer: Not that I know of…

Jim: Or maybe I'm thinking of Frank Reilly.

Palmer: Oh… Yes, that's a real father, Frank Reilly... [overlap talk]

Jim: Let’s get through high school and then we'll go to that.

All right, so you're reading books, you're also aware of illustrators at this point too, not just comic book artists. People like Jim Bama. I think most people know him as the Doc Savage artists. How was it that you had become aware of Bama?

Palmer: The paperbacks, Doc Savage and a few others. But before Bama was Norman Rockwell. I wanted to be Norman Rockwell. I even wrote him a letter when I was in high school. And I went up to meet him, up in Stockbridge, that was a big deal for me.

Jim: Oh, wow.

Palmer: Yeah, went up. I mean, for him to say, “Come up”. Imagine today, just having a stranger come in to your… I don't mean during the pandemic, but I mean, just in general. There may be a lot of kooks out there… I don't want to get too far ahead of myself, when we get to Reilly then I'll explain further about Rockwell…

[00:10:01]

Jim: Okay… And then let's talk about, you had listed in some interviews, you talked about Bob Peak too, which I don't know if he's a household name with everyone. But he's most known for his movie posters, starting with West Side Story.

But for comic book type people, there's the Superman posters, and Excalibur, and Star Trek, and maybe most famously, for a lot of people, the Apocalypse Now poster. Was it the film work that you noticed? Or was he was doing commercial stuff before that?

Palmer: Commercial stuff, advertising also. But his work had a comic book look to it. It was a line, the butt and the basis of his artwork was line. All the different ways he drew and then painted over it, did all sorts of things, pastels and all that.

Jim: I was looking at one of his art books yesterday, preparing for this. And I was struck by his faces in the drawings because they… I saw some of you... Is he an artistic influence as well, or just an interest? Because it seemed like he was an influence?

Palmer: I never really looked at his work to copy it or use it as reference. I really didn’t. I think what I liked was his color, when he used it. Maybe that was an impression on me. But Bob Peak, just looking at his work, it would inspire you to do something. So, I think a lot of artists in comics are attracted to Bob Peak.

Jim: Now, did you ever meet him?

Palmer: Yes. Well, I'm a member of Society of Illustrators, and I would see him up there. But I got really to know him, I was in a studio in New Jersey later on, and the owner there was having a New Jersey Art Directors’ Dinner, whatever. And Bob Peak was going to be there with his agent, and they’re going to show slides. He was trying to get work out in Jersey.

And I went, and it didn't work out too well for him, because the people weren’t aware of who he was. I think he was at the other end of his career where… A lot of artists were getting hurt by the photography and the… You didn't have artwork… It hurt me too… They didn’t use artwork for advertising, and that’s where you made money. And that was hurting him.

And he had a bad time… After he got off the stage, he went to the bar, and I went and followed him. And that's where we got to talk a little bit. He was banging them down too. I think he was just frustrated.

[chuckles]

But he was… I think he had a very good time. But I can say, I met somebody that I… It’s like meeting Norman Rockwell.

Jim: So, you got to meet most of the real hero artists, when you were young, when you were growing up.

Palmer: I met Jim Bama too, because he was a student of Reilly. Frank Reilly.

Jim: In fact, didn't you know that when you apply to the Reilly school, that that was a point of interest for you?

Palmer: Well, at Illustrated I met… Well, I don't want to hurt, or I don't want to say anything, bad words [chuckle]… I went to the School of Visual Arts, originally. This is right out of high school. And I want to learn how to paint, and they didn't have a very structured painting course, and I got tired of it. And I left.

And I happen to meet this illustrator, in my bouncing around to the studios and he said, “I heard about this famous teacher, Frank Reilly, and he opened a new school. His own school up on 57th Street. And when I went up there, on the walls were… I never heard of Dean Cornwell. I never heard of JC Leyendecker... That's when my head – poof, exploded.

But there was work by Jim Bama. And I said, “Jim Bama…” It was also in his catalog, Jim Bama, and he was a student there. He left around 1950, so it was a few years earlier. He’s been around. He's still out in Wyoming, I believe. He’s still working out there. But I just loved his work. But it's too tedious for me to emulate. It's just, I like something more brushy.

Jim: Right.

Palmer: He, for me, works hard. But his coloring… And what Reilly taught is the important part, the hue, value and chroma. That's what made the difference in helping you learn how to paint.

Alex: Wasn't Howard Pyle also an influence on you in some way?

Palmer: Howard Pyle was the original American Illustrator.

[00:15:00]

I mean, he was the father of a more… I knew his name, and I really didn't know who he was until I got to Reilly’s. And he would refer back to him, because there was a certain, things you’d write about illustration that I’d gone through that Pyle school, you had Harvey Dunn, you had Dean Cornwell. There’s another one, Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth, the father, N.C. Wyeth… So that’s what Reilly picked up on, and went with when he worked on a painting, that he brought something to it beyond just the thought… Go ahead.

Jim: But before we get to Reilly, you're at the School of Visual Arts. Now, in some of the pieces I've read on you, there's also the mention of the Art Students League. And I know Reilly taught there. A lot of people went in and out of there in some contexts. I'm not sure with that... Can you talk about that for a minute and what was your association with that?

Palmer: It really wasn’t. Reilly…

Jim: I didn’t think so either, and yet it pops up in places. So, I wanted to put that to bed. That was just a place where Reilly lectured sometimes or…?

Palmer: I think he had classes there. I never knew of Reilly before, this illustrator said, “There’s a teacher, Frank Reilly.” Never knew about him. Then I realized he took over for George Bridgman at the League, Art Students’ League. Back in the ‘40’s maybe, I'm not sure. But he was really good on those basics in drawing and painting. So that's where he was, and maybe that's the connection. If you look at…

Jim: Yeah. He’d been there. He taught at Pratt or lectured to Pratt. I mean, there were a lot of… He’d been in a lot of places, I guess, before he started his own. But I didn't see any connection with you. So, I'm glad we got that worked out.

At the same time that you were going to night school at this School of Visual Arts, you were working at a Lexington advertising agency. Was that like an internship? Or did they just not give you any work to do? I know you weren't happy there.

Palmer: Well, I didn't stay long. I was going to Reilly at the time. I think I was done with Visual Arts, but it was on. It was in the Graybar Building, and it was right on Grand Central Station, this agency. And it was the entrance into the business - I was the gopher. I learned the ropes. But the best part about them, and being in the next studio, was that I would be sent out to pick up the work. And one of the art directors there said, “The best thing to do when you are with the art director or the agency, whatever the person, when they're telling you what to do, if you have any questions in your mind. Ask them. Don't hold back, because we're going to ask you the same questions.”

And just going, and presenting myself, I had to wear a tie and a sport jacket, it was something that I was not taught in my growing up, in my teen years. It was a subtle way of bringing me up to speed in Madison Avenue, whatever. Advertising and business, was really professional in New York at the time.

Jim: Now. when you started studying under Reilly in the school, how many teachers were there? It wasn't just Reilly. About how many teachers? How many students?

Palmer: Well, I don't know. There was not a lot of… I was going there nights, so that's a different time. I was never there during the day. It was only Reilly but he had monitors in his two classes drawing and painting. You had to draw, you had to be in a drawing class for a while before you could go to the painting class.

And the monitor in the painting class, in the time I was there, is a famous guy, Roger Kastel. I don’t know if you know the name. He painted the Jaws poster; the famous Jaws poster and that artwork is lost. And he painted The Empire Strikes Back for… He painted other posters also, but he was an illustrator doing work.

At the time he was at Reilly, I think he came to Reilly, and he used to go in the evenings. I don't think he was there during the day. And because he knew Reilly very well, and he obviously didn’t have to pay for anything, but we would watch what he was doing, and that was a lesson in itself.

On Thursday night, Reilly would have a lecture, he’d talk about something specific. But each night, he would have us go through the phases of doing a painting, a figure painting. You started with a wash, and then doing everything else. Putting out your palette or whatever. But you watched what Roger was doing. And that was as good as having Reilly there, because it was of Reilly palette.

[00:20:03]

Jim: Now, I had read that Reilly didn't touch a brush, for demonstrations, that he thought that it was more about being a teacher than learning how to… Than just painting in front of students.

Palmer: That’s true. Yeah, no, he didn't want you to paint like him. He wanted you to get the teaching, the what he knew from him, about painting, about color, and everything else, compositions.

Jim: And he had a very, would you say it was a scientific approach?

Palmer: Well, some people used to call it… I remembered, the first time I was in the Society of Illustrators, when I became a member, and they’d said, “Oh, where'd you go to art school?” I said, “Frank Reilly.” They said, “Oh, the mathematician.” And I went, “What? The mathematician?”

[chuckles]

If you know anything about Reilly… It was all values, nine values and the chroma, you had all these numbers going out for the chroma, but it was hue, value, chroma. And that's why people say, “All the numbers.” But I mean, when you first go into Reilly, you had a house next to a road and you had a tree. And you had to paint that in sunlight, cloud, and at night. Three different… And you did them in values, and he told you the values. He had Reilly grays in tubes, Grumbacher had them. And that’s what sold me. It’s so much like filling in the numbers… You painted it, and you look at it, and it works – day light/ sun light, cloudy day, and at night.

And that’s what sold me… I said, “Holy smoke… That thing you can… That’s a real lesson.” And there’s a lot of things you learn from that. And that was, I think the basis of Reilly’s… I think that’s how he caught you… Well not caught you, but how he got your interest. So, after that, when he was speaking to the class, he had a lecture, you understood what he meant. He was talking about certain things. And he has some terrific students that came out of his classes, fine arts students, not just illustration guys.

Jim: And in terms of people that the comics community would know, I know Basil Gogos from Famous Monsters of Filmland.

Palmer: He was early on. Yes, he was back like Bama's time. Yeah. Well probably a little after that… The only reason, I probably would’ve gotten longer to Reilly, but he had a brain tumor; he died.

Jim: Yeah.

Palmer: Back in ’68, and that kind of… ’67, ‘68. And that's when I… Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. But that's when I kind of moved on out of going to school. I probably would have gone longer with Reilly.

Jim: The school shut down. Right?

Palmer: Yeah, they tried to keep it, but they couldn’t. Reilly was the core. He was the backbone, so to speak, of the school.

Jim: And that opened up your comics opportunities, and I'm going to get to why that was in just a minute.

Let's go to the other major influence, besides Reilly, was with Kamen. And you had changed jobs at that time, and you took a freelance studio drawing board position at a Madison Avenue advertising studio, right?

Palmer: Yes.

Jim: Okay. And you noticed Kamen sitting there, and then how long did the two of you work together?

Palmer: Wow… Gee… more than a couple of years. I really don't know the… It was maybe three, four years? I don't know, three years maybe. I don't remember that part. I don't remember that part only because there's a blur there. There’s so many things that were going on… I don’t know if you want me to jump to that now… What I learned from Jack, was watching…

He's a comic book artist, but he was rounded. He had Harvey Dunn as his teacher. And Harvey Dunn is one of those Howard Pyle students in a row. And I would watch him he was doing truck ads for; I forgot the name of the truck company… Mack Truck. And how he would lay this thing out, and how he had a very odd way of painting. He would put down a base with acrylic, and then he would use Prismacolor pencils, and use that all over. And then he would use an ink eraser, the motorized, and he would then blend it with this abrasive. Here I am, going to school with Reilly and [chuckle], trying it with brushwork with all the different types of brushes.

[00:25:01]

But it was just… Someone asked me once in an interview, what I’d learned from Jack? Not how to paint but how to work, how to set it up, how he would get a layout from somebody, and he would have a photo stock made, and make it larger. He never worked the same size. But he made it sure that you fit that size in that area.

And sure enough, that's what happened going out on my own. Is that art directors wouldn’t tolerate that if you… You had to know what you were doing, at least on that basic level. And that's what I learned from Jack. The last thing, I learned how to be an artist in an odd way. I mean not in an odd artist… But in a roundabout way, I should say, how to be an artist.

Jim: Now, while you were there with him, he sponsored you into the Society of Illustrators too, right?

Palmer: Correct.

Jim: So, he really took you under his wing in all kinds of respects.

Palmer: Yep, they have to sponsor… And just, this is a quick jump forward, one night I was in art school and I saw somebody here, again from EC. It was Joe Orlando sitting in the front row, sketching. And I knew him again, from the comic books, you know, the bios they did. So, after the class was over, I went over and, “Are you Joe Orlando?” He said, “Yeah”… Same thing, we got to talk. “I'm working in a studio, with Jack Kamen…” “Oh.” So, we became buddies.

He was great. When he was the head guy up at DC, I was getting work from DC and everything else. But anyway, Joe… [chuckle] I was at the Society of Illustrators’ with him, and I think he came on my… You have to bring somebody; you can't go there yourself. And he saw Tony Bennett. And he said, “Oh, I went to high school with Tony Bennett.” I couldn’t believe him, and I said, “You know, Tony Bennett is a member.” “He is. How do you become a member?”

So, I could sponsor Joe but I got the forms, filled them out, and I gave them to Jack Kamen. And Jack Kamen sponsored Joe. And Joe lived at the Society of Illustrators. Yeah, because he lived in the city at the time. He had a place upstate, but he loved the Society of Illustrators. I don’t know if he was waiting for Tony Bennett to come in again.

Jim: Oh, that’s great.

Palmer: Tony Bennett was a member. He was and is a painter. He's still around. Anyway, that's the sidetrack.

Jim: Now, let me skip and follow up with something on that. The way that I've read the story was, when you went to Wally Wood… And we'll talk about that in a few minutes... But when you went to Wally Wood, that he's the one that sent you to Joe Orlando. But you already knew Joe Orlando. Is that right?

Palmer: I'm not sure if that’s the course… I think… That may have been later. That I can't put together… Wally… I shouldn't say Wally. We call him Woody.

Jim: Yeah.

Palmer: He sent me to Joe or… Mike Esposito. And he knew Joe Orlando. But Mike Esposito, I did some backgrounds for Mike Esposito. Then I did some backgrounds with somebody else and I was doing backgrounds. But just, they’d give me a page. I wouldn't do the whole comic. So, I did the backgrounds…

Jim: Right. I think that this story has been a little bit mixed in because they have, that you went to Wood, and he sent you to Joe Orlando. And then Orlando sent you to Esposito. It sounds like maybe that's not exactly what happened.

Palmer: Now, I never did work with Joe Orlando.

Jim: Right.

Palmer: He was always… Once we became friends, which we did early on. We remained, to the end of his days.

Jim: Okay. That's helpful. My understanding is that you asked Kamen, repeatedly, to connect you with some people; you wanted to do comic book work. And that he wasn't helpful at first, because he wanted you to stay studying under Reilly. That he encouraged you to stay to keep your art studies going first.

Palmer: Right, and when Reilly died, that's when Jack relented. Yeah.

Jim: Because you didn't have the school anymore, so he said, “Okay”, and that's when he called up Woody Wood, and said, “I'm sending somebody for you to look at his portfolio.” Is that how it played?

Palmer: Yeah. I guess. Yeah. And it was up on 86th Street or something.

Jim: Now, was that his studio that you went to or his apartment?

Palmer: His apartment, his studio, had one of those… I always think of The Odd Couple - when you see the movie, those big cavernous apartments that Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon had.

[00:30:06]

Jim: Yeah.

Palmer: Wally… Woody, I should say, had the same thing. He had a big Artograph that you put up on the wall. You can only have one in a very large studio or a large apartment like that. He had me working on that a little bit too. So, I learned how to make an artograph. He would have automobiles, or people, or whatever… He would project it down in a kind of pencil form, in an odd way. But no, he wouldn’t be penciling, he would be drawing rough sketches of things. That's all he needed. That’s how he worked.

Jim: That’s it… So, when you went in, how long did you work with him? Or how many times were you there?

Palmer: I penciled something for him. And I…

Jim: The Jungle Gym story.

Palmer: Yeah… The first I ever penciled; I should say. The first, yeah. I always say it’s Doctor Strange… But it was six pages, I think… Four or six pages.

Jim: And this is a Charlton comic.

Palmer: Yeah. Yeah, I have the comic… Look, if you see it now, you’d just say, “No, Wally Wood did that, when he [chuckle] inks something, it became him.

Alex: So, with Wally, this was in 1967, he had some involvement in Tower and T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents around this time. Did you notice, just behaviorally, any mental health issues with him during this time?

Palmer: No, I he was my… You know when you have somebody in your life that, when you were kid... Wally Wood was the king. He was the guy I wanted to be… I’ll just say, after I met him, I wanted to do what he did but didn't want to be him. You know what I mean?

Jim: Sure.

Palmer: He was a very talented artist, unbelievably so… What did Bill Gaines call him? A tortured elf. I noticed that about Woody is that, in many ways, I think we all are, he was childlike. And he got caught up in things, his demons. But he was just… I think he’s the only science fiction artist that I know of in the comics, at least, that stood out the way he did.

He was just inspired, the work he did. And I just…

Jim: Yeah, and those EC stories that he was doing on those two series were just amazing.

Alex: And I do love his Galaxy Science Fiction digest illustrations. They’re beautiful.

Palmer: Yes, yes.

Jim: Now, could you have stayed and work, and assisted Wood, if you'd wanted to, but instead you went to Esposito in DC?

Palmer: Well, I only went a couple of times, on the dates he’d asked me back… I made the mistake of, I'd be working on a page, I'd be inking a page he had already worked on. And the pages were coming past me… There’d be a couple of the guys there. And I started to tickle up the faces, and he exploded. He just [chuckles] and sort of boding, “Do not do that.”

So, I think he found that I was more of a hinderance than a help with... And he didn't say anything beyond that. I don't know if he had me back anymore. But I stopped going up there. But I didn't need him then. I don't want to say I didn't need him anymore, he kind of gave me… I think it was Mike Esposito… And then Mike Esposito… Oh, I forget the other guy’s name… He’s from that era.

But one of them played poker with the group from Marvel…

Jim: Yeah, it was Esposito played with Sol Brodsky.

Palmer: Yeah. Sol Brodsky was at Marvel. Yeah, they used to play poker. And Roy Thomas, I think, was in the part… But Sol Brodsky… And Mike said, “Hey, I got this guy.” and I was doing some work for Mike, the backgrounds. But that's how I got up to Marvel. Sol Brodsky.

Jim: And so, who told you? Did Mike tell you, “Sol's interested, you should go to Marvel?” Or who contacted you and said, “Come on up.”

Palmer: Who contacted me? I don’t know, that was so incidental. That was the connection, because, all of a sudden, I was up at Marvel, showing my portfolio. And I think the portfolio, having only penciled six pages in my whole life, and the rest of it was advertising work and whatever, I forget what I had in that portfolio. And they wound up giving me, especially, they figured I worked for Wally Wood, that Doctor Strange #171, I think.

[00:35:04]

Jim: #171, and I'm going to let… Alex is going to take over at that point. I just want to ask you, in terms of you going up to Marvel?... Had you read…? I mean, I only knew you in terms of the EC comics and stuff. And then you got into art school and things. But were you following comics at all, at this point?

Palmer: Yeah. I’m admitting it now. I’m not admitting it when I was asked before. I was not a follower of Marvel and DC, at that point, the comics. I was looking elsewhere, at illustrations, more of paintings, paperbacks, the men's magazines, Male Stag… That's where Bama and a bunch of other guys… Another guy that was a Reilly student was there doing work with them. And that’s were guys kind of went - into that field.

So, I didn't know who Jack Kirby was.

Jim: I was going to ask you, Kirby and Ditko weren't big names to you.

Palmer: [overlap talk] All the names that were… I guess, none of them. None of them. Back at that moment… Good people that came in after that, and then I knew of them. But I don't want to get too far ahead. But I think that's when the other part of my career opened up, it’s when I was working… Roy Thomas was writing the Doctor Strange and within a short period of time, he had me doing some other work.

But he had a party up on a… He lived on 86th Street, on the East side. And it was a big party, even Stan Lee was there, and Wally Wood, and blah blah blah. Gray Morrow... And he introduces me to Neal Adams, and… Oh, geez, I forgot the other guy. Just out of my head, one moment. [overlap talk]

Jim: Steranko?

Palmer: No, no, no, no. Anyway, it'll come to me.

Alex: What, Gene Colan?

Palmer: No, no, no, no. Woody…

Alex: [chuckle] Name that artist. Yeah.

Palmer: Bernie Wrightson. Bernie Wrightson... And it was terrific. I think that’s how, what led to Neal and I working together. I don't know, because Roy was writing the X-Men. But that was… I’m giving you really these little landmarks, that kind of took me in different directions. All of a sudden, I wasn't worried about doing paintings for the men's magazines or doing the Saturday Evening Post cover, like a Rockwell.

I always loved comics, but it was hidden. It was a latent thing. It wasn't something that was on the surface. And that really drew me in. I think being able to color that issue… I was still getting started in coloring. I thought that would really disturb me – putting a lot of work into the inking, and then they would hand it to somebody, and had no clue, because they paid nothing. They paid like $2 a page. So, you did it out of the love for the comics and you want it to look good. And I wasn't the only one. A lot of the guys after me were doing it as well.

Alex: So then, now Sol Brodsky was your entrance into Marvel and you're talking about the parties and meeting people. Was he the one that then gave you the Doctor Strange #171 assignment?

Palmer: You know, I don't remember, either Roy Thomas was there… I remember meeting Roy, John Romita Sr…

Alex: I see. It could have actually been Roy then. Okay.

Palmer: Yeah. It was a very small group.

Alex: Very small group.

Palmer: I was told, somebody, I mean, it was a riot. Stan acted it out - the plot, for me in his office. And his gal Friday was… She took notes for me. She took Cliff Notes.

Alex: Yes.

Palmer: I couldn't remember. I just stood there. I couldn't believe there’s Stan jumping on the couch and everything else. But that's the way he gave plots out to the artist, was by phone or once in a while, I guess, they’d come in. But after a while, I guess he'd call up Kirby and just say, “Yeah, have Captain America doing this, or whatever.

Alex: Right. It was like more verbal. It was verbal, not written, really.

Palmer: And then the script was written after that.

Jim: So that was Flo Steinberg that gave you her notes?

Palmer: Flo Steinberg, yes, yes. Yes, she was the one I… She had stood behind me by the door. She was fantastic… She only passed away the last couple of years. I’d go into Marvel even years later, I saw Flo… And he kept her on. She proofread, and everything else.

Alex: And you were inked by Dan Adkins on that issue? Is that right?

Palmer: Yeah. And he saved me too, because I didn’t know who Doctor Strange was. [chuckle]

Alex: Yeah, so you hadn’t seen the previous issues.

Palmer: No, no, no. [overlap talk]

[00:40:00]

Alex: There’s this like double paged spread in that issue that I think has been in posters, or people have admired it a lot because it's so wonky. There's like this trans-universal cosmic dimensional stuff. Did you put those patterns in there?

Palmer: Oh yeah, but I ripped off an illustrator that did something, a pop art thing. And I don't remember… I say ripped it off obviously, not with that Doctor Strange. But those, that was a period of time in the ‘60s that you know what was going on, and everything else. It was the pop art.

Alex: Pop art. Yeah. So, you looked at some pop art stuff for that spread.

Palmer: Oh, yeah, for that spread, because I needed that spread, and that was kind of laid out.

Alex: And then when you say Adkins saved you, you mean like, was it - were you doing more breakdowns? Or were you actually trying to illustrate those panels?

Palmer: Oh, I was doing tight pencils, but they weren't comic book pencils. Plus, I didn't really know the characters. They gave me work with comics that had been done by… But you don't really know a book, unless you’ve been on it for a while.

Alex: So, you mean like for example like Stephen Strange’s face, maybe he changed it or altered it a little bit?

Palmer: Yeah, because when he got done… He spent a lot of time with Wally Wood – Dan Adkins.

Alex: Yes.

Palmer: And I think he picked that up, not that he worked like Wally Wood, but he made those pages I penciled, more like his work, preceding me. He was penciling and inking the comic book before me. I don’t know how many issues.

So, I … Pfft… have no regrets on it. I still got seven pages back on that. No, I'm sorry, I didn't. I didn’t get anything back. I didn't get anything back. I think Dan got all the pages back.

Alex: Oh, I see… So now, you said you weren't that thrilled with that issue, looking back on it? Is that right?

Palmer: No, that one wasn’t bad. It was the one that I inked.

Alex: Okay.

Palmer: The following one, #172 was the one that I inked.

Alex: Uh-huh, yeah, because then you were inking Colan after that.

Palmer: Yes, that was the first issue of Colan and me. It was the first time I worked with Gene Colan. I didn't know what comic book pencils was supposed to look like. So, Gene Colan had this… People had a problem doing it, but they said that I used to draw into the shadows. You know, you find something in the shadows, you can't just make everything black. Because he looked like he made everything black and it wasn't.

And Gene was terrific artist. He was a terrific artist. He could have been an illustrator… He was an illustrator, but you know what I mean. He wasn't somebody who took a pencil and drew by the point of the pencil, he used the side of the pencil on everything else.

Alex: So, who then decided, “Okay we're going to have you ink, instead of continuing to pencil.” Do you remember that?

Palmer: No… I think I just wasn't ready to do.

I really never talked to him about… Maybe Roy will say something once…

Alex: Maybe, Roy. Okay. I got you.

Palmer: Yeah, but maybe my drawing was okay, but my storytelling was terrible. Because I knew they discarded a page… And I'm trying to figure if they've filled it in. I’d never kept track to that. But I’d gotten that page back. It was kind of… It wasn't badly done, I don’t think. But I don't think it fit the story. It didn't tell the story. And that was the thing that you had to do, especially with Stan - is tell the story. [overlap talk]

Alex: Right. Like the layouts have to push the story along.

Palmer: And I didn't have enough experience I think, to have them carry me along. And they asked me to ink, and I’d never inked a comic book before. And I said, “Sure.” I never turn down work. You’ll never know… [chuckle]

Alex: Right. You're going to do it. Yeah. I got you.

Palmer: I said, “Yeah, sure.” And I just did… But what I did was, since I didn’t know comic books, I used the instruments and the tools that I, what I knew when I did the advertising art. I was doing advertising art in line. But some of it was very boring and everything else, and some figure work and everything else… But I think that was the difference.

With Wally Wood, I was using Zipatone too. And people weren't using Zipatone at that time, because Woody, this was way past the EC thing. I don’t think they knew what it was. Or craft tint, that was the other thing that I was able to use. Chemicals. And that was paying… Yeah.

Alex: Yeah… And the textures of gray shadow, like you're talking about with Colan, it said that you use Zipatone and cross hatching on your inking to kind of follow where he was getting at, to kind of flesh it out, in a sense. And that you added, you potentially even add… Did you add some illustration lines to his ephemeral forms, as well?

Palmer: I'm sure. I didn't follow. You really couldn't.

[00:45:02]

If you followed Gene Colan’s pencil, you'd have a big black area, and then some, maybe a head, or a hand because he did work in black… It wasn’t even black, it was gray… He used a very soft pencil, and when you get up to 6, 7, 8B, that's very soft. No one uses it because the point wears down. But it’s beautiful, lush, and they’re very silky blacks.

And when you get above HB, the only way you can make it darker is by adding clay to it. And your hands were black when you get done working on the pages. And I used to take a kneaded eraser, this is after me getting to know Gene’s work. And I used to just roll it like you would with rolling dough on it. People were saying, “Oh, you were erasing it.” And I said, “No, I'm not erasing it, I’m just taking all that clay off.” And it would reveal Gene’s lay-out, his drawing, his pencil lines.

Then he’d fill it in with the side of the pencils or something. So, what you saw was just a massive penciling. So, I think that’s why people had a problem with him.

Alex: Right, right.

Palmer: So, by me trying to get rid of the clay… I knew about the problem with the clay… I revealed something that, all would say, “Wow.” It was to my benefit. So, I didn't follow every line. He wasn't like… Neal Adams, I’d say. You don’t change lines on Neal, because they are there… Bam! You can add to them and make them, whatever, different thicknesses and all that, different treatment, but you don't change. With Gene you sometimes had to, because he works so quickly, I think. But, again, he was just an artist, beyond, beyond the comic conversion.

Alex: On that first issue you did, there's a double-page spread that has almost kind of a similar layout in Doctor Strange #182. And Doctor Strange is like fighting this sorcerer magic creature with like planets being thrown. It's like a similar layout but the synergy with you and Gene. It really explodes off the page. It's like a whole other thing is going on there.

Palmer: See, I don’t remember it. But if I have the book here, I’d remembered it and looked it up.

Alex: Yes. It's pretty amazing though.

Palmer: Yeah.

Alex: And then, now this is also, we should say it's the Doctor Strange with the mask on. Right?

Palmer: Okay, that's when they wanted to make him like a superhero. Yeah.

Alex: Right, right. They were trying to make him like a superhero, exactly. So now, I looked also, there was an issue with Juggernaut that was in it, a Doctor Strange issue. And I love what you guys did with Juggernaut, like there's this whole page of him just materializing out of this dimension. I mean, it's incredible. But I noticed like sometimes, maybe in Doctor Strange more so, than in Daredevil and Captain America. But sometimes, when there's a full body figure, there's almost like a distortion to them. Did you find yourself having to try to normalize some of Gene’s full body figures, in a sense, or to make it more anatomically correct? Did that ever occur?

Palmer: I wouldn’t do that to Gene. There were things that I would… Well, not change but help out.

Alex: Help out.

Palmer: Yeah. If he was quickly doing something. But I’d never changed the anatomy or anything like that. But sometimes, the shadows on a face would look good in pencil but if you ink them, they would look grotesque.

So, you would just kind of have a work, if you know the dimensions of the head [overlap talk]

Alex: I also noticed like it depended in the Doctor Strange, if it was a magician Doctor Strange or civilian Doctor Strange. And it almost kind of shifted in style, artistically. Was that kind of stuff that you kept in mind when you're inking that?

Palmer: No, I just kind of maybe… I don’t… A lot of it was just instinctive or just my natural approach. I really don't know.

Alex: Natural approach. Yeah. And then, the hair, like if you look at Clea’s hair in these issues that you inked, it’s like lustrous hair, you see like each follicle of hair.

Palmer: Okay, well this is what I was looking at, at that time, it was a couple of strip artists. One was Stan Drake. Stan Drake. The [overlap talk].

Alex: Stan Drake.

Palmer: I’d wind up meeting him too at one time. We would have lunch together. and Stan Drake, Ken Bald… The stuff by Stan Drake, anything with women, I mean, he was just fantastic.

I remember Jack Kamen mentioning his name. I think I started using the same pen point as Stan Drake. But Jack Kamen was doing a lot of that line work himself, on that comic strips.

[00:50:03]

But the advertising, and he said, “Stan Drake was the highest paid illustrator in New York”, back in the late part of the ‘50s, with all the line work he was doing, and that’s… He was the first man in Manhattan with a Polaroid camera, when they came out. That's what made The Heart of Juliet Jones look so good, and everything else. I mean just, so the whole strips changed. I had to get a Polaroid camera, and I started doing the same thing. I’d have a friend pose at something or whatever, a woman. So, I was kind of doing advertising. So, Stan Drake was one of the people that I would refer to. I had clippings and everything else.

I was not a brush man, Jack Kamen was. That’s all he did was use brush. And I just, I did work with a brush, but depending on the artist… On the Kick-Ass series I did with John Romita Jr. But other than that, I like the pen. So, when I got into the business, I realize how many people were doing brush. It was the Milton Caniff school, I guess, was part of that.

And I may have been getting ahead of things here but I think that’s what changed the comic books as it, because a lot of people were using pen, coming in behind me, and before me, maybe. I don't know how many people were doing it. But the older artists, whether it was Wally Wood; he’d use the pen for his faces, eyes, but he was brush. Joe Orlando was brush. Jack Kamen, like I said. So, that whole era… And I think maybe that’s why comic books changed in the ‘60s, the later ‘60s, because… I’m thinking of Klaus Janson, I’d say, so many people, they started using pen.

Jim: Versus like Joe Sinnott, and George Klein, and that older school that so define Marvel, before you came really, because you were the change, I think.

Palmer: I never thought of that… Well, now I know Neal for a long time, he was working in Johnstone & Cushing.

Alex: Yeah, that’s right.

Palmer: He was in there too, and I think he picked up a lot from Stan. But he also brought that quality in to comic books. It wasn’t that far along, I just told somebody else about this recently. We were doing the X-Men. When I got the first pages from Roy Thomas, on the X-Men, and I saw a couple of things. There was an operating room or whatever, and there was something else. I had that reference in my clip file, the operating room, and maybe it was, oh King Fahyed something. And I had that reference, which meant that Neal was using that reference as he would, Johnstone & Cushing because they did advertisements on that. So, he was bringing that into the pencils.

Alex: Right. That's his reference, physical reference. Yeah.

Palmer: It’s the first time I saw it, so that’s the first, my exposure to it.

Alex: I see. And that may have affected you as well, influenced you as well.

Palmer: Yeah, sure.

Alex: Yeah, Neal Adams, I see.

Now, you mentioned Stan Drake, wasn't he the one in the car with Alex Raymond in that accident in the crash?

Palmer: That’s right… He told me that whole story over lunch that day. It raised the hair on the back of my neck. It must have been torture. He relived that day, over and over, and over, for years. Probably, lasted to his last days. And he told it in such a colorful, well not colorful but tragic way about that. I think he felt the guilt of losing Alex Raymond, being part of it, so to speak. But Alex Raymond was the one driving.

Alex: Right. So, there's like a PTSD, from this experience.

Palmer: Yeah. It was Stan Drake's car.

Alex: Stan Drake's car. And did he indicate that he thought Alex Raymond may have done that on purpose?

Palmer: No, I've heard stories, only through… And maybe that's why he told me straight out. He didn't give me variations. It was starting to rain, and they were going on this curve. He knew that Alex was going a little bit too fast but he didn't say anything. And when he made the turn, they just went off the road. But there happened to be a tree there. And when they hit the tree. I believe he lost one of his ears, at least, I mean the lobe was ripped off Stan Drake's head, when he went through the windshield or whatever.

[00:55:09]

Alex: Oh, wow.

Palmer: But Alex Raymond was impaled on the aluminum, around this coupé Corvette. You know the first Corvettes, there was a big, thick aluminum chrome around the window. He was impaled, so when they found him, he was dead.

Alex: In his mouth.

Palmer: Mouth and neck, or whatever. But he was dead.

Alex: Yeah, crazy. I never heard that part of it. That's amazing.

Palmer: That's it. That's a ghastly part, maybe you can cut that out. I don’t know. [chuckle]… Or maybe leave it in… I don't know.

Alex: I think leave it in. That's a good detail. Well, thank you for sharing that. That's very intense. So then, with issue #173 of Doctor Strange you asked to also color the book. Is that right? Who did you ask that to?

Palmer: I just went in to Roy Thomas or Sol Brodsky and said... I think it was Roy. Roy was - I connected with Roy, and he was a comic book guy, and he was Marvel. And I said, “Can I color?” And he said, “Sure.” And he says, “Let me take you into Marie Severin. Marie Severin will give you this chemical color chart and all the bottles of Dr. Martin’s dyes.”

And she was so good. She opened the chart, she said, “Now, this color is beige, but you add water to it and this is the flesh, and this and this.” Gray was red and blue, together, and I’d go home… And they were all numbered charts. So, I said, “How long does it take you to do this?” Or how long does it take? She said, “Well, look at these, whoever is doing it, we can do at least a book or two a day, because it was only $2 a page, so you could make $40 a day if you were good, and had two books.”

I went back to do it in the apartment, Queens at the time. Three days later, I was still working on it. I was doing little watercolor paintings. [chuckle]. And I still remember the one that Doctor Stranger is levitating the book of Shanti, or whatever it was called.

Alex: The Book of Vishanti, yeah, something like that.

Palmer: Yeah, I remember, I was doing a watercolor painting. And when I took it… Palmer, what are you doing?... I was not getting paid for it but it was so much fun doing it.

Alex: Yeah, gratifying.

Palmer: Yeah, yeah. And also having all those colors because you had muted colors in the bottom rows, where all the colors were getting together. And then you had the bright colors, going up in the top. Everything bright, is nothing bright, so if you use the muted colors, you could make things bright. But anyway, I'm getting ahead of us, but are we going to say that's probably Reilly and the painting part… [overlap talk]

Alex: Yeah, yeah, this is interesting because a lot of the inkers and comic people, it's almost like they start from a cartooning background. But you're different, you start from like an illustration background which is like a whole other thing, and that's great.

So then, now, you did Doctor Strange all the way through the final issue of #183. You inked Gene Colan; Roy Thomas was writing it. And then there was also, you did one Captain America Steranko issue in 1969, Captain America #113. I think that’s his final Captain America. Do you remember that?

Palmer: Oh yeah, very well.

Alex: Yeah. So, tell us about that, because that's like this one Steranko issue that you inked. First, how did you get that assignment? And what was your take on those pencils?

Palmer: Again, somebody recently asked me about that, a friend of his, as a matter of fact. I could tell he put a lot of time in on it.

Alex: He put a lot of time on it. Yeah.

Palmer: He put a lot of time in on it, and it was, everything was packed. It was so well laid out. I can see he must have done things over again; put them in, then changed them. He wanted to do the best job he could, and he did. I thought it was very well… The compositions were terrific, the drawings were too. And it took me a while to do. It wasn't something that you just bang out.

And I thought I was going to get another one, but he was working on the next issue but I guess he was wasn't getting it done in time, and they had to get those books out… and they got, I understand, Jack Kirby to come in, and do the next issue. I believe it is… I never really… Follow on those things.

Jim: Yeah, it was.

Alex: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, because yours was #113, that Jack Kirby fill in issue was #112. And then, the previous issue was Steranko but it was inked by Joe Sinnott, it looks like.

Palmer: Oh, okay. Yeah, Joe Sinnott did a wonderful job with Steranko. Yeah. [overlap talk]

[01:00:02]

Alex: So now Steranko, when I chatted with him, I think he was just… We were talking more about the Sinnott stuff. At the time, I was not aware that you had inked him on that one issue, but he had mentioned that Sinnott had elevated his work. Do you feel like you did something similar? Did you add stuff to that Steranko issue?

Palmer: It was so tight. I don't think… I think I was more careful, when I saw things that were tight. I don’t know if… It goes back too far… It was at the very beginning of the game, you know.

Alex: Yeah sure. Yeah, it's been a while [chuckle].

Palmer: They would throw stuff at me and see how it worked out. I did John Buscema. That, I fell right in to that. I was certainly got used, constantly.

Alex: Did you and Steranko, chat at all before inking that? Was he like, “Hey, I need it like this or what?” Or was it just, you got the pages and you just inked it, and that was it?

Palmer: It was a couple years ago, maybe five, six, seven... But there was a comic show over in New York City, Manhattan. Steranko was going to be there. I had never met him. And I asked somebody, “I want to go. I want to meet Jim.” And I did. We didn't sit near each, I found out where he was in the convention area, and I went up to him. And he looked, I think he knew what I looked like… I kind of knew what he looked like.

But we become best of friends since. We really have.

Alex: Oh, that’s great.

Palmer: Yeah, really have.

Alex: Yeah, he's a character I like him a lot.

Palmer: Yeah, he is.

Alex: And then a lot of people show those images of Captain America on the motorcycle flying into these HYDRA guys and Rick Jones's Bucky, you inked that, and that's pretty cool.

Now you're talking about inking Neal Adams on the Uncanny X-Men that began in the spring of, 1969, and those were issues #56 through #65. He was kind of new to Marvel at the time, but had you already seen some of his DC work before that?

Palmer: Yeah, well when I started to do work for Marvel, now I started to go with the stands, the comic book stands. And I was looking at what other people are doing, and I picked up Marvels, I picked up, whatever. But I remember picking up… I think it was Deadman or something, something from DC…. Deadman… I don't remember what else it was but I was aware of Neal but I didn't put two and two together. I didn't know he was the guy… Well, boy, it turns out to be. We were both working in Manhattan at the same time.

Alex: You’re saying that Neal's pencils were very tight, very illustrative. That you didn't have to add as much form to it like you had to on Colan. But you had also alluded to, adding a little bit of…

Palmer: Zipatone.

Alex: Adding some shading, or enhancing the form, is that right?

Palmer: What I do remember is adding some Zipatone.

Alex: Zipatone.

Palmer: Yeah, yeah, where I think it needed it. And you'll never see anything about… You know That’s the part how Zipatone came into my life, I think. I said, “I always wonder why Wally Wood’s pages, in the comic books, looked different; the coloring book different. And, what it was, was there’s this Zipatone underneath it. Marie Severin was coloring and all those issues, you know?

Alex: Yeah, yeah.

Palmer: She would end up at Marvel. But right over that, maybe a 10 or 20% Zipatone was different than the red without Zipatone. And you couldn't get that subtle difference with the limited color you had. So, you used percentages. You had to keep it simple, yellow, red and blue maybe worked, while you couldn't do with browns and everything. Well, I guess you could but it didn't work out the same.

And that's what fascinated me, so there was something… Somebody had their arms up, there's a cape, whatever. I can make it look like it had a background to it, you put some Zipatone on it. Or you want to push something in the back, so when it’s colored, it does go in the back. We’re thinking that comic books are planes. Just like in painting, there’s a foreground, middle ground, background. And you got to be careful what's in the background that it doesn't come to the foreground.

Even when I’m inking, I’m very aware of those three planes. Maybe that's what I'll do, but I don't, instinctively, do it to everybody or, it's just that it's in my head.

Alex: It's in… Yeah, it's in your action.

Palmer: And if I did it, I’m not doing it consciously.

Jim: Alex, I have a question for Tom. Tom, you had said in an interview, I think for Comic Book Artists, that Neal Adams approached his pencils differently than other people in that, in terms of inking, in that he did his pencils, as pencils.

[01:05:11]

And he expected the inker, that they were two very separate jobs, and very different skills and different things. And that what he would do is set up his pencils exactly how he wanted him, but then he wanted the inker to come in and be the inker, like not just a tracer or anything like that, but to actually do what he thought an inker would do. And that it was different from other artists. And that you really appreciated the collaboration because of that. Do you know what I'm talking about?

Palmer: Yes. I never heard it explained before, like that. I never heard it said like that.

[chuckles]

Jim: Did I did I mangle it or was it accurate?

Alex: You really botched that one, Jim. No…

Palmer: Fortunately, that didn’t came out of my mouth…[chuckle] I wouldn't even think of that… It's funny how partnerships, like Neal and I, or Gene Colan and I, take on a different, I won’t say importance but…

Alex: Meaning.

Palmer: Meaning. Meaning, today. And that's a time, the comic books… I’m just saying that you know every 30 days is that there’s going to be another going out. You can't finish it… Woops, they pulled it out of your hands. That book had to leave for the printer, otherwise they would lose… There was a period of time at Marvel, maybe not just Marvel, but they were only getting monthly books out. Artists from England and all that. I don’t mean, it would be to blame the artist or anything, but that was the way Marvel.... You got to get 12 issues out a year, one a month. And if you stumbled…

I don't know what was going on with Neal, maybe it was something else at DC, but there was an issue with the Avengers we were working on with the Kree-Skrull, was it?

Alex: Yeah.

Palmer: Yeah. And it was that John Buscema had a middle slot. It was three chapters. I think they made it to three chapters. I think Roy, got John in, and said, “Do whatever you can do [chuckle] to make it look like it was you and Neal. Because Neal was doing the other part of it.

Alex: Right.

Palmer: He couldn't do the whole book. That's what the whole thing was. Besides, he was doing stuff at DC. And I think the quick reader would never even notice it. Except that John Buscema laid out a page differently than Neal. I mean, someone else would say right away, that's not Neal Adams, or that's not John Buscema. So, it was a business.

Alex: You did your best to try to bridge the look, the continuity of the look.

Palmer: Yeah, and I think that was my studio experience, there was working in a studio, you had to get it done. You had deadlines. And I remember you had to be clean with the work, you couldn't deliver work that was dirty, and all that. I guess I brought that with me. But deadlines were very important to me. I can’t say I’ve made every one of them, but if was going to have a problem, I let them know.

Alex: Right. You're also mentioning that foreground and background, but I was going over those issues last night; you don't scratch off some detail. Like you'd see Colletta would scratch out some detail, or just kind of ink it real quick. But you did not. You spared… You did not gloss over any detail. The backgrounds had just as much detail as the foregrounds did. The little beads of sweat on Alex Summers for example, clothes, suits wrinkling. Every little wrinkle, you inked all that stuff. The energy lines from Havoc, exploding with… You inked; you kept all that stuff. Did you also add some texture to that stuff as well? Because it's impressive, the detail in those pages.

Palmer: Well, if you showed me the page, maybe I would remember. I have a file; I use it today. A big folder of just wrinkles.

Alex: Wrinkles. Yeah.

Palmer: Wrinkles on blouse, pants, whatever. And especially with John Buscema, who was doing backgrounds, different category. John was doing loose breakdowns. Say, he would go, “scribbles.”

Alex: Scribbles.

Palmer: I’d be up, I have to do wrinkles. And you know I use the same wrinkles all the time. So, I pull out of my folder, some different unusual wrinkles, you have to go around the arm and all that. But just the way, they're almost like little pieces of metal or paper, then put it together. I did variety.

Maybe that's the illustrator in me, is that you look at little details like wrinkles.

Alex: Yeah, follicles and wrinkles. Yeah.

Palmer: [chuckle] Not the follicles, but the way it lays. and the lighting on it. The lighting is very important.

Alex: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I noticed that. I was like, this is crazy stuff, in a good way. And if you compare it to the Werner Roth, Sam Grainger backup stories, it's like, you kind of stop reading when your section’s done.

[01:10:04]

I also noticed some little questions on the X-Men, and it might jog your memory. I know it's been a long time, but I'm going to throw it out there as a question, but X-Men #62, there were like some memory segments where people weren't inked with black. It was almost like inked with blue or red, to show that it was a memory segment. Did you not ink that or did you ink it? And then colorist later changed it?

Palmer: That’s it. Oh yeah, the printer would, it would be on an overlay. You didn't ink it blue or red. That was a decision made in the production stage, and it was very crude back then. Later on, just going forward a little bit, but when Marvel got into color, they had no idea… There’re using a painting, that’s why, for a while there. And then they finally caught up because they was so used to the way comic books were colored and printed, really.

But when they became rotogravure… Rotogravure was when, it’s the overhead… Before, there was letterpress, which meant the metal plate came down and printed black, and then the color came from something else, it was printed over. But once they brought up rotogravures, like a newspaper or a magazine rather, it can be anything after that.

You opened up the world. You don’t have to use this thing. Today, you do comic books in whatever medium you want… He was washing, and watercoloring, and everything else. So, but at that time, it was almost like prehistoric…

Alex: You’re right. Yeah, and I know that Steranko and Barry Windsor-Smith have also commented on the prehistoric production part of things.

Palmer: Yeah, especially if you had any foot in the regular business and being in an advertising studio, you at that level of right thinkers, because this stuff is going into magazines, it was going here or there. So, it had to have an overlay or it had some way of separating color. So, by the time you got to the comics, it was almost like unheard of, to them. Because they never did it.

But it was coming in. I think guys that were coming in, were wanting to doing it. Like Jim Steranko, or Neal.

Alex: Sure.

Palmer: They’re the two that were… You know better than I, I guess. Was Jim Steranko there before Neal or... ?

Alex: Yeah.

Jim: Yeah.

Palmer: All right. Okay. I didn’t know that.

Alex: Yep.

Jim: Because he did the X-Men issues before Neal did.

Alex: Yep, that's right.

Palmer: Oh really?

Alex: Yeah, there's a couple issues. Yep.

Jim: Steranko, Barry Smith, and then Neal.

Palmer: Holy smoke.

Alex: Yep. Now, there's this one page of Ka-zar and the beast, fighting some Savage Land goons. And there's so much detail, there's so many figures on this one page and then there's like no background at all. And you see every little muscle every little body hair in this. That it is actually… Do you remember that page? It was almost like that Frank Frazetta Famous Funnies cover that there's like all this action in that fight. Do you remember that?

Palmer: Not every detail but yeah, a lot of those pages were, time consuming.

Alex: Yeah, time consuming. That's what I was going to say. So, how long would a page like that take? Or How much time?

Palmer: Oh, people would ask me, how long does it take you to do a painting? I don't know. I never kept track of it. You don't put the clock on. You learned that early on; you never look at the clock. Because it isn't… It's so much more than just a chore, a labor. It is what you love to do, first of all. And you don't slough it off, and then more, you don't – “Oh! I spent 20 minutes longer than I should have, or 10 minutes longer.” You do what you have to do.

I used to have some late nights trying to… [chuckle] Of course, from an advertising… I kept on doing advertising, by the way. I didn't give it up for comics. I mean I didn’t give it up when I went to comics. I did comic books, and advertising. I kept it up, paintings and everything. So, I had some late nights, and sometimes a real crunch doing the comic books.

Mostly, with Gene, it must have the period with Dracula, Tomb of Dracula. I remember there was one issue that Gene did very loosely, and I could follow it up by doing a very… I’d inked the whole book over a weekend. Lot of late nights. [chuckle] But it got done. But it was so… I don’t even remember what number was.

So, there were times that you had to do what you had to do. But Neal’s stuff, to me… I don't want to say anything bad about Vinny Colletta, but he used to erase things. Walt Simonson got a Thor cover, that Vinny inked over Jack Kirby.

[01:15:03]

And I was over the house one time, and I'm looking closely at it. I said, “Walt, come over here. Take a look. You could see Vinny had erased to bunch of figures here.” [chuckle] Imagine doing that. And Jack Kirby didn’t realize it, I guess, the guys at Marvel didn’t. But Neal made some comment… I think Vinny Colletta inked one of his DC Comics stories. [overlap talk]

Alex: Yeah, I think it was like a Flash issue.

Palmer: Okay, because… Yeah, there was something about the arm. He said, the way he inked it, the arm looked like a stunted, short arm.

[chuckle]

And the reason was that, you don’t draw the lines going to the short end, you draw them to the outside. It’s a long hand. So, even though it’s the shortened version of the form, and it were some other things. So, Neal was very aware of that. And this was after weeks that we worked together.

But I never rushed. I never scribbled. I really spent time in doing it.

Alex: Yeah. Now, X-Men #64, that one is the Don Heck issue. And this is interesting in that, if you look at Don Heck stuff before, and even after that, that issue seemed different, because a lot of people say, it almost feels like there is more muscle and texture in the anatomy and the classic Don Heck stuff. Was that you who added that, to make it almost more continuous with what you and Neal were doing?

Palmer: Oh yeah. I had to redraw, pretty much, most of it. Not every line, but I like you’re saying, the anatomy and the folds, and the X-Men look, so to speak. But I had to redraw that, pencil it quick. I didn't make it a tight rendering to help me. But it was basically… I forget what the book was… It was from some book. It was on a shelf - they would do that. They would pull a book out, and convert it into something that was late, or needed it.

Alex: Yeah, I see. So, you actually kind of redrew a lot of that issue, which makes sense because people are like, “Oh, Don Heck was trying to mimic Neal Adams.” No, it was actually your inking that provided the continuous look there.

And that kind of, you look at Sunfire, who's the Japanese character in that - there's a lot of wrinkles like in his uncle's face, in that issue, that Don Heck just… I've never seen him do that. And then Gene Grey's face looked more sexy, for example. Iceman's face, it wasn't a block, it had all these textures, like a human face almost. And I feel like that was the Tom Palmer effect.

Palmer: I don't have it in front of me now, but it looked much different. It looked like Don Heck. I think it's still does, to the purest, they can see Don Heck’s layouts and…

Alex: Sure. The layouts. Yeah.

Palmer: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Alex: And because before, it seemed like the inking before you. And that's what kind of Jim was also talking about, but there's almost like this Dan Barry, like slick New York line. And then, and then you come along, and make it more of like an illustration effect. But I think it almost like modernized comic art in some way.

Now, we already talked a little bit about the Avengers, how the John Buscema issues and how you also tried to make it a continuous look with the Neal Adams stuff. Do you remember that? Those early Avengers issues being mostly breakdowns also then or were they tighter pencils?

Palmer: Well, when I first worked with John, I was on the Avengers a little bit; did a couple of issues, and then there was a big gap. I think was… What year… Well, what issue? I think it was issue #50? Something around #50 when I came back on, and that's when I stayed with it, until over a hundred.

Jim: You did issues #74 through #84, in 1970... Those were the real classic...

Palmer: Okay.

Alex: And then you also did do that Avengers, what? #93, that was the Ant Man going into the Vision’s body. Right?

Palmer: Yeah.

Jim: With Adams.

Alex: With Adams.

Palmer: Yeah, that was the…Yeah.

Alex: Yeah, that's pretty amazing because it looks like a cinematic odyssey. And you see every detail on Ant Man's helmet, and Vision’s face and you… It's pretty amazing. How do you feel about that work? Do you feel proud of that work when you look at it? What's your take on that?

Palmer: Yeah, I even colored that issue, by the way.

Alex: Yeah.

Palmer: Yeah, it was, Neal and I would swap the coloring…

[01:20:00]

Yeah, because I felt doing it… And Neal did a fantastic job. I mean, he just… It was like meant for him. And I couldn't do less than what I could do best on it. That would be, you know… Not being a good friend, first of all, and to slough it off, maybe. So, what you see there is what…maybe I used some zip I don't remember. I don't know that end of it.

I wonder… you know the one illustration where there is a tube going up and down?

Alex: Yeah.

Palmer: (George) Lucas used it as reference when he was doing Star Wars.

Alex: Yeah, yeah, so that was what made it to Star Wars, actually.

Palmer: [overlap talk] They were doing the… Where you had the making of - there was that comic book page, from the Avengers. They had that…

Alex: Yeah, that’s pretty cool.

Palmer: Yeah, and if you know the tractor beam, wouldn’t know it wasn't… It was when they were having the Luke and Leia… They kind of flew from that…

Alex: I'd have to look at it to isolate the scene.

Now, but you also inked Daredevil as a character in Avengers #82 over Buscema. And I think that was your first Daredevil inking before inking Colan on Daredevil. Is that right? Do you think that's right?

Palmer: [chuckle] It could be. Yeah.

Alex: A long time ago. Yeah.

Palmer: Well, not only that. I didn’t keep track of that.

Alex: There's a John Buscema Avengers #83, it was the Rutland Parade, and you also inked that issue as well. Was there any discussion of Rutland when you were working at Marvel? Did they talk about it at all?

Palmer: You know you’re really bringing back memories… I have Roy Thomas, I don’t think he gave me something to work from, but he gave me some background. It seemed to be very important to comic book, people.

Alex: Yeah.

Palmer: What was that all about? Was it a meeting?

Alex: Well, it was a… Yeah, it was in Vermont and it was a Halloween Parade. It was like really some of the early like people dressing up in superhero costumes. Fans, and having fun at this big house, Tom Fagan's house, and then there are these parades and stuff. But you never went to that, it sounds like.

Palmer: No.

Alex: Yeah. And you lived in New York, at this time.

Palmer: What year was it?

Alex: Now, this would be 1970, ‘71.

Palmer: Yes, yes. I was in New York.

Alex: Yeah. Were you hanging around at the Marvel offices that much?

Palmer: No, no.

Alex: Not so much? You’re working from home, pretty much.

Palmer: During that, I was doing advertising.

Comic Book Historians

Tom Palmer, Inker & Illustrator Interview Part 1 by Alex Grand & Jim Thompson

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