Ink Stains 182: The Legion Outpost 8

The Legion Outpost 8: Summer 1974
Editor/publisher: Harry Broertjes

Welcome everyone to this installment of Ink Stains, where we all revel in the glory of the fanzines of years gone by. In this case, way back to 1974 and the eighth issue of The Legion Outpost! This fanzine's main claim to fame is the early and constant contributions by much loved artist, Dave Cockrum (whose work you see on front cover above). Though Dave was already working for DC on The Legion of Superheroes, he continued his ties with fandom though this and other zines. He was widely admired and well loved. If you appreciate Dave and his work, then there are a few essential books you can get from the prolific Cliff Meth. He states that "There are two books: The Uncanny Dave Cockrum, an art portfolio that 40 leading comics creators participated in ($45, limited edition, hardcover, signed) and Comic Book Babylon, which details the battle for Dave’s rights and royalties (introduction by Stan Lee — $28). I have copies of both if anyone wants one." Email Cliff at [email protected]. Do it now, holmes! If I remember right, I am in the first one!

Editor and publisher, Harry, Broertjes, was kind enough to answer a few questions from me via email. Before we jump into the zine proper, Harry will tell us about his beginnings with comics.
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"As a kid growing up in the late 1950s and ’60s , comics were omnipresent as fun, throwaway amusement for me and all my friends. When I was in the first and second grades, we had to endure a 90-minute bus ride to and from school, and inevitably there would be an assortment of comics along for the ride; we’d pass them along from row to row with no concern about how beaten up they’d get, since sooner rather than later they’d be thrown away anyway.
Around the time I turned 9, and was no longer riding that bus, I became interested in the Superman family comics, including the Legion of Super-Heroes, and started saving them. Collecting might be too strong a word to use for the start of this — I continued to roll the spines and make amateur repairs when a center page fell out. But over time, as my collection — by now you could start to use the word — grew, I started to take better care of them. And I’d been wholly sucked into the universe of Mort Weisinger-edited titles. I’d occasionally buy some of Julie Schwartz’s titles, like the Justice League of America, Green Lantern and the Flash, but it took a little longer for Batman (whom I saw enough of in World’s Finest Comics anyway). My interest in Marvel’s books was minimal at best during those early years."

So, on to the issue at hand! The first feature is an interview with the incredibly precocious Jim Shooter. His history in comics was consequential and somewhat divisive, but man....what a beginning! He was selling stories to DC at 14 years old! In fact, only a few years later, he quit (he tried Marvel for a bit, but then quit that)! Of course, he later went back and became a fixture at Marvel. Interestingly, he did not come at from a fan of comics per se, but as a way to make a living...but eventually, the grind of school and work wore him down. I really doubt anyone could duplicate or top that beginning!

page layouts for LSH by Shooter

more Shooter layouts

Harry says of his meeting Shooter, "You could write a book, or at least a few chapters, about my strange adventures in fandom. But the most interesting story concerns my tracking down Jim Shooter, the wunderkind Legion writer of the late ’60s, who had vanished from the scene. I did a phone interview with him that appeared in Outpost #8, and then met him in person in August 1974 when Jay Zilber and I were driving to New York for our first face-to-face meeting with Mike Flynn and other Legion fans. I urged Jim to return to writing comics, which he did in 1976, first for a short stint at DC and then the much longer one at Marvel, where like it or not (and for some people it’s a solid not) he had a profound and, to my mind, extraordinarily positive impact on the company and, by extension, comics in general.
There’s a parallel world where none of this ever happened, and it’s likely that we wouldn’t recognize the comics business there, if it even still exists. "

In fact, it surely could have, considering a job offer that Harry mentions, "At one point in the ’80s Jim Shooter offered me a job as an editor at Marvel, but I ended up turning him down. My sense was that comics were the fun part of my life and work was, well, work. If comics became my work, the whole dynamic would be upended.

By the way, that is Jay Zilber to the right of Harry, on that trip to New York!

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A spot illo adorning the Letter Column.

As for how Harry became exposed to, and involved in fandom, he explains that it was "...a letter to the editor in Superboy #182 (February 1972) written by Mike Flynn, who became a lifelong friend. He was announcing the formation of the Legion Fan Club. Fortunately, editor Murray Boltinoff included Mike’s mailing address, which he almost never did in his letter columns, and even more fortunately, the issue appeared just before Christmas break during my freshman year at Northwestern. That gave me some free time to respond to it — something I might not have done if I’d seen it at some other point during the school year. Mike and I began corresponding, and before long we cobbled together The Legion Outpost #1, which was intended to be the fan club’s newsletter. It didn’t take long for the Outpost and the fan club to effectively became one and the same, and after a few issues the fan club was a memory. While I was in college, I also discovered APAs through an entirely separate avenue. A friend of a dorm-mate belonged to CAPA-alpha, and I looked into it. After graduation I joined it as well as APA-5 at a time when its members included Frank Miller, Paul Chadwick and Mark Verheiden. In 1976, Rich Morrissey launched Interlac, the apa that became the focus of my fandom work for literally decades."

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Back in this issue of The Legion Outpost, we continue with two features on two different conventions, one with Mike Flynn covering Julycon, the other being Harry's coverage of not only a Legion convention, but a visit to the DC offices! The article mentions meeting such luminaries as Mike Grell and a now professional king of the letters columns, Guy H. Lillian III, among others. Below is a photo of the traveling circus!

sadly, a typically grainy bw fanzine photo (Mercy Van Vlack second from left in front)

Bruce D. Patterson!

More inside scoops from Harry here, discussing a few of his favorite zines from the scene at that time.

"In the ’70s I read a variety of fanzines, most of which were low-circulation and that I’ve forgotten. But somewhere I have a box full of individual little zines, many of them reproduced using blue ditto, which meant they were micro-circulation publications, many of them of lasting only one or two issues. There’s probably a lot of history in that box — history in the curiosities sense, not a substantial sense. Basically, once I entered the world of APAs, they became my favorite zines. I rejoined Interlac a couple of years ago after a hiatus of about 10 years, although I don’t contribute as energetically to it as I did the first time around. For those who aren’t familiar with APAs, the acronym stands for Amateur Press Association. They’re essentially closed-circuit fanzines, with members sending their contributions to a central mailer who then collects them and distributes one of each back to everyone. CAPA-alpha is monthly; Interlac is bimonthly. These days, I don’t see or read many actual fanzines that are published for the wider fannish world; there’s the occasional Alter Ego, which years ago we would have called a prozine. I’m not sure where the one-shot TwoMorrows titles fall on the spectrum, but I pick up some of those as well.

Back in the day, before the internet, Paul Levitz’s The Comic Reader was a must-read newszine, and I kept with it almost from the start to the very end, by which time two guys by the names of Jerry Sinkovec and Mike Tiefenbacher were publishing it. There were the occasional RBCCs, too.

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unfortunately, I do not know the artist of this nice illo

Following is Update, by Rich Morrissey (subbing for Jay Zilber), where he critiques a specific issue of LSH. Then, another interview appears, the subject being industry veteran (and Marvel family writer...that is, Captain Marvel, Mary Marvel, etc...) Otto Binder. Several C.C. Beck Marvel illustrations adorn the interview, one of which you can see below, in addition to a photo of the writer himself.

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Harry's schedule back then was busy and varied, as he states here, saying "This was during college and the years afterward. Looking back, I have no idea how I juggled classes (and later, work) with a regular social life, editing a fanzine, writing apazines and keeping up with a separate universe of friends, most of them at a distance — which meant lots of letter-writing and occasional phone calls. After I moved to Florida in 1976 and started working for the Miami Herald, I’d fly to New York two or three times a year to attend comic conventions, where a lot of us gathered in person for a long weekend of fun, comics and inevitably some sort of rowdiness and fooling around. The conventions were also a great place to meet and talk with the pros who worked for DC and Marvel. As New York started to fade as a convention venue, Chicago became the go-to place in the 1980s, and then San Diego in the ’90s.

Harry fills us in on what his life was like after fandom and brings us up to date as well below.

"I had kept up a steady stream of Interlac zines, one every two months, for close to 30 years. But then I got married, and a higher priority for my non-work hours emerged. I still kept up with comics, but I dropped out of Interlac as of issue #175 of my zine. A couple of years ago, now that I’m retired, I rejoined ’Lac, but my participation is far more limited than it used to be.

I took early retirement from the Miami Herald in 2014 after 37 years of being a copy editor, page designer, night city editor and Page One editor. Over the course of a couple of years I took my collection and prepared it for sale. I had 147 long boxes of comics, all bagged, tagged and organized, stacked seven-high in a storage bay. By then I was long past the point where my original idea for boxing them — to have my comics handy in case I ever needed to refer to them, or just to reread them — was lost in literally four tons of boxes full of comics. Even if I’d wanted to, it wasn’t practical to retrieve a comic from its box because inevitably it would be in a box at the very bottom of one of those seven-tall stacks; it was easier to just order a new one online, or find it in a collection, or just say the hell with it. So I sold them all, and was happy with the price I got. The dealer was happy to get them and make a lot of money from them after the carrying costs. And the people who bought or will buy them are happy to have a comic they want. It was win-win-win.

​These days, now that I’ve turned 70, I’ve done such pulse-pounding things as serve on my condo board for eight years, walk our dogs and just take things easy. From college to retirement I worked my ass off at the Herald and the two papers I briefly worked at beforehand, and the more-relaxed life I’m now enjoying is my reward."

Lastly, the letters column appears, with a letter from Dave Sim, no less! There is also an insert of a couple pages, The Legion Outpost Bulletin. The sublime back cover by Cockrum is seen below.

Harry makes it into Comics Interview!

Well people, that about wraps up this installment of Ink Stains! Thanks first to Manny Maris for scanning this issue for me from his collection, and of course, Harry Broertjes, for taking the time to answer my questions! I hope you find the time to comment and come back next time! Don't forget to view the pdf!

Ken Meyer Jr
[email protected]