Star Studded 18: Summer 1972
Editor: Larry Herndon, Publisher: Joe Bob Williams
There are a few fanzines that stood the test of time and entered the pantheon of Big Time Zines. Fanzines like Alter Ego, The Comic Reader, and maybe to a lesser degree, zines like The Collector, Fantastic Fanzine, etc. Star Studded (previously Star Studded Comics) is definitely a high ranking member of this group. Legendary in the world of fanzines, true fanzines, SS started or furthered the careers of so many talented creatives.
Wikipedia’s entry on the zine says
…Star-Studded Comics was a fanzine that ran for 18 issues, from September 1963 to the summer of 1972. Published in the U.S. by the “Texas Trio” (Larry Herndon, Buddy Saunders, and Howard Keltner), it featured early amateur superhero comics drawn or written by George R. R. Martin, Grass Green, Jim Starlin, Roy Thomas, Sam Grainger, Alan Weiss, Dave Cockrum, Mike Vosburg, Biljo White, and Howard Keltner, among others, and featured the early appearances of Dr. Weird, Xal-kor the Human Cat, Wildman, and The Eye.
George R. R. Martin’s prose story Powerman vs. the Blue Barrier won comic fandom’s Alley Award in the amateur category. Earlier, in 1963, Buddy Saunders’ cover artwork for the second issue also won an Alley Award in the amateur category. In 1967, the fanzine won three Alley Awards: Best All-Strip Fanzine, Best Fiction/Strip Fanzine, and Best Article on Comic Strip Material.
Buddy Saunders, mentioned above, is one of the earliest participants in comic fandom I am aware of. He was nice enough to answer some questions via email. When I asked him how he started being interested in comics, he said…
I began reading comics early in 1961. Early on, my favorite titles were primarily DC titles– Strange Adventures, Mystery in Space with Adam Strange (still my all-time favorite character), Flash and Green Lantern, and then later, other Silver Age revivals of Golden Age characters, among them Hawkman and The Atom, two more of my favorites. Meanwhile over at Marvel, I dearly loved the big monster books in Strange Tales, Journey into Mystery, Tales of Suspense and Tales to Astonish, issues mostly with Simon and Kirby covers, two-part monster stories, plus a five or six-page twist ending backup story written by Stan Lee and drawn by Steve Ditko. Oh my, those were the days! I knew the day new comics were released each week in my local Big World Drug. Every day after school, while the Texas summer heat simmered, I would walk the six blocks down to the big world of comics, a world I had just recently discovered. There I would buy every superhero comic, every science fiction, every western, every war, all the Dell duck comics, and all the Dell movie and adventure comics, along with any stray superhero title or the like that might pop up. Like most teenage boys, I never bought romance comics, nor to this day have I ever read an Archie Comic. Arriving home with my bag of comics, I would spread them out across my bed and begin reading them, starting with my least favorite title of the week, and working up to my favorites. I especially enjoyed seeing the teasers for forthcoming books that DC often put at the end of each story for new characters forthcoming in Showcase and Brave and the Bold (and found myself wishing Marvel had done the same).
How did I pay for my comics, a teenager in junior high school? I had a paper route, a small one, a walking route, one that earned me $12.50 a month, but I also received from my mother $0.35 a day for lunch money during the school year. I never spent that money on food, but instead spent it on comics. During those junior high school years I was a pretty skinny kid, and it was then that I also began selling comic books to the mail.
This issue alone, the last issue, features not only Dennis Fujitake, not only Jim Starlin, but Dave Cockrum as well! In one issue! The only legacy character featured, as far as I know, was Dr. Weird. Cockrum and Starlin both went pro around the time of the publication of this issue. Let’s jump into the content, shall we?
As you can see from the cover above, Steve Fritz is a featured player in this issue. I really love that cover. It is dynamic in it’s value differences, it’s circular composition, and the (then contemporary) visually arresting use of zip-a-tone. Steve leads the zine interiors with his story, Jabberwocky (partly based on and quoting the classic Lewis Carroll work). Inside, he is quoted regarding the various looks contained within the one story, saying
This was the first time I’d had a chance to experiment with and explore the different techniques of doing a comic strip. I did everything from using detailed panel sketches to blue (non-reproducing) pencil, and ink to rough pencils, adding the detail as I inked, to just drawing directly.
And he does just that! Starting with the first page, using deep blacks as a framing device, looking much like some of the best of early Berni Wrightson, adding halftone subdued backgrounds, and displaying a ton of variety for the rest of the strip. Below is page one.
Steve really did go to town on the pages in this story. As you will see from the samples below, there are interesting layouts, a variety of media used, some contemplative pages as well as some very action oriented pages. I always found Fritz’s figure work to be dynamic as well, contorting with action.
I have to admit, I had to read the strip a few times to really keep track of the action, but the visuals were fun, full of variety as stated, and I assume, a challenging undertaking for the artist. Kudos to Steve!
Returning to Buddy Saunders, I asked him when he entered fandom and how, and his response was, “When I first discovered comic books while in junior high school, organized comic fandom did not exist where I lived here, in Arlington, Texas. It wasn’t until I read letters from other fans in DC Comics that I discovered I was not alone in my love of comics. I was among the first eight subscribers to G.B. Love’s The Rockets Blast-Collector [See, I told you he was one of the earliest! -Ken], the longest running by far of all the early true fanzines. I also learned of Jerry Bails’ Alter Ego. That’s how the community of comic fans grew, first through fanzines and correspondence by mail, and then later with the advent of the comic book convention.”
The second story in the zine is by none other than Jim Starlin, portraying the long running fan character, Dr. Weird. The character was created in early issues of Star Studded Comics, as far back as 1963, by Howard Keltner (with contributions by Game of Thrones creator, George R. R. Martin). A short history states that “originally published by the Texas Trio (Larry Herndon, Buddy Saunders and Howard Keltner) from 1963 to 1972, the fanzine Star-Studded Comics spanned 18 issues and featured such characters as Dr. Weird, The Eye, Xal-Kor the Human Cat, Powerman, the Blade, and White Dragon. 1970 saw Dr. Weird gain his own title with stories by George R.R. Martin and Jim Starlin early in their careers. In 1987, Howard Keltner approached publisher Gary Carlson with the idea of reprinting the Martin/Starlin stories. In 1993, Gary Carlson and Edward DeGeorge acquired all rights to Dr. Weird from Howard Keltner and folded him into the Big Bang universe, the only character with a genuine pedigree.”
Heck, I even did a few covers of the character for a company called October comics! Maybe I will show them after the pages from this issue’s story below.
Above is one of two covers I did of that character, at that time, being totally ignorant of the history!
The famous Texas Trio was a big part of fandom early on, and Buddy talks about how it got started.
We all lived in North Texas, Howard Keltner in Gainesville just south of the Red River, Larry Herndon in Carrollton, a suburb of Dallas, and I in Arlington, just between Dallas and Fort Worth, where I still live and where Lone Star Comics has long been located. After a period of correspondence, we began to meet, most often at Larry’s parents’ home, where we evolved the idea of producing our own fanzine, not an ordinary fanzine focusing on the pro comics, but our own amateur comic book, Star-Studded Comics. Along with any number of writers and artists who went on to careers as professionals, including the biggest of all George R.R. Martin, the lesser lights played our roles as well, Larry writing his own characters and Howard and I each contributing our own writing and artwork, again featuring our own characters. In issue number four, we even ran a full-length story in which many of her characters teamed up in Justice League of America-style.
I also asked Buddy if there were any outstanding contributors. He said, “As previously mentioned, our biggest name creator, although we did not know it at the time, was George R.R. Martin, who also once or twice participated in our local science fiction writer’s workshops, Turkey City Rodeo. Bill Dubay is the only other comic creator I can think of off the top of my head, but there were several others that contributed story/art to SSC. But it is not those who went on to be problems that I most remember, but rather fandom greats such as Biljo White, creator of The Eye, and Richard “Grass” Green, creator or Xal-Kor, the Human Cat.”
Following Dr. Weird is an early story by Dennis Fujitake. This was done while Dennis was still in the throes of his Steve Ditko admiration, before he assimilated the smoother, more sf/fantasy oriented style of Jeff Jones. He still has his serifed “DF” signature as well. There is no title to the story, but it concerns a man on the run in the future, and a twist ending reminiscent of the EC comics of the past (and maybe a nod to the then current Warren titles like Creepy and Eerie), complete with a narrator! Check a few pages out below.
In typical Dennis humor, this was his response when I sent him the images for his comments:
OMG, the author and so-called artist, DF, should go back to school to learn how to write, draw and letter. One would guess that he is still in junior high school hoping to emulate the great Steve Ditko and failing miserably at it.
“Double Jeopardy” is an apt title as it describes DF’s dilemma of not being able to plot nor illustrate properly.
He will need to study and practice anatomy, composition, storytelling and the proper use of drawing tools, otherwise, he will end up in the future trying to explain this disaster in a publication dedicated to fanzines. Republish it and he will absolutely be embarrassed by it as he should be.
Naturally, Buddy was familiar with many of the zines of the time. I asked about his favorites, and he answered,
I have a four-drawer filing cabinet fully loaded with early era fanzines, including Rocket’s Blast from issue 11 all the way to 100 (several years back I sold the first 10 issues for an unseemly amount of money!). Looking back, I have to say G.B.s Rockets Blast has to rank among my absolute favorites, along with our own Star-Studded Comics, and a sentimental favorite, The Comic Fan, a little two-issue fanzine, the first printed on a spirit duplicator while I was still in junior high school. If you look at early issues of Rocket’s Blast, you’ll see that I did quite a few covers for that title and likewise for G.B.’s Fighting Heroes, another superhero publication that three times featured The Demon, a superhero I created long before Jack Kirby developed his own Demon. Another of my favorite was Biljo’s Batmania that flourished during the 1960s Batman TV show craze. There were so many great fanzines back then. I especially enjoyed reading about all the golden age superheroes, many of whom were being reincarnated in the silver age, thanks to DC Comics. And from the collector and the dealer perspective, the Comics Buyer’s Guide proved invaluable to anyone and everyone interested in comics in a time when there was no Internet and no easy ask access to back issue comics.
Lastly, Dave Cockrum gives us Un-Man, another mysterious masked superhero, with this being the origin story. Were there any other stories beyond this? As the ending surmises, only time will tell. And, well, some research on my part! For now, at least, you can see some vintage (circa 1970) Dave Cockrum below!
A few closing thoughts from Buddy, one answering my question about his workload at the height of his fanzine days. He told me “There was never a thought given to workload. It was always a labor of love. About the time of eighth grade through my college years, I did most of my fanzine work, mostly illustrating along with a bit of writing. For Star-Studded, apart from my comic page art, I primarily served as the production manager, using the skills I learned while making up ad pages for a local newspaper. Larry and Howard did much of the correspondence with contributors. To this day I am accustomed to a heavy workload. My comic book mail-order business paid my way through college. Many a night I worked late, doing my fanzine work and also pulling and packing comic book orders. The upside was that I graduated from college with absolutely no debt.”
Surely, he would wind down or tire of fandom, right? “No way I wound down or ceased involvement in fandom. Every week Lone Star Comics sends an email to the thousands of customer subscribers. In that email I talk about all kinds of fan related subjects. I am also very much involved in the Oklahoma Alliance of Fans (OAF), an organization of comic fan has been around since the mid-1960s. Come to any of our annual comic OAF Cons and you’ll see for yourself just how much a member of comic fandom I still am!”
Fandom had a tendency to help establish life long friendships. Buddy was no exception, saying “A wonderful bunch of people make up the comic collecting community. My guess is that whatever the factors are that contribute to making a collector, those factors also render some of the nicest people in the world. Over my many decades as a comic book fan and dealer I have made countless friendships. Given my age, now just shy of 77, some of those good friends have passed on but many remain, including innumerable friend that are much younger than I, so I do not expect to run out of friends.
As to your original question, I’m not sure how to answer that. All the people we know in our lives serve us as role models, either good or bad. While I was younger, I learned a great deal from that earlier generation, that first-generation of comic fans and dealers, so I hope everything I learned is now being passed along to others in the next generation of comic fans.”
Though a spry 77, Buddy’s days are not spent drinking tea and watching Matlock! Below, he expounds on what fills those days.
What is my time filled with? Better to ask what is not. I am far from being retired, despite my major stroke of two years ago that initially left my entire right side paralyzed, and the old guy’s malady, prostate cancer and other troubles.
I am now back working 60 hours a week or more. My retired friends tell me that now that they are retired that they’ve never been busier. So, I have no plans to retire as I would most likely end up working even more hours per week!
Currently, I am thoroughly enjoying my work, Lone Star Comics/MyComicShop, where I am heavily involved in buying comics—what comic fan doesn’t enjoy buying comics! I am also working with our programmers, designing improvements to our website and general database. As part of that process, I am spearheading the development of our Vintage Paper Department where we feature a listing of every pulp ever produced, plus a growing array of magazine titles, everything from science fiction and fantasy to men’s interest titles, and on to western, romance, and even general interest titles such as lady’s Home Journal.
I also write fiction. After writing Tarzan and the Martian Legion, and Tarzan and the Cannibal King, I had to put aside my half-finished Tarzan and the Moons of Mars because the meteoric growth of our retail website demanded a growing share of my time.
However, now that we are better managing growth, I hope in the near future to return to writing, splitting my time equally between Lone Star and my writing.
Lastly, Buddy wanted to mention that “…we are just now making Tarzan and the Martian Legion available on numerous e-book platforms.”
And another Ink Stains comes to a close! Be sure, as always to download the pdf of the whole zine, so you can see all that you are missing here (from the Ink Stains section of my site at kenmeyerjr.com). Thanks very much to those that helped make this column much more interesting, Dennis Fujitake, and Buddy Sanders (also Alan Williams for providing the zine).
Only time will tell what shows up next installment!
Ken Meyer Jr.
kenmeyerjr@yahoo.com
