A Killing in Comics

by Max Allan Collins

  Maggie said, “What would you know about what men like? . . . Scratch that.”

  With a smile of unmatched superiority, Bryce and his tray took their leave.

  “She has her nerve,” I said.

  “Don’t be mean.” Maggie sipped her coffee, reacting as if a much-needed blood transfusion had been provided her. “You know you like Bryce.”

  “I do. And you should listen to him.”

  Maggie sighed and unknotted the scarf, revealing a perfectly fine short-shorn tangle of natural curls—albeit of a shade of red unknown in nature—and stuffed it in a desk drawer. “. . . Any further comments about Donny’s birthday party?”

  “Let’s just say I’ve heard of falling on your sword, but this is ridiculous.”

  She hiked an eyebrow—she had perfect dark naturally arching ones, requiring little if any plucking (she’s told me so). “Yes. I hardly think it was suicide. Heart attack, I suppose.”

  “Well, we’ll know, soon enough.”

  “We will?”

  I nodded. “I overheard Mrs. Harrison talking to Louis Cohn—after the medics came and carted Wonder Guy away? She said her husband was in perfect health and she was going to know how in heaven’s name this terrible thing could have happened to such a lovely man.”

  Maggie was nodding, and not at the notion Donny was a lovely man. “Which you take to mean she’ll have an autopsy performed.”

  “Either that or buy herself a Ouija board. I’m gonna go with autopsy.”

  She was thinking. Like Honey Daily, she had perfected the art of reflecting without furrowing. “Donny Harrison was a lot of things, but in perfect health wasn’t one of them.”

  “He was fatter than Andy Devine and smoked more than Groucho and drank more than Bogart. They should sell his liver to the Stage Door deli—it’s bound to be pickled enough.”

  Maggie smiled but said, “Don’t be disrespectful. Your father loved the man.”

  “You said that last night. His mistress—Honey Daily? She said he was simply charming at home.” I was just about to ponder aloud why a dish like that would hook up with a fat lout like Donny when I remembered Maggie had married the major.

  “You told me last night who was at the party,” Maggie said. “But were there any conspicuous absentees?”

  I thought about that, wondering what she was getting at. “Well, Harry Spiegel’s wife wasn’t there, I hear. Rose has never made a great secret of her contempt for the Americana brass, so maybe Harry leaving her home was the better part of valor.”

  “What about certain . . . silent partners?”

  Now I got it.

  I shook my head. “No sign of Frank Calabria or any of his delightful crowd.”

  “Well . . . you said there were press people present. That makes sense.”

  “Even if Frank does have his own suite at the Waldorf.”

  Maggie’s upper lip curled. “You mean, his mistress has a tower suite, too. Mr. Calabria and his wife and children live on Central Park West.”

  “Oh, yeah, I forgot. He just stops by the Waldorf every day for his shave.”

  Frank Calabria was thought by those in the know to be the number one mobster in New York. And he had been a silent partner throughout the ’20s and ’30s in various business enterprises involving Harrison, Cohn and the major. All started back in Prohibition days, when publisher Harrison decided to buy his paper in Canada, for some reason. Think about it.

  “You know,” I said, “before he did the world a favor, Donny threatened me about us taking on Harry and Moe’s new strip.”

  “Really.” She sat forward, elbows on the desk, hands clasped. “You mentioned Louis Cohn . . .”

  “Another of my father’s really swell associates.”

  “He called this morning.”

  “About Donny’s farewell party?”

  “No. Which is just like Louis. Not a word of that until I brought it up halfway through the conversation.” She sighed heavily and the breasts under the plaid made their whereabouts known. “He was calling about the same subject.”

  “What same subject?”

  “What Donny threatened you over—telling us not to ‘humor’ the ‘boys’ on their new strip.”

  Now it was my turn to sigh. “Yeah, I forgot to tell you last night—Louie told me to remind you which side of the bread the butter goes on.”

  She shook her head. “I used to hear that saying as a kid in Council Bluffs. I never understood it.”

  “Yeah, well, I think Louie’s meaning is pretty clear. Does he have any contractual right to screw with us?”

  She shook her head. “You know as well as I the major made a clean break with Americana, years ago. Of course, I have a few shares of stock. And we have a first look at comic-strip syndication rights on any new comic-book feature they come up with.”

  “Tell you the truth, none of their strips are doing that hot for us.”

  We ran three strips derived from Americana comic books: Wonder Guy, Batwing and Amazonia, the latter basically a female version of Wonder Guy melded with the venerable woman warrior legend of the amazons. Wonder Guy still held a good list, though we’d lost maybe 20 percent of our papers, postwar. Batwing never had a huge list, despite the size of Rod Krane’s ego, but was holding on and had its share of major cities. Amazonia looked to be gone in a year or two—a respectable list at the outset that was getting whittled away at every month.

  “The bloom’s definitely off the superhero rose,” I said.

  She was sipping her coffee. “Yes, but we have the two biggest stars in Wonder Guy and Batwing.”

  “I don’t know—on the newsstands, comic-book market in general? Marvel Man’s outselling Wonder Guy, these days.”

  She nodded. “Yes, and I wish we could take out a strip version of that—nice light touch that appeals to kids and parents—but Cohn would foam at the mouth, if we did.”

  I had a sip of Coke. “Anyway, rumor is Cohn’s planning to sue Spiggot Publications for plagiarism over Marvel Man. We don’t need to be in the middle of that.”

  “We certainly do not.” She sorted through some artwork on her desk. “But do we need this?”

  I rose to take the samples of the new Spiegel and Shulman strip, Funny Guy. I’d seen them before but Maggie seemed to want me to have a second look.

  Back in the leather chair, I flipped through the large comic-strip originals—like many cartoonists, Shulman worked “twice up,” double the size of the printed version. The originals were beauties in their quirky way—on Crafttint, a chemically treated board that allows the artist to use a brush to bring up tones of shading in black-and-white art.

  “Very professional,” I said. “Looks like Moe’s getting some help on the art.”

  “I think he has to.”

  I glanced up. “Oh?”

  Maggie shrugged. “You’ve noticed those glasses of his.”

  I nodded. “Every time I see him, they seem even thicker.”

  Then she waved it off. “But that doesn’t bother me. What cartoonist doesn’t use assistants and ghosts?”

  Six daily strips and a Sunday page, every damn week, is a heavy workload, a murderous grind, and Maggie was right about even the most dedicated workhorses among comic-strip artists needing a hand.

  And to produce Wonder Guy for both the comic strips and monthly books, Spiegel and Shulman had had to assemble a studio of helpers, originally back in Iowa, the last few years here in New York. One bone of contention between the team and Americana was the comic-book company hiring other artists and writers to supplement the work coming from the creators and their studio.

  “Sales tells me we can start with a strong list,” she said, “but I doubt it’ll hold up. The concept doesn’t . . . well, let’s just say I wouldn’t consider this for Starr if it wasn’t from a name brand like Spiegel and Shulman.”

  Funny Guy was an odd duck of a strip, no getting away from it—circus acrobat Sammy Laff would fight crime dressed up as the clownis
h, big-nose, big-shoes Funny Guy, spritzing tear gas from lapel flowers and surprising villains with exploding-cigar grenades, driving his Fun-Mobile and staging elaborate pranks.

  I handed the strips back. “Does kind of try too hard.”

  Bryce stuck his head in the office. “I have Mr. Spiegel and Mr. Shulman for you, Miss Starr.”

  Always “Miss Starr,” never “Mrs.”

  “Show them in,” she said.

  Harry Spiegel—spiffy in a tan sportscoat with padded shoulders and patch pockets over a green-and-white sportshirt with sporty brown trousers—came in first, of course, rushing over to shake hands with Maggie, who rose for the occasion, and then with me, grinning like Funny Guy himself. Moe Shulman, in that same slept-in-looking brown suit he’d worn yesterday, but with a blue sportshirt underneath, lumbered in after; he was smiling a little but seemed vaguely embarrassed about it. He just nodded at Maggie, politely, and shook my hand, with considerably less force than Wonder Guy might have.

  Harry took the center chair and sat forward, while Moe slouched into his.

  Bryce followed quickly behind them with a tray of iced teas, having already taken their order. Bryce set the tall, sweating, lemon-slice-sporting glasses on coasters on Maggie’s massive desk nearby; my glass of Coke was on a similar coaster. Moe thanked Maggie’s assistant, who nodded, but Harry hadn’t seemed to notice the inconspicuous figure in full beard, black attire and white shoes.

  “Beautiful day out there, Maggie,” Harry said, beaming at her. “You really need to get out in that sunshine.”

  “I don’t have the skin for it,” she said with a gentle smile.

  I said, “I see you’re over Donny’s death.”

  Harry turned to me and his face went blister white. “God, I don’t mean to be a ghoul about it . . . . I mean, like the philosopher said, every man’s death is every man’s loss . . . or something.”

  “Or something,” I said.

  Maggie said, “A lot of people loved Donny Harrison—he put Americana on the map with his, well, his glad-handing and kick-backs and what have you. But I fully understand that finding any grief for him is a tall order for you and Moe.”

  If he’d sat any further on the edge of the chair, Harry would have been on the floor; his voice had something pleading in it as he said to Maggie, “I really don’t mean to be a louse about this . . . but somehow, it’s like . . . like a sign.”

  Maggie’s eyebrows hiked. “A sign?”

  “Of our new beginning. I mean . . . the sun is shining Everything is going great.”

  “Including having Donny fall on his birthday-cake knife,” I said.

  Harry managed to glare at me and yet at the same time seem like he might bust out crying, which I had a feeling he hadn’t done yet, where the tragic loss of his publisher was concerned.

  “Jack,” he said, and it was almost a whine, “you make me sound terrible. I don’t mean to gloat, really I don’t . . . but Donny stabbed Moe and me in the back, over and over. He and Louie Cohn stole and cheated and lied . . . Jack, Maggie—you know the story.”

  We did—Harrison had paid $130 for the boys to turn their rejected Wonder Guy comic-strip samples into a cut-and-paste comic-book story. Buying all rights, as was typical at the time, and even now. He and Cohn had hired the boys to write and draw their own creation, paying them ten bucks a page.

  Maggie was nodding. “But you have an industry-standard deal on the comic-strip version—fifty percent for you with the Starr Syndicate paying off Americana from our half. That’s one of the best contracts in the business.”

  Harry’s grin split his face. “That’s because you and Jack here are salt of the earth. You’re a kid from Iowa like Moe and me, Maggie, and you don’t try to swindle and screw the talent. You’re not out to steal our dreams! That’s why we’re back to do business with you again.”

  “But remember,” she said gently, “Americana blessed the Starr Syndicate contract—Donny and Louis tried to do right by you, in that instance at least.”

  Finally Moe spoke up. “Yes, but you don’t know about the toys and the candy and the movies and the radio show.”

  Maggie shrugged a little. “Admittedly, I don’t. That’s not any of my business.”

  With the expression of a man taking in skunk, Harry said, “They set up a whole separate company for that. A Wonder Guy company that handles licensing and we don’t get a cent of it. They don’t even say our names on the radio show. Americana made a real killing off of our character, and we got zippo! Zilch, zally! Greedy bastards, Maggie. Horrible people. The kind of people Wonder Guy punches out or puts in jail.”

  That was their problem, the boys. They were naive kids from Iowa who grew up on science-fiction magazines and hung around with other geeky unpopular kids and believed in the red-white-and-blue simplicity of pulp fiction and Hollywood morality plays. They were unprepared for a world where comic books featuring Wonder Guy punching out mobsters were financed in part by the likes of Frank Calabria.

  But I didn’t go into that, and neither did Maggie. Spiegel and Shulman were purveyors of an unsophisticated version of America to kids of all ages, arrested-development creators who were themselves incapable of understanding the more complicated underbelly of not just the business they were in, but existence on the planet Earth itself.

  As opposed to the planet Crylon.

  “Let’s talk about Funny Guy,” Maggie said.

  “Let’s!” Harry said brightly.

  “You said Americana turned the property down.”

  “Yes. Sy Mortimer rejected it outright, but then, when I pressed him, admitted Donny and Louis had put their personal kibosh on it—said we already had enough on our plates with Wonder Guy!”

  “Do you?” Maggie asked, lifting her eyebrows again; God, how did she do that without wrinkling her forehead? Amazing.

  “Maggie,” Harry said, “I’m one of the fastest writers in the business. Turning out scripts is no problem. Pages just fly out of my machine, like Wonder Guy up in the sky. And Moe’s got a great bunch of youngsters helping him out.”

  Maggie had a thoughtful sip of coffee, then turned to his partner. “How much of the work are you able to do yourself, Moe?”

  Moe, who was sipping coffee himself, frowned just a little—he’d picked up on that phrase: Are you able to?

  “I design all the characters,” he said, stiffly dignified, “and I do all the pencil layouts. And I ink the faces myself.”

  I said, “Pretty standard. Probably more than Sam Fizer’s doing on Mug O’Malley.”

  Harry nodded vigorously but Moe just looked at me.

  Maggie gestured to the sample strips and cocked her head as she said, “Very professional work. We are interested. Have you placed it elsewhere, as a comic book?”

  “Oh yes,” Harry said, bright-eyed. And bushy-tailed, goddamnit. “Comic Book Enterprises—one of Donny and Louie’s former editors runs it—have committed to six issues. Our names are big on the cover! We can coordinate the launch of the strip with the comic.”

  “Good,” she said. “Is doing the property somewhere other than Americana a problem? I mean . . . I don’t mean to pry, but we’re all aware your contract comes due soon, on producing Wonder Guy comic books. And our arrangement with Americana on the strip version comes due only a few months after that.”

  I said, “You fellas are aware, aren’t you, that Americana has the right, by contract, to specify who we use as artist and writer on the strip?”

  Harry’s face fell. “You wouldn’t sell us out, would you?”

  I shook my head, firmly. “Not a matter of selling you out. They can make us do it.”

  Harry batted the air. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll be fine. Zelly’s on top of it.”

  Zelly was Bert Zelman, the team’s lawyer, a smart hustler whose shingle had only been hung out a year ago. Harry had met Zelman when they were in the service together, Harry having served two years stateside as a company clerk, still turning out W
onder Guy scripts in his off-duty time. Moe had been 4-f—five’ll get you ten, for his weak eyesight . . . .

  I said, “If you boys actually did sell all rights, at the start of this shindig, couldn’t you get fired? What I mean is, we at Starr don’t want to be part of a disaster for you . . . giving you a home for Funny Guy and making you lose Wonder Guy.”

  Harry had already started shaking his head halfway through that. “Jack, Jackie boy—we got them by the short and curlies . . . excuse me, Maggie, didn’t mean to be crude.”

  “I’ll get over it,” she said lightly.

  “But Donny and Louie made a big blunder,” Harry said, that face-splitting grin going again. “See, a few years ago, Moe and me submitted an idea for a spin-off feature—Wonder Boy. All about Wonder Guy’s years growing up as a fun-loving kid, a small-town prankster learning to harness his powers for good. Well, they flat-out rejected it—Donny and Louie said, stick to the grown-up version. Nobody’s gonna wanna see a kid version. Is exactly what they said. And in writing!”

  I nodded, sipped Coke again. Maggie was just listening, fingertips tented.

  Moe said, “And then a few months ago, they launched Wonder Boy as lead feature in Exploits. Without telling us. Without negotiating anything.”

  “Lousy thieves!” Harry blurted.

  Now Maggie was nodding. “And it’s a separate property. You may be right, fellas. They fouled up—they may well have opened the front door of the house.”

  “Meaning,” I said, “in your contract renewal negotiations, you may get to rearrange all the furniture.”

  “Yeah!” Harry said, his smile huge and happy.

  “Yes,” Moe said, his smile small and sad.

  “But, guys,” I began, sitting forward, “why Funny Guy? If you’re going to get Wonder Guy back . . . .”

  “We just want to branch out a little,” Harry said. “You know—explore our wealth of creativity.”

  But Moe cut through the BS. “Frankly, Miss Starr . . . Mr. Starr . . . we need to hedge our bets.”