Carole kept the name Seuling, which she says was to not confuse her children. “He and I remained friendly but not friends,” she said. “His family never stopped considering me part of the family.”
Phil’s conventions remained strong, with the big one each July, and later monthly conventions at smaller venues. He supported all types of comics, and he allowed underground material to be sold at his shows. Among them was the infamous Zap Comix #4, which had a story by Robert Crumb called “Joe Blow.” In a cartoony style reminiscent of children’s comics, the story shows a smiling suburban family whose evening descends into an incestuous orgy. The story became a flashpoint with church-sponsored groups, used in campaigns to ban comics.10
On March 11, 1973, the campaign hit Seuling’s monthly show. Police officers entered and asked to speak with the organizers. When they met Seuling, he was told, “This is an arrest.” He and three of his workers were handcuffed and taken in a squad car to jail. They stood accused of selling indecent material to a minor, the kind of charges that Seuling knew could cost him his job and his reputation. He stood to lose everything.
Strong Silent Type
Mike Zeck was a star artist for Marvel, known for his dynamic covers and his knack for action sequences. He drew Captain America, The Punisher, and “Kraven’s Last Hunt,” a critically lauded Spider-Man story, among many others. Before he broke into the business, he was a young fan in Florida with a fondness for Black Bolt, the Marvel character who is often silent because his voice releases a devastating shockwave. Here, Zeck tells the story:
I was a rabid comics fan throughout my childhood and always dreamed of being a comics artist someday. In 1970, after art college, I went home to Hollywood, Florida, and I started connecting with the fan community there. I was well aware of Phil Seuling’s Fourth of July shows in New York City and decided that 1971 would be the year I would realize the dream of attending one.
I started saving money to buy some titles I needed to fill in my Marvel collection. Most of my time, though, was spent preparing for the show’s costume contest. I was inspired by Neal Adams’s version of Black Bolt, so that was my character choice. Never doing things in half measures, I mail-ordered stretch satin material, had a tailor help with the basic bodysuit, sewed all details of the costume myself (including the collapsible underarm glider wings), and shopped for or made all accessories. Even with my perfectionism, I liked the end product, so I knew I wouldn’t be embarrassed in New York.
The drive from South Florida to Manhattan was a long one, but I was too excited to be tired. When I got to the show, it lived up to its billing. I saw many of the artists, writers, and editors I idolized as a fan. This went beyond the advertised guests because so many comics professionals lived in the city and attended the convention. One highlight: Frank Frazetta set up a gallery room at the hotel and let fans come in and browse his paintings.
As awesome as all that was, the best was yet to come, the costume contest. I suited up and made my way to the contestant holding room next to the auditorium. When I walked in, all faces collectively sank and there were mutterings about a professional showing up. I took that as a good sign.
I walked on stage to a roaring crowd. News crews were there as well. The judges, Jim Steranko, Gardner Fox, and Kirk Alyn, picked me as the winner. No doubt the best moment was accepting the first-place award and hearing the crowd start yelling “Speech!” “Speech!” I stayed in character and remained tight-lipped, just like the Black Bolt would do.
I didn’t know much about Phil Seuling at that time other than he was a fan, a comics dealer, and he ran the biggest comics convention in the land. That made him something of a celebrity in my eyes. I had the chance to meet him and speak with him during and around the costume contest, and he was incredibly nice. I got the impression he was enjoying the show as much or more than the other attendees. He was always on stage or present, whether it be panel discussions, auctions, awards, contests, or dinners. Almost as if he was running the show entirely by himself.
While at the convention, Zeck took photos that now stand as some of the best records of the event. The photos in this section are all by him.
Mike Zeck in the homemade outfit that won him first place at the convention’s costume contest. Black Bolt © Marvel Entertainment. Credit: Mike Zeck.
On the sales floor, a fan looks through old comics stored in a box labeled for egg noodles. Credit: Mike Zeck.
Some of the comics creators who were stars of the show: (left to right) Frank Frazetta, known for his fantasy paperback covers and paintings; Harvey Kurtzman, the cartoonist and editor who helped launch Mad; and Gil Kane, a star artist best known for his work on Green Lantern. Credit: Mike Zeck.
Phil Seuling auctions a page of original art from DC’s Showcase #29, “The Last Dive of the Sea Devils.” Credit: Mike Zeck.
3
Nonreturnable (1973–80)
“ON MARCH 11, 1973, at 4 p.m., I was told by a tall man with a firm angry voice that ‘this is an arrest.’ Then, within a few bewildered minutes, I was taken away from my friends and my business, put into handcuffs and led away to a waiting patrol car.”
So begins a guest editorial written by Phil Seuling in the June 1973 issue of Vampirella, a magazine-sized comic from Warren Publishing.1 Jim Warren, the publisher, said in an introductory note that he had provided the space for his friend, “one of the most respected dealers in the comics market.”
Much of the comics industry stood to lose from this wave of censorship that had hit Seuling, including outfits such as Warren, whose publications were aimed at an older audience and had more sex and violence than a major publisher would ever put in a superhero comic.
Vampirella was pure pulp. In the lead story that month, the scantily clad title character was drugged by a band of street toughs. She got her revenge with a blood-sucking rampage. The letter column was dominated by a debate among readers about whether Vampi, as she was nicknamed, had an unrealistically large cup size. The editorial was an oddly sober counterpoint.
“I can’t easily express the feelings of being led in handcuffs from the show. Or being questioned, fingerprinted, mugged [photographed], placed in a cell overnight, and left till morning. Or knowing that the animal pens procedure was being inflicted on two teenage girls who were working at my tables and were miserably frightened at this cold, heavy treatment.”
One of those teenage girls was Jonni Levas, age seventeen. She had met Seuling when he was her teacher. At some point before the arrest, she and Seuling became a couple, something she said she instigated. “Of course people raised eyebrows,” she said. “After a while, when people saw we were still together, they stopped raising their eyebrows.” Other people in their circle, including Bud Plant, remember her as hip but not a hippie. The day of the arrest was one of the worst of her life.
“All I knew of New York City detectives was Kojak,” she said, speaking from Palmyra, New Jersey, where she now lives. “We were taken away in handcuffs and we were told it was a felony and that meant they could shoot us if we ran away.”
Seuling, Levas, and the others spent more than twenty hours in separate cells without food or water before they were allowed to see a lawyer. During that time, news of the arrest appeared in the local media, Seuling said in the editorial. The reports named a church-sponsored group that had a campaign against so-called