Comic Book Resources

I think I’ve only heard of one of these, and I’ve forgotten who it is. So… yeah. I’m useless.

5. Adam Austin — Gene Colan
7. Sergius O’Shaugnessy — Denny O’Neil

Ouch. And where’re Jonathan Harkness, David V. Reed, and Jay Gavin? ‘Cause those I could actually answer

Adam Austin was Gil Kane wasn’t he? He adopted the name for his early Marvel work on Hulk and the like, and didn’t want DC to know.

That’s the only one I recognize.

Greg

“Dutch Nireves”

Well. Nireves is “Severin” spelled backward. So, was it John?

Also, I don’t know who “Francis X Bushmaster” is, but the pen name made me laugh out loud. (Frances X Bushman was a silent film actor, probably best known for starring in the 1925 verison of -Ben Hur).

I AM actually interested in they why’s

Adam Austin was Gene Colan and Frank Ray was Frank Giacoia. The rest aren’t familiar to me. What, no Bjorn Heyn?

Jaap, I think the main ‘why’ is basically that employers used to have an expectation of exclusivity (if you worked for Marvel, you didn’t pick up DC assignments, too, and vice versa).

Yeah, it was almost always just to get around the whole exclusivity problem. There are one or two exceptions to that, though, which is why I didn’t want to just say that that was why all of them did it.

And yeah, there were some notable ones that I left off, but I figured it’d make it more challenging this way.

Denny O’Neil’s pseudonym’s first name was SERGIUS, not Sergio. I’m quite surprised nobody’s pointed that out already. Otherwise, I’m totally in the dark here, and wouldn’t have bothered to post at all.

David V. Reed was a psuedonym? Whose?

Dave

David V. Reed was a psuedonym? Whose?

Now that I think about it, I do not know if they ever actually revealed who it was. He was a novelist who used the pseudonym for his comic book work.

I’ve been wondering about the David V. Reed question for years.

Denny O’Neil swiped the name “Sergius O’Shaughnessy” from Norman Mailer; that was the name of the lead character in ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF.

Also: Google’s telling me that “David V. Reed” was a pseudonym for David Vern, born David Levine. According to this interview, he was responsible for introducing John Broome to Julie Schwartz.

Thanks, Jack! I knew it wasn’t revealed at the TIME, but I had to figure it would come out eventually, and it DID!

Thanks again.

ok, without googling or looking it up (and there is a website with all or at least most of these on it):

1. Gary Michaels - Jack Abel
3. Robert Starr - Robert Kanigher
5. Adam Austin -listed above: Colan
7. Sergius O’Shaugnessy -listed above: O’Neil
12. Frank Ray - frank gioacia
15. Francis X. Bushmaster - Gary Conway
18. Dutch Nireves listed above - J. Servin
20. Jay Noel _ I think this is Schaffenberger

sr

But who was ‘Writer X’ from Brotherhood, the series with an amazing first three issues, and then some amazingly bad issues after that?

Then there was Bart Regan, who was Bob Kanigher, who I think in a lot of the dollar comics wanted people to think that there was more than one DC war writer…

Steele Savage sounds like it could be Mike Manley, since Savage Steel was a character from Darkhawk. Or, was he a Punisher character first?

>I AM actually interested in the why’s

Because they were mainly working for one company but moonlighting at another company.

Either 1) they were under a formal exclusive contract, which means they could be fired for working elsewhere, or 2) (and this is more common, especially in Hollywood), if you’re mostly working for one company, but it’s known you’re taking work from another company, an editor is inclined to think, “I better not give this rush job to Harry. He’s likely tied up with his moonlighting work. I’ll give it to Phil instead.”

Even Stephen King had to write under a pseudonym because his publisher only wanted to publish one book a year, and King was faster than that.

Clayton Emery AKA Sarah Hargate, Webmaster
Challengers of the Unknown
http://www.challengersoftheunknown.com

Clayton Emery AKA Sarah Hargate

That was a nice touch!

1. Gary Michaels – Jack Abel
2. Jed Corby – Robert Kanigher
3. Robert Starr – Gardner Fox
4. Steven Mallory – Mike W. Barr
5. Adam Austin – Gene Colan
6. Al Stak – Gil Kane
7. Sergius O’Shaugnessy – Denny O’Neil
8. Farouk Ber Fakir – Mike Baron
9. Floyd Kelly - Jack Kirby
10. Curtis Slarch – Steve Bissette
11. Herbert Fine – Jerry Seigel
12. Frank Ray - Frank Giacoia
13. Christian Volt – Alred Alcala
14. H. E. Arloff – Arnold Drake
15. Francis X. Bushmaster – Gerry Conway
16. Sam Meade - Murray Boltinoff
17. Steele Savage - Gene Day
18. Dutch Nireves – John Severin
19. Lew Loger – Jose Garcia-Lopez
20. Jay Noel - Jim Mooney

Originally, Norman Mailer used the pseudonym Sergius O’Shaugnessy. O’Neil in comics (and didn’t Richard Hughes use that as well occasionally?)