He had close-cropped red hair and tiny green eyes, and was built like a jockey. He was from Hell’s Kitchen, and had lost part of an ear in a fight when he was twelve; that was about all Sammy knew about him. The sight of the pink nubbin of his left ear always made Sammy a little sick, but Davy was proud of it. Lifting the sheet of tracing paper that covered each page, he stood perusing the five pages of “The Legend of the Golden Key” that Sammy and Joe had already completed. As he looked each page over, he passed it to Frank Pantaleone, who grunted. Davy said, “It’s like a Superman-type thing.”
“It’s better than Superman.” Sammy got down off his stool and went over to help them admire his work.
“Who inked this?” said Frank, tall, stooped, from Bensonhurst, sad-jowled, and already, though not yet twenty-two, losing his hair. In spite of, or perhaps in concert with, his hangdog appearance, he was a gifted draftsman who had won a citywide art prize in his senior year at Music and Art and had taken classes at Pratt. There were good teachers at Pratt, professional painters and illustrators, serious craftsmen; Frank thought about art, and of himself as an artist, the way Joe did. From time to time he got a job as a set painter on Broadway; his father was a big man in the stagehands’ union. He had worked up an adventure strip of his own, The Travels of Marco Polo, a Sunday-only panel on which he lavished rich, Fosterian detail, and King Features was said to be interested. “Was it you?” he asked Joe. “This is good work. You did the pencils, too, didn’t you? Klayman couldn’t do this.”
“I laid it out,” Sammy said. “Joe didn’t even know what a comic book was until this morning.” Sammy pretended to be insulted, but he was so proud of Joe that, at this word of praise from Frank Pantaleone, he felt a little giddy.
“Joe Kavalier,” said Joe, offering Frank his hand.
“My cousin. He just got in from Japan.”
“Yeah? Well what did he do with my brush? That’s a one-dollar red sable Windsor and Newton,” said Marty. “Milton Caniff gave me that brush.”
“So you have always claimed,” said Frank. He studied the remaining pages, chewing on his puffy lower lip, his eyes cold and lively with more than mere professional interest. You could see he was thinking that, given a chance, he could do better. Sammy couldn’t believe his luck. Yesterday his dream of publishing comic books had been merely that: a dream even less credible than the usual run of his imaginings. Today he had a pair of costumed heroes and a staff that might soon include a talent like Frank Pantaleone. “This is really not bad at all, Klayman.”
“The Black … Hat,” Jerry said again. He shook his head. “What is he, crime-fighter by night, haberdasher by day?”
“He’s a wealthy playboy,” said Joe gravely.
“Go draw your bunny,” Julie said. “I’m getting paid seven-fifty a page. Isn’t that right, Sam?”
“Absolutely.”
“Seven-fifty!” Marty said. With mock servility, he scooted the taboret back toward Sammy and Joe and replaced the bottle of ink at Joe’s elbow. “Please, Joe-san, use my ink.”
“Who’s paying that kind of money?” Jerry wanted to know. “Not Donenfeld. He wouldn’t hire you.”
“Donenfeld is going to be begging me to work for him,” said Sammy, uncertain who Donenfeld was. He went on to explain the marvelous opportunity that awaited them all if only they chose to seize it. “Now, let’s see.” Sammy adopted his most serious expression, licked the point of a pencil, and scratched some quick calculations on a scrap of paper. “Plus the Black Hat and the Escapist, I need—thirty-six, forty-eight—three more twelve-page stories. That’ll make sixty pages, plus the inside covers, plus the way I understand it we have to have two pages of just plain words.” So that their products might qualify as magazines, and therefore be mailed second-class, comic book publishers made sure to toss in the minimum two pages of pure text required by postal law—usually in the form of a featherweight short story, written in sawdust prose. “Sixty-four. But, okay, here’s the thing. Every character has to wear a mask. That’s the gimmick. This comic book is going to be called Masked Man. That means no Chinamen, no private eyes, no two-fisted old sea dogs.”
“All masks,” said Marty. “Good gimmick.”
“Empire, huh?” said Frank. “Frankly—”
“Frankly—frankly—frankly—frankly—frankly,” they all chimed in. Frank said “frankly” a lot. They liked to call his attention to it.
“—I’m a little surprised,” he continued, unruffled. “I’m surprised Jack Ashkenazy is paying seven-fifty a page. Are you sure that’s what he said?”
“Sure, I’m sure. Plus, oh, yeah, how could I forget. We’re putting Adolf Hitler on the cover. That’s the other gimmick. And Joe here,” he said, nodding at his cousin but looking at Frank, “is going to draw that one all by himself.”
“I?” said Joe. “You want me to draw Hitler on the cover of the magazine?”
“Getting punched in the jaw, Joe.” Sammy threw a big, slow punch at Marty Gold, stopping an inch shy of his chin. “Wham!”
“Let me see this,” said Jerry. He took a page from Frank and lifted the tracing-paper flap. “He looks just like Superman.”
“He does not.”
“Hitler. Your villain is going to be Adolf Hitler.” Jerry looked at Sammy, eyebrows lifted high, his amazement not entirely respectful.
“Just on the cover.”
“No way are they going to go for that.”
“Not Jack Ashkenazy,” Frank agreed.
“What’s so bad about Hitler?” said Davy. “Just kidding.”
“Maybe you ought to call it Racy Dictator,” said Marty.
“They’ll go for it! Get out of here,” Sammy cried, kicking them out of their own studio. “Give me those.” Sammy grabbed the pages away from Jerry, clutched them to his chest, and climbed back onto his stool. “Fine, listen, all of you, do me a favor, all right? You don’t want to be in on this, good, then stay out of it. It’s all the same to me.” He made a disdainful survey of the Rathole: John Garfield, living high in a big silk suit, taking a look around the cold-water flat where his goody-goody boyhood friend has ended up. “You probably already have more work than you can handle.”
Jerry turned to Marty. “He’s employing sarcasm.”
“I noticed that.”
“I’m not sure I could take being bossed around by this wiseass. I’ve been having problems with this wiseass for years.”
“I can see how you might.”
“If Tokyo Joe, here, will ink me,” said Frank Pantaleone, “I’m in.” Joe nodded his assent. “Then I’m in. Fra—To tell you the truth, I’ve been having a few ideas in this direction, anyway.”
“Will you lend one to me?” said Davy. Frank shrugged. “Then I’m in, too.”
“All right, all right,” said Jerry at last, waving his hands in surrender. “You already took over the whole damned Pit anyway.” He started back down the stairs. “I’ll make us some coffee.” He turned back and pointed a finger at Joe. “But stay away from my food. That’s my chicken.”
“And they can’t sleep here, either,” said Marty Gold.
“And you have to tell us how’s come if you’re from Japan, you could be Sammy’s cousin and look like such a Jew,” Davy O’Dowd said.
“We’re in Japan,” Sammy said. “We’re everywhere.”
“Jujitsu,” Joe reminded him.
“Good point,” said Davy O’Dowd.