Jerry Bails Father of Comic Book Fandom R.I.P: June 26, 1933 - November 23, 2006

[CArchivist-migration]

This is the saddest notice I have ever had to pass along to my friends in comic book fandom.

 

I just received a call from Jerry's wife Jean of the news that Jerry Bails, The Father of Comic Book Fandom, died in his sleep today of an apparant heart attack. He was 73.

 

Jerry had been suffering a serious heart condition for the past several years. In recent months the physical discomfort he had experienced had kept him mostly homebound, but his mind remained as sharp as ever, thanks to the contact he was able to continue with friends and family through the internet.

 

At this time, details of any services or funerals are not yet known. According to Jean, Jerry's wishes were for something simple and the family are in the process of working on that.

 

Jerry was a lot of things to a lot of people. For me, he was a mentor, a teacher, a guide--whose wisdom and kindness helped make the world an even better place for many. But most important, I am and will always be deeply proud that I consider Jerry to be my friend. I am a little less not to have his wisdom gracing my ears any longer and I am much MORE knowing that I did have time on this earth in having that same wisdom touch my heart.

 

My deepest love goes out to Jean, Kirk, and all other family members and loved ones of Jerry.

 

-Ray Bottorff Jr

[shadroch]

That is most distressing.

Although his name seems to have faded since the 90s,without Mr Bails and a handful of others like him,comic fandom and the world of comics we know wouldn't exist.

My prayers go out to him and his.

[Neurosis138]

RIP Jerry.

 

-Chris

[Norrin_Radd]

Very sad news.

 

 

I was just re-reading the interview he did with The Pulse recently.

 

"Comics became one of three legs on which my life was built. My profession, my family and my hobby. Comics remained a good supporting hobby, saving my sanity when other areas of my life weren't doing so well..."

[plady69]

Very sad indeed. I bought all his indexes back in the 70's and they inspired me to write the Phantom Lady index for Bill Black in 1978. He will be missed...

[Alex DeLarge-migration]

Rest in Peace, Mr.Bails

[CoreyB-migration]

Thank you, Ray. Sorry I missed your post until now. Thanks for pointing me to it, Alex.

 

I've posted about it on my new blog. Any corrections or comments about what I've written either here or there are more than welcome.

 

Being relatively new to this side of comics, I wish I could say I knew him. He sounded like a great guy, a real fan, and smart! My heart goes out to those who knew him.

 

Blake Bell posted about it on the ditkokirby Yahoo! mailing list, and linked to Mark Evanier's post.

[precodekeith]

A sad day for fandom....

[CArchivist-migration]

A Message from Jean Bails

 

I have been reading the kind words about Jerry and shared them with his sons as well. I thank you as do they. I hope to get around to send a more personal thanks to each soon. What would Jerry say?

He would probably have said, "awe, stop--you are making me blush." :-)

 

Actually it is MY read of his involvement in fandom that it was not all about him--it was about YOU. Surprisingly as it may seem, fandom was not that much about comic characters either but rather it was about people discovering their potential in whatever area and developing confidence in what they could do. Also, fandom was above all good people cooperating with one another to create an entity that was greater than the sum of its parts.

 

Looking at the size of some of the fanworks and conventions he would sometimes joke, "a monster has been created" but it was a monster he dearly loved. He had no misgivings about fandom going on quite well without him. It will because of all of you.

 

Thank you very much.

Jean Bails

[Forbush-Man]

Fandom might go on without Jerry, but he had a lot to do with starting the movement!

 

His letters (along with Roy Thomas, Grass green, Ron Foss & others) to D.C.'s editor, J. Schwartz, encouraged the re-introduction of Golden Age D.C. characters and, with the re-introduction of the J.S.A.(in the form of the J.L.A.) encouraged (rumor has it) a discussion on a Golf Course which resulted in the Marvel Age of Comics. Martin Goodman telling Stan lee to see what he could come up with like that Super-Hero group D.C. had. Fantastic Four was the result.

 

Time for me to go re-read "The Golden Age of Comic Fandom". Comic collecting must have been so exciting & challenging then: no reference material, internet, conventions, mail order or comic shops. So the early collectors like Jerry collected information and shared it with others through their Fanzine's. Now the Fanzine's are a history record of these very collectors, and Jerry was a true pioneer of the hobby.

 

R.I.P. Jerry.

[Forbush-Man]

Excerpt from The Golden Age of Comic Fandom by Bill Schelly

 

The Birth of Alter-Ego

 

As a result of the imposition of the Comics Code Authority, only three hundred comic book titles were printed in 1955, as opposed to six hundred the previous year. A number of publishers closed their doors, and the survivors began casting about for new ideas.

 

Although the attempts of Timely/Atlas to revive Captain America, Human Torch and Sub-Mariner as commie fighters in 1953 hadn't worked, the field was now considerably thinner, and the decision-makers at National Periodical Publications (now DC Comics) decided that the time had come for them to test the waters with their own revival.

 

Their innovative Showcase title was designed for such try-outs, and it was during a session where the editors discussed various ideas that "someone, some unknown inspirational genius, suggested that we bring back the Flash," Julius Schwartz recounted. "We decided not to revive the old Flash from the forties, but to modernize him."(1) Schwartz had been on the editorial staff of DC (beginning in the All-American branch) since 1944, and was now about to launch what would become the Second Heroic Age of Comics.

 

Yet "Presenting the Flash" in Showcase #4 was an exceedingly tentative feeler; the follow-up didn't appear until Showcase #8, some months later. Then Schwartz waited almost a year to produce the third and fourth try-outs, in Showcase #13 and #14.

 

With this kind of sporadic publishing, it's not surprising that the first two sallies were missed by a Math graduate student who had been dreaming of a return of the Flash and the rest of the heroes of his youth.

 

Jerry G. Bails had been yearning for a return of the Justice Society of America since All-Star became All-Star Western in early 1951 and the JSA went into limbo. He was a tireless fan of the JSA, no doubt because he encountered them at an early age on a newsstand in Kansas City, Missouri, when he was growing up.

 

Born on June 26, 1933, his earliest recollection of comics was marveling at the covers hanging by bulldog clips in the window of his favorite shop that sold comics. It was a dry goods store across the street from what would become his father's pool hall.

 

"In early 1941, the Great Depression was just ending, and families were finally beginning to come into some disposable income," Jerry said in a recent interview. "This translated down to seven-year-olds as a weekly allowance-a quarter as I recall. I was free for the first time to spend it as I chose. It went for comics first and foremost.

 

"One of the earliest covers I recall from my youth was on Flash Comics #20, where the Flash was hurling a crook onto overhead telephone lines," Bails remembered. "That issue was dated August 1941. At almost exactly the same time, I spotted All-Star Comics #6. It marked the very first time I would witness the Justice Society of America, starring all my favorite heroes teaming up in a book-length adventure. That comic book had the most profound long-term effect on me. Spotting the covers of #6 and #7 were ecstatic moments for me. I can still feel a rush of endorphins just recalling the covers."

 

Though Bails had spent the last several years obtaining a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from the University of Kansas City, and then going for a Masters in Math, he had corresponded with Gardner Fox in the late 1950s regarding the JSA, and worked steadily toward re-building his personal collection of All-Star. "Gardner Fox was a most generous and compassionate man and it is clear to me that he had influenced my basic values through the vehicle of the Justice Society," Jerry said. "He made a big difference to me."

 

When he finally noticed the Flash revival in Showcase #13 around January of 1958, he was twenty-four years old and deeply immersed in his studies. But the sight of that comic book on the stands struck him like a thunderbolt, for it implied the possibility of further revivals-even his beloved JSA.

 

Bails unleashed a flurry of letters, with renewed energy, at Fox and Schwartz. Around this time, mid-1959, he and Fox worked out a deal for the writer's bound editions of All-Star, and Jerry's JSA collection was complete.(2)

 

From the time he saw Showcase #13, Bails had to wait nearly two years for the day to arrive when the JSA was back in its new incarnation: The Justice League of America. Brave and Bold #28 hit the newsstands at the very end of 1959. Of course, he had other things on his mind, like completing his doctorate in Natural Science. Around the time Jerry G. Bails, Ph.D. (with his wife, Sondra) had moved to Detroit to take his new post as Assistant Professor of Natural Science at Wayne State University, JLA #1 appeared, and Bails was thinking of ways to support and encourage this exciting development. (In that issue, Schwartz indicated that further hero revivals were probable.)

 

Then, another spark-plug fell into place, and that was Roy Thomas, an English and history major in his senior year at Southeast Missouri State College in Cape Girardeau, about a hundred miles south of St. Louis on the Mississippi River.

 

Thomas, though several years younger than Bails, had learned to read in the pages of All-Star, and was so taken with the "new JSA" that he'd written his first letter to editor Julius Schwartz. (In an earlier contact with DC, a youthful Thomas had been informed that trading and selling old comics could not be officially sanctioned by the company, for it might spread disease.)

 

This time, when Roy inquired about obtaining back issues of All-Star, Schwartz gave him Gardner Fox's name and address. Fox in turn referred Roy to Jerry Bails, informing the Missourian that Jerry had recently purchased all his back issues. Roy was disappointed, but immediately dashed off a letter to "Mr. Bails" on November 21, 1960, the day before his twentieth birthday.

 

Just five days later, he had his reply. "I can't tell you how happy I am to find another All-Star enthusiast after all these years," Jerry wrote. "In 1945, I began my campaign to collect all the back issues of this magazine, and in 1951, when the JSA was dropped, I began my campaign for the revival of this old favorite. Just last year, as you know, my efforts finally paid off. Now, I'm off on a new campaign-to make the Justice League of America more popular than Superman. First, I want to see the JLA published monthly; then I want to see it published in a giant edition. I hope you will join me in working for these goals."(3) Along with the letter, Jerry sent dog-eared copies of All-Star #4 through 6, the first Roy had ever seen of them. This generosity on Bails' part cemented their friendship.

 

Thomas and Bails began a long and voluminous correspondence, each writing two or three letters a week to the other, with queries and responses often crossing in the mail. Their letters were filled with trading proposals and comments about recent acquisitions from the few sources available to them.

 

"We both bombarded DC with scores of letters," Bails recalled years later. "JLA #4 is filled with letters from me under different pen names. Don't blame Julie for this. I did everything I could to fool him, including mailing the letters from all across the country."

 

Jerry revealed that he had suggested to Gardner Fox (in a letter dated August 29, 1960) that a revival of the Atom would be the next logical step after Hawkman, who was slated to make his debut in December. He and Roy set about concocting a concept for the

new Atom, which they planned to submit to Schwartz. (Jerry envisioned a new, more Dollman-like Atom.)

 

Bails put the outlines of their suggestions in a letter to Schwartz on December 8th, which reads in part: "A brilliant young experimenter [Al Pratt, a physics professor in ordinary life] discovers how to compress the atoms of his body to make himself only six inches tall. In this meta-stable state, the mighty mite has the power to leap great distances and to smash through ordinary matter in his battle against crime, but he can only safely remain in this miniature form for one hour."

 

Schwartz wrote back on January 6, 1961, "Many thanks for your ideas on the Atom revival, but by a fantastic coincidence I had already had some similar ideas on the same subject; even went so far as to have artist Gil Kane do some sketches." Both Bails and Thomas believed, probably correctly, that their enthusiastic letters and suggestions played a part in DC's decision to revive the Atom.(4) Bails urged Thomas to consider revival ideas for Dr. Fate.

 

In that same letter, he mentioned (for the first time) that he was thinking about publishing a "JLA newsletter" that he would distribute to contacts made through the letter pages in Julie's comics. Schwartz had decided, toward the end of 1960, to begin running complete addresses in his letter columns. Full addresses appeared in Brave and Bold #35 (May 1961) with pre-publication comments on the Hawkman revival from Jerry, Roy and others.

 

Now fate intervened to bring Jerry Bails and Julie Schwartz face-to-face. Near the end of January, Bails was invited to visit and lecture at Adelphi College on Long Island the following month. Jerry and Sondra decided to make the visit the occasion of a long-awaited holiday, and he scheduled a visit to the DC offices. "I am going to suggest my plan for a JLA newsletter and see if I can get their support for it." (3)

 

A few days later, in a letter to Roy, Jerry wrote, "My thoughts for a newsletter are still pretty muddy. I can have the thing hectographed for nothing, but I would prefer to at least have it mimeographed, [and] that costs money. So does postage if the number of copies is very great. I don't want to charge for it, because that involves all sorts of complications and DC might not give their approval, and their approval is essential if I am to get the kind of advance info I need for a good sheet.

 

"Right now I think I'll send The JLA-Subscriber (as I might call it) only to adult readers who write in to one of Julie's magazines," Jerry continued. "This audience would supply many new ideas and help to boost the JLA with the younger set. They would also be interested in gossip about old JSA stories and other DC comics, and might want to trade old mags, just as we have.

 

"The number of JLA fans over 18 shouldn't be so great that I couldn't afford the postage myself, and perhaps different issues of the newsletter could originate from different fans. In other words, any one at any time might get a newsletter off to other fans. What do you think? I think that each editor might include an editorial. I have one I want to write on the good and bad effects of the Comics Code. And I'm sure you could write many interesting features."(3)

 

It's fascinating to see the workings of Bails' mind. Jerry may have had some indirect awareness of sf fandom at this point (for there are indications that he advertised for comics in The Fantasy Collector as early as 1959), but if he did, it was obviously vague and incomplete. His candid letters to Roy Thomas certainly reveal no knowledge of the workings of sf fandom and fanzines.

 

In fact, Bails was very close to conceiving of a "fandom" on his own. The idea of various editors putting out their own newsletter is just another way of envisioning different fanzines being published. Yet, these thoughts were very embryonic, for he and Roy had no idea how large a potential readership an amateur publication on comic book heroes would have. They were still operating in semi-isolation. Would a newsletter meet with indifference?

 

Jerry and Sondra saw the Broadway shows "Camelot" and "An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May," and various other big-city sights, and of course he gave his lecture, but undoubtedly the highlight of the trip was his visit to DC. When Bails broached the subject of a JLA newsletter to Julie Schwartz, he received an entirely positive response, for such amateur publications were well-known to Julie. With his amateur publishing background, Schwartz may have seen Jerry and Roy as something of successors or counterparts to himself and Mort Weisinger, in terms of their fannish pursuits. (Weisinger, of course, was then editor of the Superman family of comics.) Certainly Schwartz was impressed with Jerry's academic credentials. All this came into play in helping Bails receive Julie's approbation.

 

It was Julie who told Jerry that amateur magazines and newsletters were called fanzines. (The credit for coining the terms "fanzine" and "prozine" goes to sf fan Louis Russell Chauvenet, who first used the words in print around 1941.) "Julie had shown me copies of ... Xero, which was running a series on the old comics," Bails later wrote. "I was happy to learn that there was a segment of science-fiction fandom that was devoted to the old comic-book heroes."(5)

 

Bails' visit with Schwartz in mid-February kicked his publishing plans into high gear. He returned to Detroit loaded with information about upcoming DC comics, fairly bursting with energy and enthusiasm.

 

He wrote to Roy: "My five-hour visit to the DC offices, my luncheon with Julie and Gar, my private conversations with writers and artists, and my perusal of AA [All-American] classics, gives me more than I could relate in a half dozen king-sized letters; and besides, I don't want to steal all my own thunder, because I know now (for sure) that I want to bring out a 'fanzine' devoted to the Great Revival of the costumed heroes.

 

"I even have what I consider to be a brilliant title and format. It will be called Alter-ego. [small-case "e" at first.] I have enough background info, promise of advance previews, support in Julie's letter columns, and hope for fresh ideas from a guy named Thomas to make this fanzine go, go, go, as Snapper [Carr] might say."(3)

 

Jerry immediately sent out dozens of feelers to people like Ronnie Graham and Ron Haydock, whose letters had also appeared in Brave and Bold #35. Graham and Haydock had been active in other fandoms, and quickly helped get the word out about Alter-Ego. Schwartz had loaned Jerry his copies of the early Xeros, and Bails wrote to everyone in the Lupoffs' letter columns. Soon, Jerry reported that he was receiving two or three responses daily. These people would receive the first issue free of charge. From then on copies would sell for 20 cents unless the person had an article, letter or advertisement in it.

 

By early March, Jerry had outlined tentative contents of the first issue. He would write the first part in a history of the JSA, and an article on the Comics Code Authority; Roy would contribute his proposed ideas (in a text narrative) for a revival of the Spectre, as well as the first part of a JLA parody strip. The issue would also feature ads for the sale and trade of comics, and news of coming events at DC.

 

In mid-March, Bails changed his mind about one feature planned for A-E. He didn't want to duplicate Jim Harmon's AICFAD article on the Justice Society in Xero #3. Therefore, he scratched his own general history of the JSA and started over on a related piece.

By March 28th, the masters for Alter-Ego #1 were completed; it was printed via a portable spirit duplicator that Jerry had purchased. Copies were in the mails by the end of the month. What would the response be like? Would Julie be favorably impressed by this initial effort? Would the readers? If Bails had any doubts, he was nevertheless charging forward with preparations for a second issue without stopping to catch his breath.

 

What did the readers receive for their expression of interest? At twenty-two pages, Alter-Ego #1 (March 1961) was slim by later standards, but it had grown considerably from Bails' initial conception.

 

The cover was a multi-colored scene featuring Roy's parody of the JLA, known as the Bestest League of America. The formation of the "new Justice Society" had been the energizing factor that inspired Bails to launch Alter-Ego, so it was fitting that the first issue was headed-up by this spoof of DC's team of superstars.

 

Inside, after the contents page was "A Matter of Policy," the brief editorial which announced, "This is the first issue of Alter-Ego, a new comic fanzine devoted to the revival of the costumed heroes." From there, Bails launched into four pages of pro news in a feature called "On The Drawing Board." It carried advance word of the forthcoming "Flash of Two Worlds" story (Flash #123) which brought back the Golden Age Flash, previews of the upcoming Batman and Secret Origins annuals (with a cover reproduction of the latter) and hints of the Atom revival slated for Showcase #34.

 

"The Wiles of the Wizard, Portrait of a Villain" was Jerry's two-page substitute for a JSA profile. On pages ten through twelve, Roy Thomas presented the first part of his "Reincarnation of the Spectre," which proposed a new version of the Spectre as a man divided into two characters representing good and evil, ego and id: the Spectre and Count Dis.

 

Instead of the piece on the Comics Code Authority that Jerry had planned, he ran "Merciful Minerva: The Story of Wonder Woman." (Perhaps he felt that criticizing the Comics Code might not be taken well at DC.)

 

Then, on page 17, the issue was rounded out by the first five-page chapter of "The Bestest League of America" by Thomas. The members of the BLA were Wondrous Woman, the Cash, Aquariuman, S'amm S'mith, Lean Arrow and the Green Trashcan. The ostensible leader of the group was the Green Trashcan, whose motto went:

 

In little shack or circus tent,

No evil shall escape this gent;

Let those who are of evil bent,

Beware my power

-Green Trashcan's scent!

 

Chapter One centered around the heroes gathering together, and squabbling over who would pair off with Wondrous Woman, Queen of the Glamazons.

 

That was A-E #1: three JSA-related articles, two columns and an amateur comic strip. The lay-outs were neat, for Sondra Bails had done a careful job on the typing, and the lettering was accomplished with plastic lettering guides. There were two spot illustrations and a couple of small ads from Jerry and Roy to even out the pages. Much of the printing was done from black ditto masters, which proved to be shorter-running than regular purple ditto masters, thus making the printing rather light on the later copies.

 

As noted in Chapter One, Comic Art #1 from Don Thompson and Maggie Curtis was published about the same time as A-E #1. There is some uncertainty about which one came first. The best available information is that Alter-Ego preceded Comic Art by no more than a month, and possibly as little as a few days. Still, there is little point in splitting hairs, since the two fanzines played very different roles in the history of comic fandom.

 

Comic Art and Xero were published by double-fans and were read mainly by sf fans who generally had little interest in (or disdain for) new comics, even the Schwartz revivals. The focus of AICFAD was strictly nostalgic. And, by their own admission, the Thompsons' interest was in just about every aspect of comic art but the super hero comics of 1961.

 

Bails had a fiery urgency, an almost messianic fervor, in his effort to support the super hero revivals of the era he dubbed "The Second Heroic Age of Comics." That was, indeed, the stated mission of Alter-Ego. As a result, the fanzine had an interesting double-focus. It linked the current super heroes (many of them revivals) with their antecedents (alter-egos, in a sense). With this attention to both new and old, A-E not only differentiated itself from its predecessors, but established a mix that had something for fans both young and old.

 

Excitement crackled through its pages, a result of Jerry's almost breathless "what's next?" attitude about upcoming revivals. His enthusiasm was contagious. Yes, the high standards of the writing and lay-out were important to the zine's success. Certainly, timing played a great part, too. But it was Bails' interest in current developments that caused his recruitment efforts to catch fire across the country (and around the world) within a very short time.

 

This is not to take anything away from the Lupoffs and the Thompsons. Xero's "All In Color For A Dime" series continued with well-written, often eloquent tributes to comics of the past. AICFAD put forward baseline facts about each of its topics, which subsequent writers would attempt to enlarge upon. [see Chapter 4 for a rundown of the AICFAD entries in Xero #4 - 10.] Comic Art printed excellent pieces by Harlan Ellison, Jerry De Fuccio, Larry Ivie, Robert Coulson and many others over the next couple of years.

 

But it was Jerry Bails who reached out to the names in the letters pages, and those who were mainly comic fans, with a magazine that was decidedly down-to-earth (even a little "gosh-wow," in Ted White's words). It was Bails who wanted to bring as many people into fandom as possible, since it would further the goals of Alter-Ego. And it was Bails who frankly had the organizational skill, desire and vision to lay the groundwork for an ongoing comic fandom.

 

Don and Maggie later wrote, "Alter-Ego's editors were trying to get it distributed to the largest possible number of fans-thus earning its reputation as a seminal point in comics fandom. We tried, as did and Pat Lupoff with Xero, to keep our circulation as small as possible."(6)

 

Had Jerry Bails not come along when he did, surely someone else would have come up with the idea of a comics fanzine devoted to the resurgence of the super heroes. Jerry himself acknowledged, "Had there been no Jerry or Roy or Don or Maggie, someone else would surely have come up with the idea." In the coming years, one thing became clear: fans with Bails' vision and organizational ability were few and far between.

 

So great was the impact of Alter-Ego #1 that Jerry found himself at the center of a maelstrom of activity. Had he ever seriously questioned whether his efforts would receive an enthusiastic reception? If so, then the torrent of mail he received in response put all doubts to rest.

 

Alter-Ego was launched, and all systems were "go." Soon, like stages of a NASA rocket, its various sections would separate, each part becoming a key building block of the new fan movement.

 

The Golden Age of comic fandom had begun.

[burntboy]

just a GREAT article - thanks for taking the time to share it with all of us .

 

i was just a kid back in the late 50's/early 60's and remember the names Jerry Bails and Roy Thomas with much affection. seems like they were always getting published in the first letters pages (to which i, too, sent in rather silly musings).

 

i've often thought of Mr Bails and would have loved to have him autograph my personal copy of AE #4 which is signed by Roy Thomas. (i still have the original mailing envelope with Jerry's address sticker from Karam Court in Warren, Michigan...................). Interestingly, back in early 1963 it only cost 8cents (2 purple 4cent Lincoln stamps) to mail AE #4 in a big manila envelope.............

 

He helped to enrich many lives in the hobby and this is truly a sad day for Comic Fandom.........