For most of them the work is an emotional outlet. They can set loose fantasies most of us repress as we grow older! Herb Trimpe put it this way: "If a story works out well, I have the same feeling of satisfaction as if I'd worked out all day long, or gone on a eight-mile hike. It's a release. Plus there's a feeling of creation, of controlling a situation. In a comic book story, unlike life, you know what the plot is and you control every aspect of that story. It makes you sort of a miniature god."

I had lunch with Herb and it was good to talk to him. He'd been my favorite bullpen artist, not just because I dug the way he drew the Hulk, but because he was so nice to look at. He's incredibly handsome, tall and wiry with deep-set eyes and black hair. He looks like a superhero, like the Phantom Eagle, or a good-looking Hulk. Or maybe the Hulk looks like an angry, ugly him. He's been through a lot of changes in the last two years, including a divorce. His old lady now is Linda Fite, who used to work at Marvel. She was my partner in letter opening and general office disrupting, a beautiful hip southern belle with a fine sense of humor, and a fine sense of life.

Herb's still going through a lot of changes and confusion. Reality is making some heavy demands on him. Gil Kane said, "It's hard to keep the boy in the cartoonist because if you do, it means that you are talking about an individual that never outgrows his needs for fantasy." And that's the question. How to remain a child and cope with a world that imposes problems and responsibilities?

Tired of the hour-long commutes to work, Herb moved from his home in Peekskill, New York, where he was born, to a room in the city. He painted the floors battleship grey, the trim and his drawing table he painted black. Linda had given him three wooden chairs painted in primary colors. His collection of toy soldiers, tanks, trucks and model airplanes were arranges in near rows on his shelves. He's always had an interest in flying -- he was in the air force for a while -- and some day, he says, he would like to go to Mars.

Herb would make a successful criminal, because he's the last person anybody would suspect. People always put him in the role of being a good guy. When he was in high school he won the good guy medal for the senior class. "It really stuck in my craw. Anybody that gets the good guy medal, there has to be something wrong with them. We had an awards assembly and they had this medal. A real medal, it's a goddam medal with a ribbon on it, a pin, it came in a plastic case with a felt backing and all that crap. It was named for a student who had done very well and was killed in a traffic accident and they made this award in his memory.

"It's not an athletic award, it's not a scholastic award. It's just for being cooperative. If a teacher needed a project done, you'd help do it. I didn't realize what it was I felt at the time, but now I realize that I felt like a traitor. Like in Bridge over the River Kwai, when the Japanese give the English commander a medal for building that bridge for them, that would be the last thing he'd want to get, even though he wanted to do a good job on the bridge, and he wanted to show those people that the British army does a job right.

"So at the senior assembly they said, "For helping his fellow student and faculty,' and all that shit, and they said, 'Herb Trimpe.' I was dumbfounded and embarrassed. And ten years later I said to myself I'm going to get even with those bastards if it's the last thing I do. Anybody who gets a good-guy medal, they must be doing something wrong.

"So now I'm real bad. I react in the opposite direction, trying to be bad. If you keep being a good guy, people will take advantage of you, they'll take you for granted. Because I'm not a threat to people they don't listen to me. Herb Trimpe, they say, that's one guy you don't have to worry about. Hah." He scowled at the coca cola he was drinking.

I went to the Marvel office Christmas party. Stan wasn't there; just the slaves. They had already downed two bottles of champagne by the time I came, and were working on the second bottle of scotch. There was a lot of laughter, more than usual, and the atmosphere is always pretty high there. There were peanuts, and powdered sugar cookies, the kind that spell asphyxiation if you inhale at the wrong moment, and salamis that Holly the secretary's father manufactured.

I drank more than my share of the scotch and wandered into my old room. I sat down at my old desk. On the wall in front of me were pinned up the recent covers from the 30 Marvel titles published. My old friends Daredevil, the blind superhero in the red suit, Thor, the Asgardian thweetheart with the magic hammer, Sub Mariner, Captain America, Iron Man, Sergeant Fury, Invisible Girl, the Human Torch, the Thing, the Avengers, Spiderman, the Black Panther, the Falcon, Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., and a newcomer, Conan the Barbarian, whom Marie calls Conan the Masochist.

I thought about Dorma, the Sub Mariner's blue-skinned love. She and Subby had been planning to get married ever since I could remember. And Roy Thomas, who writes Sub Mariner, had just told me of poor Dorma's fate. Roy had let them get married because they'd been planning the wedding for so long, but they didn't even get as far as their wedding night. Roy arranged for a green-skinned girl who was in love with the Sub Mariner to kill Dorma, and he said he was never going to bring her back again. He said he felt that Sub Mariner should be a lone wolf and he didn't like the idea of his having such a stable home, a Lois Lane situation. Now the broken-hearted Sub Mariner would be even more hostile, and roam the seas alone. I felt very sad that the blue-skinned Dorma was gone.

And I thought about the Silver Surfer, who used to have a book of his own. He was the sexiest superhero, a sleek silver-plated sports trophy of a guy who sped through the galaxies on a surfboard made of silver. A philosopher as well, who flew around unhappy about pollution and man's inhumanity to man, and went nowhere. He was a hit with older audiences, but didn't sell enough to survive, so the book was killed. But the Silver Surfer still makes guest appearance in other comic books, and I could see him gliding from cover to cover before me.

Most of the characters aren't drawn in the Marvel office. They're done by freelance artists and sent in through the mail. But Spiderman and Hulk were set loose in the Vision building and had their home there. I could almost feel them there, more with every sip of scotch.

The colors on the covers seemed to jump and move around, the characters seemed to come alive in front of me. They were having a Christmas party, too. Kid Colt brought in a huge tree he had chopped down, and Spidey decorated it with his web-shooter. The webbing came out sparkling silver. The Silver Surfer glided down and topped the tree with a star he'd picked from the galaxies. Everyone had brought presents for Reed and Sue's baby. And then in came Santa Claus, all dressed in red with a big phoney beard and moustache. It was a beautiful party. But all at once I realized that Santa was the sinister Red Skull. Couldn't everybody see that? And what was in the huge sack he was carrying?

In leaped Daredevil, the blind superhero. To him disguises meant nothing, because he couldn't see anyway. His radar-sharp senses detected the evil Red Skull's presence and he signaled the danger to Ben Grimm who was standing in back of Santa. Ben turned into the Thing and lunged at the villain yellow, "It's clobberin' time!" But too late! Santa Claus/Red Skull was too fast for him and managed to detonate the negative energy machine in his sack. Everything disappeared, the colors of all shapes and sizes receded and everything turned white before me. The whiteness floated down to my desk. I picked it up. It was a piece of paper with an original drawing of Spiderman on it and it was signed Merry Christmas to Robin from Johnny Romita.


* * *

Most people who read comic books are not fans. They aren't concerned about who makes the books, or how. They read the comics, then lose them, or give them to a younger brother who loses them or tears them up. Or they roll them up and stuff them in a back pocket to read again later.

But a real comic book lover never folds or bends his comics. He reads them, catalogues them, and files them in his library of other comics when he can refer to them instantly and they won't get bent or soiled. Most comic book readers buy comics occasionally, three or four a month, usually attracted by the bright gaudy colors on the cover, which are put there to do just that. But the aficionado buys as many as he can afford, and he arranges to afford all of them. This is another breed of comic book reader, the fanatic, the fan, the Marvel Maniac, the True Believer.

I asked about the fans, the ones who find the office, and manage to get in. She put down the plastic cigarette she was sucking on. Marie says she has the common sense, or pride, to hide what she really is. Like she dresses very Peck and Peck, and with her wide brown eyes looks like the kind of person people on the street ask for directions. But if she dressed the way she really wanted to, it would be, she says, gold lame. "Gee," she said, "they're so uninteresting, that why they're fans. If they were interesting they wouldn't be fans. I mean, is a hospital ward interesting? The fans buy the books, but they don't support comics. Comics are supported by many other normal little children, but the fans are the ones who are hung up on it. I think fans are very lonely." She says the fans are arrogant now. They don't gasp and ooh and ahh anymore. The new breed of fans just want to lean over your shoulder and tell you what you're doing wrong.

Hanging above Marie's desk is a cartoon she drew describing the fans who come to the office. "There's one guy that clutches his artwork to his chest and won't show it to anybody but Stan, and he is what the office calls the wet dream. Then there's the mother that brings the child up and the child is the absolute duplication of her, with short hair and no bosoms, and the poor child has done these comics and they're all stapled and worn and looked at, and she is saying, 'Look at this, isn't this marvelous that he can draw this,' and you look at what the child has drawn and there's murder, every page he's killing his mother, right there, and she is propagating it, bringing this child up and he just looks at you and doesn't talk or communicate in any way.

"And then there's the whole family that comes up and the father's taking pictures and bumping into everything and they're from Indiana or something and awfully nice dull people, and the mother does all the talking and we keep handing the children pictures and there's no reaction, these children could be in a covered wagon. And they say to John Romita, 'Yes, I like Spiderman. I like Steve Ditko [who used to draw Spiderman],' and John Romita cries because he is an artist, and Ditko was a fan, but they all remember Ditko. And then there are little thieves who steal anything. They don't come up to steal, it just happens.

"Then there are the really quiet totally subdued kids, with acne all over their faces, but with something to show, work that they've done, and you have got to give them credit, it's not bad. And then there's the beatnik woman from the Village, and they're usually, pardon the expression, doing an article for a magazine, and they're very overbearing, and when Stan comes in they immediately hunch over and follow him.

Marvelmania is a subculture, a living-breathing-changing-happening art form, a fantasy world in which millions live, some of them most of the time. The fans participate in the process of creating the comic fantasy world. They send in their ideas and criticisms and Stan listens to them. The comic world has a language and logic of its own, even a whole technology that works for it, and the books have to be consistent within that world. If they are not consistent, letters will pour in about a mistake. For instance, if a book says that the Hulk was transported back to 1917 to fight the Phantom Eagle in France, hundreds of readers will write in to object that Phantom Eagle was in Germany at that time. Because they keep track, they know everything that's happened in that strange world.

If a reader spots a mistake and writes in about it, he will receive a "No-Prize." A No-Prize is an empty envelope which has "No-prize" printed on it, and the name of the recipient.

One interesting thing about being the person who opened the mail was the occasional obscene letter. And there were some precocious drawing of Spidey and Gwen doing some S-M bondage trips, some letters full of swear words some kid just couldn't hold in anymore. There were some fantasies that comic books don't acknowledge, but kids have them anyway.

I remember one letter from a young couple who had met through the letters page of Silver Surfer comics. the girl had written a letter which was published, and the boy had read the letter, dug what she said and written to her. They met at a comic book convention a little later, and shortly afterward were married.