Eddy Zeno, back in 1979, initiated a correspondence with industry legendary artist, Curt Swan. This correspondence lasted until Swan’s death in 1996. But Zeno’s appreciation of Swan’s work did not end with the artist’s death. In fact, Zeno took this appreciation and channeled it into creating a biography of Swan, entitled Curt Swan: A Life in Comics, published by Vanguard. As detailed at the publisher’s website: “Filled with iconic and previously unseen pop art, this fascinating biography traces the artist's career from the beginning on features like Gangbusters to his rise as the top Superman artist. Engaging one-on-one interviews with Swan family members as well as comics-legend associates like Joe Kubert, Carmine Infantino, Murphy Anderson, and dozens more paint a portrait of the man as elegant as the artist's own work.” Zeno recently shared with SBC some of the efforts involved in writing the ambitious book. My thanks to Carlin Stuart in helping to orchestrate this interview.
Tim O’Shea: What was it that made you decide to tackle a Curt Swan biography? Had you been a longtime fan of his work, prior to embarking on the 10-year-long correspondence between the two of you?
Eddy Zeno: Starting at the age of seven in 1963, long before there was a conscious attempt to understand why, something drew me to the stories penciled by Curt Swan more than those illustrated by his contemporaries. Becoming too “sophisticated” for comic books by 1969 and getting rid of nearly all of them, it wasn’t till visiting a flea market while in college several years later that I had a chance to replenish some of my favorite Swan issues of Superman. Next came the discovery of new-to-me Silver Age Swan classics at various back-issue comic shops followed by the sighting of some of Curt’s original art while attending my first comic book convention. In 1979, learning that he was still the primary Superman artist after what seemed like forever to my young adult mind, it became paramount to write to Curt directly. He must have enjoyed hearing from this fan for that was the beginning of a written correspondence which lasted until his death in June 1996.
TO: On a related note, what were the most surprising or interesting things you learned about or from Swan during that 10 years of correspondence?
EZ: Not realizing I was playing with fire, it would have been devastating to learn that the man who drew the most noble and heroic version of my childhood hero was anything but a nice guy. Fortunately, from the first time he wrote, Swan’s gentility, humility and respect for others were apparent. (With that first letter, he also generously sent a contemporary page of original art, a piece which I treasure to this day.) As we continued to correspond, there were hints of a quiet pride. Curt was always striving to improve his skills; he would never be satisfied with plateauing as an artist. In later notes as he faced some personal setbacks which included declining health, Swan continued to derive joy from being around family and friends. He was always looking forward, retaining a sense of optimism and an unwillingness to complain.
While working on Curt Swan: A Life in Comics and following its completion, I’ve continued to learn interesting things about the man from his contemporaries. Murphy Anderson said in December 2002, “We were kindred spirits... I was the first, or one of the first, to call Curt ‘The Norman Rockwell of the Comics.’ I could see it! If it took him ten hours to do a panel, he would do it. Now don’t get me wrong; he was fast but he never slacked up on the detail. If Curt was drawing a crowd scene, he gave each person a distinct face and they all moved in their own way.” A few months later (March 2003) Sheldon ‘Shelly’ Moldoff, added, “He was Superman! He treated the character like a son -- a part of his family. Superman was a warm person, a real person with him; he loved doing it.”
TO: How long did it take to compile the index of Swan's comic work and how daunting of a task was it?
EZ: Regarding the index of Swan’s comic book work seen as a sixteen-page bonus section in the book’s deluxe signed and numbered edition, I’ll let the compiler, Raul Wrona, tell how he completed this massive undertaking. “I originally had all the Jimmy Olsen comic books, loaned them to a friend and lost them all when his basement flooded. It took years to get them again, which is when I decided to make a Jimmy Olsen index. That evolved into wanting to document more of his work. When I met Eddy Zeno and found out he was doing the book I figured I might as well try to make it as complete as possible. I wrote to Jerry Bails; he sent what he had, including old microfilm reels of Action Comics with Curt’s work on Tommy Tomorrow. My friend Annette Lawrence went on the Internet and used the Grand Comics Database [the GCD is endeavoring to index the creators behind every comic book story that’s been done]. All of these sources contained bits and pieces of his work; it was far from complete. I went to comic stores in Toronto. I knew that it was quite a lot of stuff, but it was more than I figured. For example, I didn’t know about those Boy Commandos stories in Detective Comics. I knew there were a couple of stories in Gangbusters comics but he did much more than I anticipated. Eddy helped quite a bit and the index was greatly refined by Mark Waid, who caught possible inaccuracies based on my best guesses about certain inkers. Eventually, I also tried to find out how long Curt drew the Superman daily newspaper strip. One guy sent a bunch of photocopies but thanks to a friend named Ian Ornstein I found the remaining Superman dailies done by Swan in the Toronto reference library. They were on microfilm from a paper called the Sudbury Star. (Sudbury is a small mining town in northern Ontario.) I spent five or six hours every day at the library for a month copying them from microfilm. In total it took three or four years to finish the index.”
TO: While Swan's career is often defined by many through his work on Superman, in researching the book did you find there was another series or project that you think Swan should be more known and appreciated for drawing?
EZ: Though he will always be remembered first and foremost for his rendering of The Man of Steel, Fittingly, I see most of his other key series as either leading up to or branching out from his work on that character. For example, Swan’s run on the Jimmy Olsen comic title beginning with the first issue in 1954 was pivotal. The artist showed editor Mort Weisinger why he should become a featured Superman delineator when the hero would show up near the end of a typical story to get Jimmy out of some crazy jam. Curt also got a chance to shine drawing ordinary folks in down-to-earth scenes.
Another example, drawing The Legion of Super-Heroes in Adventure Comics during the 1960s, came as a direct outcropping of Curt’s longtime work on the Superboy character beginning in 1949. When a young Jim Shooter became the writer of the same-aged Legion’s exploits, no one was better than Swan at showing teen angst in the body language and on the faces of Shooter’s hormonally rampant characters. Also, due to Swan’s skill at portraying an optimistic future in which so many young heroes (all with exotic costumes) resided, his work demanded to be brightly colored.
TO: Which of Swan's surviving contemporaries added the greatest insight and context to your research?
EZ: All of the interviewees, whose unique experiences with Curt encompassed many eras, helped paint a rich portrait of his life and career. A few things learned were that he: worked with Andy Rooney on The Stars and Stripes army newspaper in WW II; was a loving and gentle father who delighted in drawing at home so he could watch his children grow; never dwelled on the past and thus was a poor interview subject; strongly believed in standing up for the downtrodden; penciled some twenty-thousand pages worth of stories and covers with little rest due to a depression-era upbringing; didn’t like portraying the Legion while simultaneously giving his all; went toe-to-toe verbally with a sometimes overbearing editor named Mort Weisinger, forever gaining his respect; could not understand why his consistent high-quality work became less marketable in later years; was unable to give up smoking even when it compromised his health; intimidated younger writers and artists by his sheer talent; was beloved by his peers as an artist and as one of the nicest people to ever work in the industry.
For me, the one person who added the greatest insight by challenging me to broaden the scope of my research was Julius (Julie) Schwartz. Eighty-four years young at the time I interviewed him, Julie asked me more questions than I asked him. Before we spoke I thought his interview would be one of the last. But while subtly inquiring if I’d spoken to many of Curt’s former writers to see if they were pleased with his interpretations of their scripts, by asking what I knew about Swan’s World War II days, by wanting to know who his cartoonist-golfing buddies were, he showed me the work wasn’t half-complete. In the book’s introduction Schwartz was kidded about the by-product of those probing questions -- delaying the book’s release.
TO: The introduction to the book is written by Mort Walker, what is the Walker/Swan connection? Does it stem from Walker's International Museum of Cartoon Art, or did their association predate the museum, which was founded in 1974?
EZ: The Mort Walker/ Curt Swan connection stems from when Curt moved to Connecticut, long before Mort founded the International Museum of Cartoon Art in 1974. When Walker (who wrote the introduction to Curt Swan: A Life In Comics) found out another cartoonist was living in the area, he phoned Swan to ask him to play golf with he and his buddies. As Mort put it, the two became “the best of friends,” once sharing a condo in Vermont for a month while Walker finished a book and Swan drew Superman.
TO: Do you plan on doing more books like this in the long term?
EZ: Currently I have no plans for another book but have been doing research for an article I’m writing on Edmond Hamilton. Hamilton was a noted science fiction author who also scripted comic books for twenty years; they included some of the finest Superman stories ever done.
