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The Creative Adventure 1: November 1971
Publisher/editor: David Kasakove

Hello everyone…this is posting on January 1st, so it’s the first column of the new year! I hope everyone had a good holiday season. It’s somewhat poetic (for me personally) that this zine is the first of the new year. The connection is Dennis Fujitake, who did the illustration above for the front cover. Poetic that it is Dennis and done in the year 1971, which is the year I got my first Buyer’s Guide, and which had a cover from Dennis on it (AND that I own the original, one of very few originals I have).

This, the first issue of The Creative Adventure (I believe that there were only two issues, and issue two is covered here) is somewhat thin, to be honest. But, it has some good stuff in it, regardless, starting with that typically fluid cover by Dennis! He does the back cover as well, which you will see later.

Dennis got back to me via email regarding his work in this zine (as well as another piece) by saying

Sadly, I do remember seeing the cover art before but have no memory of actually doing it. Now that I see it again I am reminded of the poor judgement of my younger days. I do see the influence of Frazetta and Jeff Jones but without any of their illustrative skills. It’s apparent that I was inking almost exclusively with a brush at this period of time. 

The second illustration of the armed girl I absolutely do not remember doing. I see the influence that Jones, Bode and Wrightson had on me at the time. More brush inking. 

Oh, the word balloon and caption was NOT my doing. I know my hand lettering was bad but not this bad. The publisher probably thought it would make it more interesting which is a sad commentary on my artwork. 

The final drawing of the guy with the spear I again have no memory of. I kinda remember doing a lot of spot drawings like this. I did sign all of the artwork and even dated them so I am guilty of doing them. 

I think I was flattered to be asked by so many fanzines to submit artwork. I don’t remember any of the publishers returning the originals. There was no monetary payments, just a promise to send me a copy of the zine if they remembered to do so. 

Hey, the one thing I do remember was that TBG #8 cover art that you now own. I really enjoyed doing that one. I stand corrected because I do remember Alan Light returning some of my art. There was one piece of art he actually folded twice to fit it into an envelope. I think because of this I stopped doing stuff for him. 

David Kasakove was nice enough to answer some questions via email. I started out by asking him when and how he got into comics in the first place. He said “I saw comics here and there through my childhood — I remember somehow holding a copy of Daredevil #1 when it came out! (No, I didn’t keep it) But comics didn’t hit me over the head until sometime in the fall of 1966 when I was in 6th grade. I was at a friend’s and he had a stack of Marvel comics. I looked at them and was hooked! I recall starting my habit with Daredevil # 23 (Dec. ’66). Sadly, I missed so many prime Marvel years right before that, but at that time Marvel was reprinting the earlier classic material in Marvel Tales and other similar titles, so I quickly got caught up in the Marvel universe of the time. In addition to Daredevil, I really enjoyed Spider-Man. But pretty soon I was collecting pretty much every Marvel title.”

After an editorial, we jump right into a Klaus Janson portfolio. You can see a few images below, but get the pdf, because there are more! I so loved Janson’s inking on people like Kane (who needed some thick blacks to complement all that single density line work) and Miller, it was a thrill to see these early pieces.

I was also curious when and how David became exposed (and entered) fandom. Like most of us that were around back then, memory can be a fragile thing! He said “Gee. This is a long time ago — I don’t remember how I got into fanzines, but at the time comics had a lot of small ads, and I assume I must have seen ads for a few fanzines and got into that world. I most remember Fantastic Fanzine, published by Gary Groth, which really floored me. I recall also being an avid reader of Don and Maggie Thompson’s fanzine about the comics industry, which was a very low tech affair, was it called Newfangles? That really opened up my eyes to comics culture, as did the book All in Color for a Dime, and of course, Julies Feiffer’s The Great Comic Book Heroes, originally published in 1965.”

Neal Pozner (who of course, went on to a successful career in comics) contributes a strip, but also a column entitled RIP Fandom, lamenting the proliferation of prozines, and the perceived impersonal attitudes that came with them. Can’t say I agree, but that is beside the point of course. He mentions his own zine, Wonderful World of Comix…coincidentally around the same time I found this zine, I found issue 4/5 of WWoC, which I may profile next month.

David had such a great group of contributors, I wanted to know how he came to find them.

In those days without internet or social media, we would subscribe to fanzines, see who was editing it, and actually write letters to each other! And then call each other! I stumbled upon The Wonderful World of Comix, published by Neal Pozner, who lived on Long Island, as did I. I expressed an interest in starting a fanzine to him, and he was very helpful and kind to me in sharing the addresses of his contributors. To this day, I am sad that he is no longer with us. We would spend hours and hours talking comics. Klaus Janson was one of the fan artists that he featured, and one weekend, the 3 of us got together at Neal’s house. I’ve been friends with Klaus ever since. But a lot of the artists, I only knew through the mail. It was an amazing time. Fans were all so enthusiastic and altruistic. Everyone was happy to contribute to each other’s fanzines — just to get published! I just wrote to Dennis Fujitake and Gary Kato, who both lived in Hawaii, asking if they would contribute — and the next thing I know they would just send me back this amazing art! Absolutely incredible. Over time, I would meet a few of the contributors at conventions.

David also said that, “I worked with Neal Pozner on his fanzine, which morphed from Wonderful World of Comix to Shazam. I recall working with him and co-interviewing Carmine Infantino and also Billy Graham, which was fun. Neal had amazing entree into the professional comics scene, which I did not have.”

The Key is Understanding (the Pozner and editor Kasakove strip) is next, a whimsical and cartoony plea for understanding and generosity, following the gorgeous Fujitake pin up seen above. Then, a strangely numbered short story by Warren writer, T. Casey Brennan comes, with illustrations by Janson. The Brennan interview then appears, wherein Brennan recounts his entry into fandom/comics and presents his opinions on the comic industry. Probably unsurprising that he thinks if Warren publications were more widely seen, the business would be a better place. Can’t say I would have disagreed!

Above you see the work of Fujitake’s fellow Hawaiian, Gary Kato. There are several small illustrations (and one large one) that have no signature or credits, which is somewhat frustrating for me. Same goes for some text content. But hey, first issue and all, let’s lower my expectations a bit. Writer Gerard Geary has a speech/discussion on the violence in comics next, taken from the 1971 NY Con. A few illustrations follow, and that is it! Below, you can see both. First, a typically quiet (for a dragon slaying, anyway) and nicely drawn piece by John Cornell, and the back cover by Fujitake.

Of course, I was interested in what David did immediately following his time in fandom, and indeed, up to now. Below, he goes into some detail.

During the time I was editing TCA, I somehow got my local high school in Port Washington to let me teach an elective course on comic books. This would have been around 1972. I then went to college at the State University of New York at Binghamton and just dropped TCA.  In those days, there were no programs studying comics, so I figured the closest thing was film. So I majored in cinema, where I met another life-long friend, Danny Fingeroth. During my college years I taught another full semester class on comics under the auspices of the cinema department — this would have been around 1976 or ’77. I also co-wrote “An Examination of Master Race” with John Benson and Art Spiegelman, which was printed in Squa Tront 6 (1975), and has been reprinted quite a bit since then. Over the years, when I would meet comics artists at various events and conventions, and they would find out that I co-wrote that article, they would turn to me and say, “That article changed my life.”  The article seems to have opened the door to analyzing comics as an art form. While now that may be something obvious, during those early days, this was a crusade for many of us. 

When I got out of college, I worked at Marvel comics as a production assistant in the British Department,  so I guess my fanzine background didn’t hurt. But more helpful was that I knew Danny Fingeroth who graduated college a year before me, and landed in the British department, so thanks to him, I was hired at Marvel and worked in the Bullpen from around ’77-’78. After realizing I did not have the talent to be a comic book writer (I sold a few mystery story plots in high school to DC and Warren and wrote an article on underground horror comix for Marvel’s Epic Magazine # 9, but didn’t get much further than that), I happily explored other pursuits. Ultimately, I became a litigation attorney in New York City, where I put my writing talents to good use writing legal briefs. Of course, one down side of writing in the legal field, compared to comics, is that you can’t use exclamation points!!! I have had the good fortune to represent a few comic book creators along the way.

Nowadays, David says that “I’m still an avid comics fans, mainly focusing on original art, and purchasing all these remarkable reprint books. (I sold my collection in the 1980’s, and have spent the rest of my adult life buying reprints of those titles, as well as many others.) “

As I said, a thin zine, but with such great visuals! Thanks for stopping by Ink Stains. I hope you will take the time to comment below, as it always feels good to know people are actually reading these things! Thanks this time goes out to Dennis Fujitake and David Kasakove, for humoring my questions! It always makes the column more interesting when it isn’t just me yammering on!

Ken Meyer Jr.
kenmeyerjr@yahoo.com