Posted in: Comics, san diego comic con | Tagged: 2016, Allen Bellman, comic con, comiccon, comicon, Comics, entertainment, july, san diego, san diego comic con, sdcc, sdcc '16, sdcc16

Golden Age Murders, Affairs And Hot Feet: The Spotlight on Allen Bellman Panel at SDCC

Hugh Sheridan writes,

Mark Evanier interviewed veteran creator s at SDCC tonight.

Bellman worked at Timely Comics (the company now known as Marvel) throughout the 1940s and early 1950s. He fell out of the comic business for 50 years until fan Michael J. Vassallo tracked him down and got him to start attending conventions and doing interviews about his career.

Though 92 years old, he was full of pep and anecdotes from his time working for Stan Lee and publisher Martin Goodman.

Mike Sekowsky was "a beautiful artist with a very bad attitude" Bellman would greet him in the hall with a "how are you" and Sekowksky would reply "What do you care?" "Well, I suppose I really didn't" says Bellman.

At one point Sekowsky was sure that his girlfriend, staffer Violet Barkley, was having an affair with artist George Klein. He marched in to Stan Lee's office and announced "I want you to fire Violet Barkley or I leave" to which Stan replied "bye". "Of course Sekowsky just went back to his desk" says Bellman. 

Al Jafee was a great artist but a "funster" who was always joking about and Bellman never knew how he got his work done. His favorite gag was hot-footing – sneaking a box of matches under someone's foot and lighting it up, which "almost burned down the bullpen several times".

Robbie Solomon was "a lady's hat salesman who thought he was an art director" according to Bellman. He was Stan Lee's uncle and Martin Goodman's brother-in-law and he used to hassle Bellman and his colleagues to draw like other artists from other companies – "Charlton, Quality etc. even though we were outselling them"

When Bellman finally met Joe Simon in 2007 and Solomon's name came up "Simon said straight away "That Son of a bitch! – he tried to make my life miserable!"" with the same behavior.

After the mid-50s downturn Marvel fired its entire production staff and Bellman went to work for Lev Gleason, publisher of the then-popular Crime Does Not Pay book. He worked beside writer/artist Bob Wood who was, he said, a "quiet polite man who it was easy to get along with". However he "would come in after every weekend with a black-eye or something" as "he had a problem with drink."

One day Bellman was out looking for work when he saw a headline on a paper "Cartoonist kills woman in tryst". Wood had murdered his girlfriend after some torrid episode. Wood served time, was released and worked as a short-order cook for a while before he was eventually murdered by gangsters over unpaid debts, according to Bellman.

In the mid-fifties Bellman married his second wife and he says he "wanted a more secure job" so he left comics to start his own business. He had limited contact with anybody in the industry until Vassallo (who was in the audience) tracked him down in Florida the early 2000s.
The panel ended as an emotional Bellman thanked the fans for "keeping him out of the rocking chair" with their enthusiasm and support.

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