Otto Binder (author)

(1911—1974)
Wikipedia Entry

Many of the great comic book creators of the 40s were anonymous. Companies didn’t list the writers like they may have the artists, so people like Bill Finger and Gardner Fox were not given the proper credit.*  One of the biggest and most successful at the time was Otto Binder.

Binder first started out as a science fiction writer, co-authoring stories with his brother Earl using the pen name “Eando Binder”,** starting with “The First Martian” in Amazing Stories in 1932. The collaboration produced a bunch of pulp novels and stories, and one that made a big splash:  “I, Robot.”*** It was one of the first SF stories to portray a robot as something other than a monster.**** As such, it was adapted to comics in 1955 and again in 1965. It was also the basis for an episode of the original Outer Limits with Leonard Nimoy, who also appeared the 1990s version of the show when they did the story again. It led to a series of stories about the robot, Adam Link.

By 1940, Earl stopped writing, becoming Otto’s agent and Otto started writing comics for Harry “A” Chesler’s comic book shop.  He was hired away by Fawcett  assigned to Fawcett’s major title, Captain Marvel. Binder wrote well over half of the Big Red Cheese’s adventures and created most of the characters that made it successful. Binder also worked for other companies, moving to DC when Fawcett stopped publishing comics. He introduced such mainstays as the Legion of Superheroes, Brainiac, Kandor, Supergirl, the Phantom Zone, Lucy Lane, Titano the Super Ape, Bizarro. and Jimmy Olsen’s signal watch. He continued to write Superman stories until 1969. He continued to write science fiction in his spare time, and returned to it after leaving comics.

Binder had a way of understanding the underlying silliness of comics and created character that where both whimsical and serious, often at the same time. His Mr. Mind – a superintelligent worm -- was one of Captain Marvel’s major foes and he managed to make Mr.Tawky Tawney – a tiger with the bearing of a man – into a charming sidekick.

Alas, in 1967, tragedy struck. Binder’s daughter died and it seemed to affect him. His stories became more pedestrian and he became interested in UFOlogy, writing many articles on the subject.

Binder died in 1974, but the characters he created are still  remembered well today.

___________________________________________________________
*Of course, this was often a deliberate decision on the part of the artist (like Bob Kane), but also, while fans might recognize an artist’s style, the writing was not easy to pick out.

**Eando Binder: E–and-O Binder

****Not to be confused with the Isaac Asimov collection of the same name. Asimov has said that he read it and it influenced him to start writing robot stories.  The publisher of his first collection of robot stories used the title, despite Asimov’s objections.

****Lester del Rey’s “Helen O’Loy” beat it to publication by a month (by cover date).

Marital Blitz (book)

(1954)
By Stan and Jan Berenstain

The Berenstain Bears are a beloved series of children’s books, and there seems to be a minor controversy about the spelling of the authors’ names.  Many people think it’s Berenstein, even though it’s been spelled Berenstain on all the books they’ve written.

I never thought it was spelled that way. Also, I have never read any of the books about their bears.* What did introduce me to them was their paperback, Marital Blitz.

This is not a children’s book. It’s a humorous look at the foibles of married life (note the cover, which is a little risqué for children).  It concentrated on the early years of a marriage.

I read through my parents’ copy many times.  It was one of the things that gave me my idea of what a marriage should be, along with my parents and Jean Kerr.

The Berenstains did quite a few books of this kind in the 50s and 60s, with titles like Lover Boy, The Facts of Life for Grownups, and How to Teach Your Children about Sex without Making a Complete Fool of Yourself.  Of course, as the bears became a phenomenon, they concentrated on that.  Their last book of this nature was published in 1972.

Most, if not all, of these books are long out of print.  But they were a charming sidelight to the careers of a successful husband-and-wife team.  And I noticed from the start the way they spelled their name.

____________________________________________
*I was too old for them when they first came out in 1962, and they never came up when my daughter was the right age.

Rosel George Brown (author)

(1926-1967)

Right now, there is some debate in the science fiction field about the role of women in current science fiction. It’s indisputable that SF has had more male writers than females over the years, but even from the very beginning, women did try their hand at the genre.*  Many are overlooked today, and one that needs to be rediscovered is Rosel George Brown.

Brown was born in New Orleans and lived there most of her life, after getting an MA in Greek from the University of Minnesota. Biographical information is scarce; I believe her birth name was Rosel George, since her husband’s last name was Brown.

Her first sale was “From an Unseen Censor,” which appeared in Galaxy in September 1958.  Most of her short stories appeared there and in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. She was praised both by critics and readers of the time.

I first encountered her with her anthology A Handful of Time, which included most of her best short stories.  It was a book I kept rereading for years, but I seem to have lost my copy in the interim. 

Brown switched over to novels with Sybil Sue Blue, about a female detective of the future.  Sybil was strong and competent, a single mother who has to juggle both her work life and dealing with her teen daughter. 

She collaborated on the novel Earthblood with Keith Laumer.

In this time frame, of course, a lot of the sexist assumptions of the 50s and earlier fit among the more feminist concepts. You can’t blame Brown for that, though. Feminism started gaining mainstream attention in the mid-60s, but Brown’s last story short story came out in 1964, with Earthblood out two years later.    She was diagnosed with lymphoma and died in 1967 at age 41.

That left her to be just a minor footnote in the history of SF.  However, if she hadn’t died so young, she may have been recognized as one of the major names of the genre.

_________________________________________
*John W. Campbell published a story by Amelia Reynolds Long in the third issue of Astounding SF in 1937, and Long had been publishing regularly since 1928.