Sol Brodsky

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Sol Brodsky (born April 22, 1923, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, United States; died June 4, 1984) was an American comic book artist who, as Marvel Comics' Silver Age production manager, was one of the key architects of the small company's expansion to a major pop culture conglomerate. He later rose to vice president, operations and vice president, special projects. "Sol was really my right-hand man for years", described Marvel editor and company patriarch Stan Lee.^[1]

Marvel Age #22 (Jan. 1985). Cover art by John Romita Sr..

Working primarily behind the scenes, Brodsky's accomplishments include co-creating, with letterer Artie Simek, the long-familiar logo of The Amazing Spider-Man^[2], as well as other Marvel logos still in use in the mid-2000s. He was belatedly credited after decades as the inker of the legendary Jack Kirby's pencil art for The Fantastic Four #3-4 (March-May 1962) and many other landmark comics. When the famed but troubled artist Bill Everett turned in Daredevil #1 (April 1964) extremely late, Brodsky and Spider-Man artist Steve Ditko inked "a lot of backgrounds and secondary figures on the fly [and] cobbled the cover and the splash page together from Kirby's original concept drawing", per Mavel editor-in-chief Joe Quesada.^[3]

So integral was Brodsky to the Marvel phenomenon, and so well-liked, that even after leaving to co-found a rival company, Skywald Publications, he was welcomed back after some months at that eventually defunct firm.

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life and career

Brodsky inked one of penciler Jack Kirby's most significant comics, The Fantastic Four #3 (March 1962).

The son of Abraham and Dora Brodsky, Sol Brodsky was the eldest among siblings Leonard, Ted, and Faye. Determined early in life to pursue cartooning, he took a job sweeping floors at Archie Comics in order to break into the industry. A 1985 tribute feature in the Marvel promotional magazine Marvel Age (pictured above) cites his comic-art debut at age 17 in 1940 "in the comic V-Man" (actually V •••—, using Morse Code in the title); however, the two issues of that Fox Comics title that starred the superhero V-Man were cover-dated January and March 1942. Brodsky's earliest confirmed comics credit is inking a six-page Volton story in Holyoke Publications's Catman Comics Vol. 3, #2, a.k.a. #12 (July 1942).

That same year Brodsky began his long, if initially intermittant, association with Marvel, writing and drawing four one-page "Inky Dinky" gag strips in Mystic Comics #10 (Aug. 1942) and an additional one in Comedy Comics #11 (Sept. 1952), for the company's 1940s predecessor, Timely Comics. His earliest known cover art is for Fox Comics' Blue Beetle #17 (Dec. 1942).

Brodsky served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps during World War II, advancing to the rank of corporal. The Marvel Age article reports he was stationed on the USS Fairfax, but that destroyer was decommisioned to become the British Royal Navy ship HMS Richmond on Nov. 26, 1940, more than a year before the U.S. entered the war.

Upon his return from military service, Brodsky created the feature "Red Cross" in Holyoke's aviation series Captain Aero Comics, where it ran as a backup from issues #21-25 (Dec. 1944 - Feb. 1946).

Brodsky married Selma Cohen on Nov. 28, 1948. Their first child, Janice, was born Aug. 7, 1952, and son Gary on March 18, 1957.

[edit] Atlas Comics

Never a star and generally described as a "journeyman" penciler without an immediately recognizeable style, Brodsky in late 1950 or early 1951 — the exact date uncertain due his work often going unsigned, in the manner of the times — began penciling and inking for Marvel's 1950s forerunner, Atlas Comics. He is tentatively credited as cover artist of Marvel Boy #1-2 (Dec. 1950 - Feb.1951), and confirmably credited through the '50s for covers and occasional stories in issues of Atlas' horror/suspense titles Adventures into Weird Worlds, Strange Tales, and Uncanny Tales; the Westerns Kid Colt, Outlaw, Gunsmoke Western, Western Outlaws, and Wild Western; the satiric Crazy; and such miscellaneous genre titles as Sports Action and Spy Fighters.

After an Atlas reorganization in c. 1954, publisher Martin Goodman eliminated all his comics-division staff except for editor-in-chief Stan Lee. Freelance cartoonist and later longtime Marvel colorist and Millie the Model artist Stan Goldberg recalled:

They needed someone on production to handle things since there was no real staff. I would come in a couple of days a week to help out, but I had a lot of my own freelance stuff, so I couldn't do much. Stan got in touch with Sol. Stan was a one-man department, and with Sol it became a two-man department.[4]

Lee elaborated:

Sol and I were the whole staff of Atlas Comics. I bought the art and scripts and Sol did all the production. My job was mainly talking to the artists and the writers and telling them I wanted the stuff done. Sol did ... the corrections, making sure everything looked right, making sure things went to the engraver and he also talked to the printer. He was really the production manager. And then little by little we built things back up again.[5]

C. 1957, with economic conditions and distrubtion woes prompting what fans and historians call "the Atlas implosion", Goodman again fired the staff. Brodsky teamed with friend and fellow comic artist Mike Esposito to attempt launching a publishing company. Neither Brodsky's magazine prototypes, which included a rock and roll fan magazine, nor his travel kits for children, containing things to draw, play, and stay amused with during trips, found an investor.

Brodsky had much more success with a series of promotional comic books he created and produced for the Big Boy restaurant chain. Lee would script the majority of these. Brodsky also produced promotional comics for Bird's Eye frozen foods, featuring talking vegetables. In 1958, Brodsky became founding editor of the satirical magazine Cracked — Mad magazine's only serious rival — leaving it in 1964 to become Marvel's production manager.

[edit] Marvel Comics

Brodsky concurrently freelanced for Marvel, by now something of his second home, inking The Fantastic Four #3 (the issue that introduced the team's costumes and other mythos sui generis) and #4 (the return of the Golden Age antihero the Sub-Mariner), among other covers/interiors. As Marvel began to expand with the success of Fantastic Four, The Amazing Spider-Man and other titles, Brodsky's organizational skills and easygoing manner led Lee, by now a friend for several years, to offer him the newly created, formal position of production manager in 1964.

Some Marvel humor comics with art credited to Brodsky may not have been his work. As comics historian Mark Evanier notes:

...there were quite a few issues of Millie the Model and other teen comics signed by Sol Brodsky or 'Solly B.' Brodsky was the firm's production manager and an occasional inker, and he did ink a few of the Millie stories that bear his credit. But they were all at least pencilled by Stan Goldberg. At the time, Stan was doing occasional work for the Archie Comics people, and they didn't like to see their artists drawing in that style for other publishers. So when Stan drew teen comics for Marvel, they put Brodsky's name on them in the hope that the Archie editors wouldn't know it was him.[6]

Tales to Astonish #40 (Feb. 1963), a rare interior by the occasional cover-art team of penciler Jack Kirby and inker Sol Brodsky. Ant-Man stars.

Except for a few months away from Marvel in the early in the 1970s, when he and Israel Waldman co-founded Skywald Publications (the first halves of their last names comprising the company name), he remained as Marvel grew from its original three-person staff (himself, Lee, and secretary/receptionist Flo Steinberg). Sometime before May 19, 1978 — the date of a letter, put up for auction years later [1], that he had sent to a Marvel fan — his title had become vice president, operations. Later, as vice president, special projects, he oversaw Marvel UK, Marvel Books, and other brand expansions.

A fictionalized Brodsky is among the beachgoers gathered 'round the unconscious Namor in penciler Marie Severin's splash page for The Sub-Mariner #19 (Nov. 1969). As an in-joke, Severin had drawn the Marvel staff (as well as three personal friends) as on-lookers. Brodsky is the man in the Hawaiian shirt at lower right, gesturing to the police (and standing in front of a cigar-smoking Mike Esposito).^[7] A fictionalized Brodsky also appeared alongside Lee, Kirby and Steinberg — all transformed into a Marvel Bullpen version of the Fantastic Four — in the alternate-reality comic What If Vol. 1, #11 (Oct. 1978). Written and drawn by Kirby, the odd tale featured Brodsky as the Human Torch.

[edit] Misc.

Brodsky's son Gary founded the short-lived, 1980s independent-comics company Solson Publications, which published an issue of the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents update T.H.U.N.D.E.R., by writer Michael Sawyer and artist James E. Lyle, plus the short-lived "super-president" spoof series Reagan's Raiders. Brodsky's daughter, Janice Cohen, has been a Marvel colorist.

Occasional 1970s Marvel writer Allyn Brodsky is no relation.

[edit] Audio

• Audio of Merry Marvel Marching Society record, including voice of Sol Brodsky

[edit] Quotes

Stan Lee : "One guy who I miss tremendously wasn't an official artist. Sol Brodsky. He was my assistant for years and the company's production head. He could write, he could draw, he could ink — he could do everything".^[8]

Stan Lee message read at funeral; excerpt: "I had known him for more than 30 years, and never heard him say a derogatory word about anyone, never saw him give less than his best to any task he tackled, and never knew him to pass the buck or to be anything but scrupulously honest and sincere. He was always ready to do what he could to help, to make things easier for the other person".^[9]

Allen Bellman, Timely/Atlas artist: "Sol and I were close friends. We both lived in Brooklyn and I was already married. I can remember picking up Sol at his home (he wasn't married as yet) and we went for a ride in my new car. I was a new driver and we were riding around the Prospect Park circle and I was scared stiff, and frankly, I was driving blind! Even in those days traffic was heavy. I could hear horns honking at me and it's a miracle that we made it back safely! When Roz and I were married, we moved to the Jersey shore area of Asbury Park, and Sol and his wife visited us often. He was a warm, good-natured person. His passing so early in his life shook me up".^[10]

[edit] Footnotes

[edit] References

• The Jack Kirby Collector #18 (Jan. 1998): Roy Thomas interview
• Silver Bullet Comics: "Stan Lee: Grand Master - Part Two"

• Famous Cartoonist Series Buttons — 008: Sol Brodsky
• POV Online: "Why did some artists working for Marvel in the sixties use phony names?" by Mark Evanier
• The Grand Comic Book Database
• Comic Artists Direct: James E. Lyle
• Marie Severin Sketchagraphs
• Newsarama: "Joe Fridays 4" (Joe Quesada interview series)
• The Comics Journal #92 (Aug. 1984): "Marvel Vice President/Administration Sol Brodsky Dies at Age of 61" p. 18 (offline)
• Marvel Age #22 (Jan. 1985): "Sol Brodsky Remembered", by Dwight Jon Zimmerman, pp. 12-25 (offline)