Alter Ego # 114 December 2012 (magazine review)
The focus of this edition of ‘Alter Ego’ was artist/writer Don Rico (1912-1985). Question marks? Me, too. Much of his work was in the 1940s-50s but he did three early stories for Marvel in the early 1960s, including a ‘Tales Of Suspense’ Iron Man story introducing the Crimson Dynamo and the Black Widow. Rico had moved onto book covers and writing shortly before the Wertham comicbook crash but was always busy. Editor Roy Thomas managed to acquire a 1977 interview conducted by Robert Levitt Lanyi showing how productive Rico had been and how they noted how many Italian-Americans were in the comicbook business at the time.
Rico’s widow, actress Michele Hart, gives a very entertaining interview with Dewey Cassell about her husband and how much of a renaissance man he was, turning his hand or pen to anything. The reason he wrote so many novels, apart from money, was he could do them in a single draft and she pointing out the odd discrepancy in building descriptions.
Other highlights. There are several articles about and with comicbook artist Allan Bellman (1924-2020) about his role in the early Timely Comics of the 1940s where he drew the big three. It’s his Captain America on the cover by the way.
Writer Ger Apeldoom’s piece about Marvel publisher Martin Goodman focuses on his financing two New York plays. They didn’t last long but one presumes his career would have gone off on a different track had they been successful. An interesting side-note is how he came up with the Timely company name.
Michael T. Gilbert’s ‘Mr. Monster’ has a third part looking at the send-ups of the Charles Atlas adverts and I wish some of the smaller ones here were much larger to read.
GF Willmetts
June 2025
(pub: TwoMorrows Publishing. 82 page illustrated magazine. Price: varies. ISSN: 1932-6890. Direct from them, you can get it digitally for $ 4.99 (US))
check out websites: www.TwoMorrows.com and https://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=98_55&products_id=1033&zenid=6matnh6qqm1grcovna1qvbqrc3
