Alex Dueben | March 13, 2025
Will Franz, photo courtesy of Annalisa FranzWill Franz had a short career in comics. With the exception of a few stories in the decades since, Franz began writing for Charleton Comics as a teenager in 1967 with “The Sniper,” in Charleton Premiere #19, and his career ended just a few years later. Between 1967 and 1970 he wrote a number of short comics for the company, including “The Organist and the SS” and “Kewpie Dolls” which appeared in titles like Army War Heroes, Attack, Fightin’ Army, Fightin’ Marines, War Heroes. This was in addition to the three serials her wrote for bi-monthly series, for which Franz is most famous. The Devil’s Brigade, which appeared in War Heroes and later Fightin’ Army, told the story of the remnants of a British tank unit and an American tank unit in the North African campaign in World War II who team up. The Iron Corporal, which ran in Army War Heroes, was about an American fighting in the Australian Army in the Pacific campaign. His most famous series was The Lonely War of Capt. Willy Schultz, which he created with the late Sam Glanzman, and originally ran in Charleton’s Fightin’ Army. The series was published in a collected edition last year by Dark Horse Comics and IT’S ALIVE PRESS.
In the years since he left comics – or rather, comics left him – Franz kept in touch with Glanzman and wrote a few comics, some of which have been published, including “The Eagle,” which he made with Glanzman for Negative Burn. For the most part Franz has been working in insurance, he’s been a fencing coach, a writing teacher, a disability activist.
The collection of The Lonely War of Capt. Willy Schultz has been a passion project of editor Drew Ford for years, though neither he nor Glanzman lived to see the publication. Franz and I spoke over zoom over the past year about his life and work, fencing and activism, his long friendship with Sam Glanzman, and the deeply moral philosophy that underlay what he sought to do in these comics. My thanks to Franz and his wife Annalisa for their help and patience in assembling this.
ALEX DUEBEN: Just to start, I wonder if you could talk a little about growing up and what you were reading and watching and what stood out?
WILL FRANZ: I grew up in 1950s Brooklyn, before the times of the Marvel Universe. I always enjoyed movies and television. One of the channels we have is rerunning the old Lone Ranger with Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels. Guy Williams’ Zorro was a favorite of mine growing up. I was never into superheroes. Superheroes didn’t give a realistic approach to anything. I just mentioned to [my wife] Annalisa the other day, I like both Star Wars and Star Trek, but I prefer Star Trek. Because Star Trek is science-based, reality-based, where as Star Wars is great fantasy. I enjoy them both. But my preference is for the more realistic. Back when I was growing up we had Superman and Batman, who were the muscle, and Green Hornet, who was more intelligent. I loved the illustrations in the old Dell Comics. Gunsmoke. The Lone Ranger. The Cisco Kid. Cheyenne. I don’t know who some of the illustrators were because they never had their names on it, but the detail was splendid. Classics Illustrated. Some of the illustrations were marvelous and some of them sucked big time, but one that caught me was Sam Glanzman, who then merely signed his initials SJG. Not only his detail, but his emotion. There was a rhythm and a grace to his work. Very realistic. Russ Heath was magnificent, but all of his work looked the same. Great facial expressions, beautiful women, handsome men, but with Sam you could always feel that guy has dirt under his fingernails.
There was an issue of, Air War, I think, for Dell Comic Books. It was a World War I aviator story. An American pilot had lost his brother. In the end the main character survived but he’d been shot down and in the background Sam drew this marvelous line drawing of the dead brother looking down on him. I thought that was so freaking beautiful. I always think of that panel when I think of Sam’s work. That was the first war comic I ever bought. My father wasn’t a veteran. He was John Wayne’s age. His left eye was mostly blind and kept him out. I’d watch Bataan with Robert Taylor or Guadalcanal Diary with Anthony Quinn, but then I saw Combat #7, “The Battle of Sunda Strait.” I was amazed by not only the detail of the ships, but when a torpedo hits the engine room of an Australian ship the grill work melts instantly. The men fell in and died instantly. I’m looking at these drawings and there’s nothing gory, but he gave the impression of horror. I thought, that’s the way I want to write.
There’s a novel The Killer Angels: A Novel of the Civil War, that they based the movie Gettysburg on. Unfortunately it was [Michael Shaara's] only novel. Talk about page turning style. He got the point across of a canon shot hitting a man and sending his body cartwheeling. I don’t remember exactly how he wrote it, but it wasn’t gory. I always admired the way he got that imagery. Looking at the illustrations in the old comic books, this is why Sam stood out. As much as I admired Joe Kubert, I always preferred Sam. I collected them both.
But [regarding] what did I watch, I mentioned the movie Attack! That was a gut puncher. That was like, huh? I was, what, ten years old when I saw it. Kirk Douglas's 1960 historical – though, highly inaccurate – epic Spartacus. The emotional impact on a 10-year-old boy of the enslaved heroes achieving victory, then gradually getting whittled down, betrayed, defeated. And then over 6,000 of them nailed to crosses along the highway was rather devastating, as well as eye-opening, to the harsh realities of life. The approach of the Roman legions for the final battle was the first truly scary thing I recall seeing in a film) had such a significant emotional impact on my view of the world. There was All Quiet on the Western Front. Paths of Glory. That also made an impact, just like The Long and the Short and the Tall, as to what the war was really like as opposed to John Wayne. I admired these types of stories and I wanted to make those kinds of stories myself.
It sounds like war stories were really central to what engaged you from a young age.
This is at the time when I developed what we now call Type One Diabetes. I wanted to serve in the military. I wasn’t interested in going into battle. My father had a cousin Charles who was a Sergeant. A Master Sergeant, I think. I admired him. He always seemed to be a very upright man. My friend’s father, who really contributed to raising me in the neighborhood, was a Sergeant in World War II. He came from an Italian-American family and wanted to go to aviation high school. His father said, you want to go to high school? He took him down to Pier 6 and said, here’s your high school, be a longshoreman. Well as soon as he turned eighteen, he beat it. He joined the Civilian Conservation Corps. He was a lumberjack out in Oregon. And he joined the military. He told me he tried going overseas, but he had a perforated eardrum.
These are some of the men I spoke with as a kid. I always admired that sense of duty, of doing the right thing. Again, this man with the perforated eardrum never went into battle, but he taught me a lot about morality and acting in general. Years later when I started losing so much sight, I had to go to a therapist and she asked me why I was always interested in battle and later swordsmanship. I said, I really don’t know. She said, it might be because of your daily struggle to survive with your diabetes. That every morning you wake up, and you don’t know whats going to happen. Now diabetes is next to nothing compared to what it was in 1964. Sixty years ago the end of this month. She felt that that might be why I have an understanding of the day to day struggle and of an association with men through no fault of their own are caught in that kind of situation. I also was sent to Catholic grade school and that might have something to do with it too. Yelling and screaming and beating. Watching my friends get the crap beaten out of them. The prettier the girl, the harder the nuns hit them. It was a daily struggle. My childhood was one of going to a combat zone. To this day, I still get nervous in a classroom. That also may have something to do with my understanding. But why I was interested in it in the first place? It has always interested me.
So why comics as opposed to movies or TV or radio or whatever?
Because I loved the illustrations. I could through scriptwriting – and let me tell you, writing a script is not easy because you are under tremendous restraint. When you’re writing a script you have to be disciplined because you have a certain amount of space to tell your story. You have to be able to communicate your ideas to a visionary, an illustrator, and it’s, I feel, an intense way of writing. You have to communicate more and find ways for them to relate to what you are trying to get across. Not using just words but expressing your ideas in words and illustrations. Like describing a sunset to a character. The end of that story I did for Joe Kubert, “Slave", with the guy in one the cross. I had the hawk circle and rest on the crossbar and then fly away. There was no dialogue. It was all what I told the illustrator to do. I think I even had the setting sun in it. I would always do pencil drawings. I started out with stick figures and the oval bodies. I started learning about light sources.
This is how Sam Glanzman drew me in. I had sent him some of the drawings I had done based on his work. He loved the detail in them and wanted to meet me because he wanted to steal my swipe files. My swipe files were his work. [laughs] I still remember, we were in his studio in Long Island and he was looking and his mouth almost fell open when I showed him my swipe file. He started grinning and started laughing. I was making my own comic books. Paneled and drawn and captioned and ballooned and everything. He was impressed and said, write a shorter version of this. He showed me how he liked his scripts done. I wrote up four and sent them to Dick Giordano who sent it back too me. He said he couldn’t use them but he critiqued them and explained why. The generosity of this man, same as Sam, he said he wanted to see more. Instead of dismissing this fifteen year old kid, he wanted to see more. Talk about encouragement! This was at the time when I was suddenly out of school. My doctor didn’t want me attending high school because of the diabetes. I was that critical. It was dangerous for me to go to school. He withdrew me. He said you can get a tutor form the Board of Education. I had this time and I had these two generous men who were giving me a chance to do professionally what I’d been doing on my own. One door closes, another one opens.
How long was it between when Giordano critiqued those first four scripts and when you sent him the script for “The Sniper?”
Just a few months, I think. If you remember the old G.I. Joes, when they were twelve inches tall – when they were still military and not superheroes – I had a few of them for drawing. Remember, I wanted to be an illustrator. The diabetes was so bad there were times when I could not steady a pencil. I couldn’t steady my hand. And then Sam was encouraging me to write. So I just took out a few of these G.I. Joes, idly positioning them. There was this toy dagger and you could stick it in the G.I. Joe’s neck. I thought that would be a dramatic end to a story. You couldn’t show it, but you could imply it. I typed it up and sent it to Dick. And he loved it. To this day, it embarrasses the hell out of me. But it worked. As Sam said, give them what they want. I can’t remember the exact order, but I think the next thing he did was offer me D-Day. Which was 27 pages. I think I wrote that in a week.
When Dick offered me D-Day I had already had the idea of the story of the German side developed. I had a whole bunch of these beautiful American nurses with German names helping me with my diabetes and I put them in the story. [laughs] And I just put it all together. The first time I had very little revisions. I had to add a page of just battle action and I didn’t want to rewrite too many pages. I think after that was when I got called in. Editor Dick Giordano was impressed with my D-Day script. He wanted three on-going bi-monthly war series for Fightin’ Army, Army War Heroes, and War Heroes titles and offered me the opportunity. That’s how I did Willy Schultz, The Iron Corporal, and The Devil’s Brigade.
You wrote an introduction to the Willy Schultz collection which discusses a lot of the background behind the comic. I would argue that your work overall – and this comic in particular – stands out because you were trying to write about war as a horror story as opposed to an adventure story, which is how so many have written these stories, especially for comics.
That’s the way I’ve always looked on it. I was never a John Wayne enthusiast. The first meaningful book I read was All Quiet on the Western Front. Really the finale of that book. But the most vicious – I call it anti-war – movie was Robert Aldrich's 1956 movie Attack! with Jack Palance, Eddie Albert, Lee Marvin. Based on a play called The Fragile Fox. I found that the movies that really influenced me were originally plays. War is not glorious. I was fascinated by stories of survival. I knew a man who was shot out of his tank in Italy and he had arthritis of the spine and was walking around on crutches. This was in the 1960s. I knew a man who was a machine gunner in France who witnessed a bunch of SS men kill themselves rather than be taken prisoner. When he got home, he carried a Luger with him. He couldn’t walk down the center of the street. He stopped carrying the Luger when he almost pulled it on a bus driver. And then of course, Sam.
These were the men I paid attention to. They weren’t bragging. In fact they rarely said what they themselves had done. They said what they had witnessed. With Sam, some of the stuff in the U.S.S. Stevens [stories] that he attributes to other shipmates, every now and then he’d slip and he’d let it be known, Will, this happened to me. You’ve got to pay attention. If you want to write and relate about someone’s experience, you have to pay attention. War is not glory. All you’ve got to do is go to any VA hospital. ANY VA hospital! I had some friends in college, one man was a Ranger in Vietnam, and some of the stories he told me that he had “witnessed.” This is a man who killed at close range. He had to empty a magazine into a man who wouldn’t stop charging him. You could see it in his eyes when he’d relate this stuff. This was well after I did the writing for Charleton. But that’s the effect that war has and that's why I don’t believe in glory.
There was one panel, I think in the third chapter of Willy Schultz, where you had the plane swooping down, the tank being blasted into the air. Sam was of course great at drawing this, but then you have this caption: “the first rocket hit Mueller’s tank, blasting it into the air. Mueller was married and had a little kid.” You were consciously taking an image that people had seen before, that could have been in any war comic, but altering what that meant and how the reader should feel.
Again, I want people to think. You see a tank knocked out – that’s four to five men incinerated. Most tankers burned to death. When the tanks were hit, hatches buckled, and they couldn’t get out. One anti-tank round would drill through the armor and some of them would ricochet all inside the compartment and kill the crew that way. If you see some of the later German Mark IV tanks, they have shielding put up alongside their tracks and wheel assembly. That’s to detonate and slow down the anti-tank weapons. I forget what the skirts were called; there was a name. I haven’t gone through that kind of research in years.
There are men in there. There’s a few terrifying aerial bombardments. I think it’s a B-24 where all of a sudden – boom – the wing explodes and folds up and the plane goes down. Very few of those guys could get out. Centrifugal force stuck them in there. Sam’s art also influenced my writing. I wasn’t a big comic book fan of Sgt. Rock and all that. I liked Classic Illustrated. Fine artwork. This is what drew me to Sam. I was so impressed by the intricacy of his work and the sense of being there. Although he didn’t draw gore, he gave the outline impression of horror. I think I had a very good education without having to actually live through it myself on what war can do to people. Again, I’ve spoken with men who did live through it and I’m grateful that they shared their experiences with me.
I know you’ve done other interviews over the years, but we’re talking about this period of a few years from over fifty years ago. I’m sure it’s odd for you that you’re still talking about them, but it was such a unique body of work.
Thank you. I appreciate that. Maybe because I was not influenced by the standard comic books. I had done a lot of research on the Panzer divisions. In fact in Willy Schultz they were originally Mark IIIs and IVs. I had given Sam a plastic model of an early Tiger tank. Tiger tanks were independent heavy tank battalions. They were not parts of Panzer divisions, but he had them all in Tiger tanks. He drew them well. I had a done a lot of research on the Panzer divisions and I wanted to write about the Eastern front. I even had a series lined up called “Blood and Iron.” It would be about an independent heavy tank battalion fighting the Russians. Back then in a comic book you could fight the Russians. Sam went, why do you want to do that? Those guys were a bunch of bastards! I said, fine, I’ll put an American in the German army. I was tired of seeing every German in a comic book had a swastika and the old World War I helmet. They were all evil and had monocles and scars. I was thinking, how am I going to put an American in the German army? I don’t remember exactly how it came about. Willy Schultz was originally named August Kruger. “Gus” Kruger among his American friends. Sam said, what the hell kind of name is that? Call him “Willy Battle” or something like that! I got ticked. I said, fine! That’s why he was named Willy. At the time Hogan’s Heroes was on and they had Sergeant Schultz. So here you have this blond headed aryan with the name of a German clown. I think that also attracted readers. He wasn’t Sergeant Rock or Captain Storm – he was every man. He was in a no win situation. He was falsely accused. A general’s son was dead and the general had his people railroad him. I could never get into the further details of why that happened and why Wilks was so vehemently bitter about it. You’re limited to ten pages. When you write a script you have to take into consideration the art, how much of the story will be told in the art as opposed to verbally. A lot of my wording was cut because Sam would say, I just don’t have the room. I learned through him about writing a visual script. A different type of writing goes into it.
I’m thrilled that it’s remained popular, but that was a very rough time in our country. I knew guys who got drafted. I knew guys who were over there. I was 4-F from age 14, so I was ineligible. Families would argue. People asking, should I go or should I stay? People saying, if you don’t like the country, go to Canada. People burning draft cards. My generation didn’t go over as a unit, nor come back as a unit. It was all individuals. And they would come back at night and they’d be spat at. Again, Willy Schultz, I didn’t want it to be just a combat story. I wanted my readers to think about the five guys incinerated in the tank. Or the guy who blew the tank up. What does he feel? That old feeling of relief, I survived! And later on, what did I do to survive? And Willy Schultz looking back, it’s a story of survival. Again the original ending that I wrote in 1990, I feel was far more dramatic than the ending I wrote for the book.
You mentioned in the introduction that in this book we are reading the third ending you had for Willy Schultz.
Originally Schultz was going to get killed at the end of the war.
That was your original idea of how to end the story?
He had an American nurse sweetheart who was trying to help him. I feel the ending that I gave in the book was more fitting to the time in which Willy Schultz was written. Survival. I don’t want to ruin it for people who haven’t read it yet, but I’ve had tremendous dealings with the disability community. I’m a member of the disability community myself. I have been for many years. That’s why I had one of the main characters in a wheelchair. To have it be about survival. Still alive, still functioning, still contributing. Some people, I know, preferred the first [ending], but they understand the second. I hope the readers appreciate why I ended the series the way I did. I wanted to get Schultz involved in Operation Valkyrie, but I didn’t have the space. It worked out okay, though.
Without giving too much away, there was clearly a meaning in ending the book with him still alive in the Vietnam war era and ending in the time period when it was written.
I also wrote it in a way that to me – well, the besides the ending of the partisan unit in Italy which was kind of nasty –
It was.
Not as nasty as the original! [Pause] Actually, maybe it was. But I wanted to assure people that Schultz was not a nazi. He sympathized with the enemy. He got to know the enemy. That scene in the concentration camp. And then him talking with his Sergeant Sturmholtz who was saying, this isn’t what I fought for! No. In the end, this is exactly what they fought for. I wanted people to realize why Schultz did what he did. He never killed an American. He may have caused a few to get killed. That time when he sent a radio message warning the tank company. He gave the Americans a chance to come around and blast the hell out of the Germans. He fought because he felt the nazis had to be stopped. He was an anti-fascist.
I have another story that I wish some time I could get published about an American sergeant in Italy that fought in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain. This is based on an actual Marine in the Pacific who they wouldn’t let rise above Sergeant because he was a commie. He wasn’t a communist! He was an anti-fascist! There were orders in Italy to start arresting Italian partisans who were communists. No one talks about that. Another thing that’s always bothered me is how no one ever talks about Mussolini. Mussolini used poison gas against the Ethiopians. He was the one who brought tanks into the desert. He was doing this stuff when Hitler was still in jail. And no one talks about it. It’s always the Germans. No one talks about the Hungarians, the Romanians, the Croatians, the Ukranians. Germany couldn’t have done what they did just with German manpower. Not that they were pro-Hitler; they were anti-Stalin. And if you look at Germany – I don’t know if you’ve ever tried reading Mein Kampf?
Never.
Don’t. But there is a section in there about what was going on in Europe. The books only came out recently about some of the outrages committed by Eastern European civilians against Jews and Gypsys. Murdering them. Beating them to death in the streets. And these are civilians wearing arm bands. No one wants to talk about it. I remember back in the day the first time Schultz was with a German column and the planes machine gunned it and the Germans were crying out for mama or Hilda. They weren’t saying Sieg Heil or anything like that. That was his first view of the enemy. He had been hit and the German medic Erich comes over and helps him. He’s realizing, hey, they’ve got good guys like we do, and they’ve got schmucks like we do. Again, at the time in the comic books, the Germans were always evil. I was just tired of it and I wasn’t going to perpetrate it. I think I got away with a lot.
You definitely got away with a lot.
Do you know why? Because the editors didn’t really read my stuff. Sal Gentile and I had a massive argument over the partisans because I knew it was a rough story. I got it in way ahead of time. I said, Sal, if anything has to be changed, let me know and I’ll change it. I want it to be strong, but if you can’t do it, let me know. He said, oh it’s fine. I think I only met him once in the Manhattan office. He was a nice guy. He was just incredibly over-worked. And then when I get a copy of it in the mail on a Saturday, the whole drama of the ending of it was changed! And Joe Gill’s name was on it! I called Sal up and I was on the phone for about two hours. He blamed the Comics Code Authority. I made an appointment with Mr. Leonard Darvin. I showed it to him and he said, we didn’t change anything. We never change. This was the way we got it [from Charleton]. I realized, what’s the point? I was again getting older. I was learning I wouldn’t want Sal Gentile’s job. All the titles he had to go over. It was a learning experience. I’ll know better next time. I’ll be more careful next time. Maybe I did go too far? In the book, those pages have been restored to their original script. I had the mentorship of fine men like Sam Glanzman and Dick Giordano. I got to meet Joe Kubert.
What was writing for Charleton like back then?
Working for Charlton in those days had advantages as well as disadvantages. As only one editor would be responsible for thirty or more titles, as a writer, I was left pretty much on my own. I was told the number of pages needed for a story dealing with the army or navy or air force, and when it was due. They were pleased, as I never missed a deadline.
a teenage Franz, photo courtesy of Will FranzHowever, I rarely got feedback which eventually led to a colossal screw-up a few years later with the over-worked and stressed-out editor Sal Gentile and myself over an already-published and too-late-to-be-corrected screw-up in The Lonely War of Capt. Willy Schultz involving the introduction of Italian partisans to the series. That error has, thankfully, been repaired in the book recently published by Dark Horse. But overall, working at Charlton with Dick Giordano, Sal Gentile, George Wildman – and, of course, Sam Glanzman – and actually getting published was an incredibly rewarding as well as educational experience for a teenage guy. Especially when some of my friends were stacking cans of cat food in the local grocers. Not, of course, that there’s anything wrong with that.
You mentioned Joe Kubert just now and in your introduction as well, but you didn’t say much about him.
I liked him a lot. I was very proud of a story I wrote called “The Kewpie Dolls” about two little Italian kids. A G.I. guns down their father. They were looting. The G.I. feels real guilty and the sergeant is yelling, we would have shot them anyway, they’re looters. These kids never say a damn thing. He says, you guys look like a couple of kewpie dolls. He’s giving the kids C ration cans and they just put them in their bags. Oh, you’re saving them for later? Okay. The German attack and to save the kids, the G.I. runs out and the squad gets wiped out. He’s running down the road with the kids wondering, did I do the right thing? All of a sudden a German tank hits him and he goes down. He’s bleeding and yelling at the kids to run – and the kids start looting him. They take his wedding ring, his wallet, and he goes, I guess the sergeant was right about those kewpie dolls. As the tank is going past two Germans go, oh, those two kids look like American kewpie dolls. Give them some rations. I showed that to Joe and he goes, that’s horrible story! [laughs] I didn’t say a thing to him. He goes, it was well-written, but it was horrible! I said, that's war, Joe.
The only story I could ever sell to him was “Slave” about a prisoner in a Roman quarry. They didn’t put my name on that one. I don’t know what it was back then. They wouldn’t put the writers’ name on anything. One of the last stories I did at Charleton was called “The Organist.” I had in the copy column “A story by Willy Franz” – and they cut that out! It was in the copy column! You’re supposed to print it. I don’t know. Stan Lee really got things going as far as giving everyone credit – the letterer, the inker, the colorist – even the writer.
So as far as this new last chapter in the book that is drawn by Wayne Vansant, did Drew [Ford] have the idea for you to write a new ending for the book? Or was that something you wanted to do for the collection?
It was my idea. I figured, let me try a different approach to the finale of Willy Schultz. Actually this ending is more upbeat than the original. [laughs] The original ending was really miserable. If I remember right, he had rescued Ilse, the German General’s daughter. The war is over and G.I.s are going home – and he’s there in his German coat and he can’t go home. Some Americans are razzing him and an American MP who resembles Tiny, the German driver who he was friends with, starts yelling at them and says, don’t mind them, you’ve been through garbage and they haven’t. They’re newly arrived. Just go home. And Ilse comes over and in German says, come on, let’s go home. Wilkes is there in a staff car and Schultz screams, I didn’t murder him! Wilkes looks at him and doesn’t recognize him. I think I had an idea that he had survived the war and with Ilse’s love he could start a new life while Wilkes with his hate would be forever trapped in his.
But I wanted to try to give it a little more positive spin. In the original ending he had merely survived, where the new ending there was a chance of hope for him. I think both endings worked. It depends, I guess, on your point of view. Going over all of this right now is bringing back emotion to me. I’ve got a tear in my eye right now remembering things that happened in the country, things that happened in my own personal life, the loss of friends. I am so very thrilled that it was popular and that it has remained important for some people. I put in the introduction in 1990 at a convention in upstate New York, a man came in carrying a stack of my books and asked me if I’d autograph them. I said, sure. Sam will autograph them, too. I go to write in them and I hear him go, Willy Schultz sure meant a lot to me in ‘Nam. I looked at him and I was about to say, it’s only a comic book, but he had the thousand yard stare. I don’t know if you’ve ever met anyone with it.
I have.
It’s haunting. I remember it to this day. Obviously. This is why when I teach creative writing at various disability centers, I always caution people, remember that they may not understand what you’re writing, but just make sure they don’t misunderstand. Make sure that what you’re trying to say is going to get across to them in the way you want. Willy Schultz wasn’t, my country right or wrong. The very country and system that he was defending was screwing him over. I researched this later on. He was technically a traitor. They would have either imprisoned him or hanged him for treason because he bore arms in the army of an enemy nation. He wasn’t working undercover. He was finished by the very system he risked his life to defend.
It sounds like you and Sam – you write in the introduction about how you got know each other before you were working together – but it sounds like you two became friends long after working together.
We stayed in touch. He was mostly deaf at the end, but I was talking with him and I said, I love you, Sam. He said, I love you, too, Willy. Those were the last words we said to each other. He died shortly after. At his memorial service it was pouring rain. People were standing in the pouring rain to be there. Including one American sergeant in his dress blues. It turns out he had seen me and Sam at a convention years earlier. He was showing me pictures he had taken of me and Sam.
I was just one of MANY who he took under his wing. They wanted him to teach a class. He wasn’t into teaching classes but he would work with individuals. He was a masterful teacher and mentor. He didn’t realize. Most of them who are really good don’t. He knew how to get to the heart of the matter. He wanted to get another writer because he was tired of drawing the same stuff. He liked my ideas. I don’t remember what. I think it was a story about the Battle of the Bulge called “Twilight of the Gods.” I did my own comic book on it. I forget how many pages it was dealing with it. I had researched sections of the Battle of the Bulge. I put some actual occurrences in among my fictional characters and Sam liked that. He said, write a short version and send it to Dick Giordano. He showed me the script format he liked. Instead of the standard horizontal format that most scripts are written in, he preferred a line down the middle of the page and on the left side, panel one and the description. Right side is all the copy. To him that was easier to follow. So that’s the way I wrote all of my scripts back then. I sent four stories to Dick Giordano and I’ve got to tell you, I miss working with Dick Giordano. He sent them back to me saying he couldn’t use them – and he critiqued them – and said that he’d like to see more. The next thing I did was “The Sniper” which to me was dreadful, but he put it on the cover of Charleton Premiere. And he wanted to see more! I was what, sixteen years old?! But again, both of these men were my mentors. I’m crazy. I’m not stupid.
“The Sniper” appeared in Charleton Premier #19 and your first published comic.
Yes, “The Sniper” was my first published work. I hated it, but editor Dick Giordano, bless his heart, loved it.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt your train of thought. You were talking about Sam and how you worked together.
I did not always agree with Sam. We would discuss, we would argue, but I would always see his point of view. From his experience in the field. From his experience as a former warrior, a sailor. He was in kamikaze attacks off Okinawa. We were at a convention – I think the last convention in Manhattan we were at, a few years ago. One of the other illustrators made an unwise comment regarding war. I forget what exactly he said. The only time I ever saw Sam lose control. He turned and he said, “if you don’t like it, get out! If you had only seen what I saw. What happened to the kids on my ship—” And all of a sudden he broke down weeping. I put my hand on his shoulder. I couldn’t say a damn thing. The man running it – Alan Rosenberg, I think? – said, it had to come out. Sixty years he’d been holding that in. Fortunately the other illustrator kept his mouth shut. And then Sam started apologizing to us. [laughs] You’ve got nothing to apologize for. That was the kind of man he was. And again, to be taken under the wing of a man like him. And the generous professionalism of the likes of Dick Giordano. Who I miss to this day. When he moved to DC, I was very limited in my writing experience. I wrote a western called “The Outrider,” I think. Dick liked it but he didn’t edit those kinds of stories. But again, we stayed in touch. We talked. I love reading articles about him. I have never heard anything negative about him as an individual and as a pro.
I ran into some editor one or two of them at DC – ain’t going to mention his name – but I found out Sam wanted me to do a few Haunted Tank stories. So I did. I knew they were better than anything they were putting out at the time and pardon me, but by that time I knew something about writing and continuity. I got them back from this editor with a nasty letter. You do a whole script? We never do a whole script. Blah blah blah blah. And he didn’t care. I let Sam know and Sam blew his stack. Then I found out that this guy had been rude to everybody. I was wondering if maybe it’s me. I was in my twenties? I forget how old I was at the time. But again, this is why you really do appreciate the mentorship. I was at a medical meeting the other week and they’re amazed that I’m still alive. This eyepatch? Who would ever think I’d become Captain Lupo. This is the result of a bad marriage. Stress. I tell people it was stress; the divorce aggravated the diabetes. I’m mostly blind in my remaining eye. I’ve worked hard to keep going. I’m a retired fencing master. For real. Authorized to wear black by the first American born Olympic fencing coach. He bellowed at me from his hospital bed to wear black. I’ve worked all my life at one thing or another. When I lost so much of my vision, It got to the point of, Will, what are you going to do now? I can’t read maps for the Parks Department, I can’t do this, I can’t do that. I became an advocate in the disability community and I’ve never regretted a day of it. Because I have met some marvelous people in the disability community who also have had to work their butts off. And in a way it’s kind of going back to Willy Schultz who got a raw deal. But he didn’t give up. And I think we talk about the different endings. The original ending that I wrote was merely surviving. The new ending, he not only survived, but he was prospering. He was scarred. Physically.
I like Wayne Vansant’s artwork. I’m very, very pleased that Drew convinced him to complete Willy Schultz. Cause to me he got the spirit. It wasn’t just – The late great Russ Heath was a fantastic technician, but all his work looked the same. Beautiful work. But it all looked the same. Wayne did Katusha, I think, about a young girl tank commander. The one thing I feel about Wayne he loves beautiful women. One of the characters in the end of Willy Schultz is hanging by the neck and she looks like she’s sleeping. [laughs] But that’s okay, Wayne! Honest to God, I am thrilled with what he did. There’s one panel he did in Indochina at Điện Biên Phủ. Of Schultz going to help a fellow legionnaire. He’s not armed and he’s a captain and he’s going to help catch the guy. Although he’s a captain, that imagery of him is of him helping rather than killing. I don't know if Wayne felt it, sensed the character consciously or something was working subconsciously on him, but I am thrilled by that panel, in particular.
We were talking before about how it’s great that the book is out, but it’s hard since Sam and Drew never lived to see it published.
Emotionally, it's very bittersweet. I mean Drew Ford and I were never close, but we were honest with each other. And if it wasn’t for Drew, none of this would have been done. I miss him. It is so unfair – especially why he died. If we had known he had been ill. If he had reached out. But I hope the book does well for all involved. And who knows, maybe they’ll say, Will, you did The Iron Corporal, what was that about? I enjoyed writing The Iron Corporal more than Willy Schultz. Willy Schultz was troubling. I don't remember if I put this in the introduction, but I think it was the only time I wrote in second person. I think that drew people in. When I teach writing I say first person is “I” and second person: you’re Perry Mason. You’re questioning the reader all the time. Third person is the tame one. They, it, whatever. I think the accusatory aspect of Willy Schultz may have gotten to people as well. I wish I could remember what was going through my head at the time.
When Willy Schultz had escaped from the prison train in Italy and he was starving and he goes by a house and all he has is a bayonet and there’s a German soldier inside with bread and wine. Schultz kills him with the bayonet and then takes the bread and wine. The German is sitting upright in the chair with his head back and mouth open and Schultz put the bread in his mouth. You paid for it, you earned it. I wish I could remember what was going on historically at the time I wrote that. Why I wrote such a really grim scene. I think that’s the grimmest scene I ever wrote. Again, this is bringing back a real mix of emotion. I talk to writers about passion. There are some wonderful writers out there. Technically they’re terrific, but where’s the passion? Why should I care? I wanted people to care about what Schultz felt. What he thought. That when he had an opportunity with the two old peasants who betrayed him and Elena to the Germans, Schultz could have gunned these two old bastards down, but he just threw his carbine to the ground. He chose not to. You, as a reader, what would you have done? I always wanted people to think that way. The second person accusatory format, I think, was a bit of a stimulus. I think if I had written Willy Schultz in third person or first person, it may not have caught on the way it apparently did.
You mentioned The Iron Corporal and that’s one of the other serialized stories you wrote. For people who don’t know, what was The Iron Corporal?
The Iron Corporal was inspired by the little-known 1961 British WWII drama The Long and The Short and The Tall aka The Jungle Fighters starring Laurence Harvey, Richard Harris, and Richard Todd. And I had been impressed by Sam Glanzman’s New Guinea episode of Combat for Dell. I felt a story dealing with and American volunteer fighting with allied soldiers wearing bush-hats would be rather different. So, I started doing research on Australia’s involvement in WWII. Originally the iron corporal was an Australian corporal, but he had to be an American. Sam said the main character should be an American volunteer and that he should have a gimmick so, “give him an iron ribcage or something.” Sam, as I said, was my mentor, and I respected and loved him dearly but – an iron ribcage? So Australian Corporal Ian Heath became an American volunteer in the Australian Army who, while visiting in pre-war Australia, was beaten almost to death by some back-ally street thugs and left for dead. Heath’s father, a wealthy steel industrialist, had a special flexible steel brace designed for him and made to compensate for his irreparably-shattered ribs. And through his influence he wanted to volunteer for the Australian army. He always wore a black t-shirt cause that covered the iron ribcage. The ribcage was not inside of him, it was a brace. Rather than the relentless grimness of The Lonely War of Capt. Willy Schultz, The Iron Corporal became far more of an ensemble with the development and inclusion of Harry Simms, “Fat” Earl Boswell, Tom McKee, Doris the Mule, and others.
I remember I got some criticism when a Japanese hand grenade come flying into the foxhole and the guy freezes, he’s holding onto the grenade and shoves the guy out and the guy gets killed. It was either him or all three of them. And they put that right on the cover. I wanted to make The Iron Corporal more varied in its approach. After a while to me, Ian Heath became just the narrator. I enjoyed more writing about Harry Simms and Boswell – and Bill Franks, who was me, but with a mustache and goatee. Sam made me a lot more muscular than I was at the time, too. I enjoyed that. I saw in an interview that Sam said he enjoyed it more than Willy Schultz. He was a Pacific veteran and it gave him more to relate to. I remember twice I got a little ticked off with him. He left off the shadow of the grim reaper over all the characters in the end. There was another one where Ian Heath throws a hand grenade at a Japanese unit. I had originally written “sent three Japanese soldiers to hell”. Sam changed it to “wherever brave Japanese soldiers go when they die.” I had to respect Sam because he was in kamikaze attacks, and he admired them for their courage. I remember him saying, Will, they were brave guys. I wasn’t going to argue with him. It was too late to argue with him, but I wasn’t going to argue with him on that point. I felt I wasn’t qualified to argue that point with him. The Iron Corporal was challenging in a fun way. Willy Schultz could get me really depressed.
I’m not surprised that he enjoyed it more. But with The Iron Corporal, people may have known the Pacific theater, but the Australian army had a very different experience of the war than the Americans.
I studied mostly New Guinea. Some of the Australians had previously been in North Africa. I was going to do a flashback with Ian Heath as a private in North Africa, but I never got that far. If I remember this right, you had to volunteer to fight overseas. Australia had conscription but you had to volunteer to be sent overseas to fight. I remember studying up on Australia at the time. They really loved the Vietnam GIs because Australia and New Zealand were major hangouts for US service personnel. The Australians liked them and admired them because they had so much in common. I remember they said one time, put two Australians together and you have a race. This is why I had the friendly antagonism in The Iron Corporal. I brought in Doris the Mule and the mule reminded one guy of another guy’s wife. I was going to bring in Freddy the Boxing Kangaroo and they were going to have a USO show but with a boxing kangaroo and guys were going to fight it. But again, it got canceled. I was kind of hoping that with Willy Schulz brought back and I was hoping someone would say, what was that other thing he did? Would someone bring back and consider finishing that? I just wish I had known more about Australia at the time. I would love to have an opportunity to not necessarily complete it, but to further develop the characters.
I may have mentioned to you, when I was doing Willy Schultz, there was a guy who was always writing me and he said once that he wasn’t sure about Willy Schultz’s personality. Because sometimes he will do anything not kill somebody and other times he’ll gun them down. I started thinking about it and this was when Vietnam was starting to heat up. I remember I got into a discussion with neighborhood guys who I’d gone to grade school with about Vietnam. One guy was going, my brother is over there and he says we’re burning babies. I said, I know, but I’m a little more concerned about our own guys who are getting sent over there. He said, what do you care, you’re 4-F, and he literally turned his back on me. Willy Schultz was in that no man’s land. He didn’t have anyone he could genuinely confide in. Even among the partisans, he was a foreigner. Where was he going to turn? That was I think my feeling of being isolated from my peers. That contributed to Willy Schultz. And maybe thats what contributed to his unexpected popularity all these years later. I don’t know.
Being alone drives us all a little crazy. I take his point, but that never bothered me.
All the turmoil. Again, I knew guys who got drafted and they didn’t make it. Another guy had his legs blown off. Another guy never recovered psychologically. Another guy I knew killed at close range. Emptied his magazine into a guy at close range and he’d wake up at night beating his wife. Where do you turn? What can you do? As a writer and storyteller, I want to do justice by these men and women who went through it. And not glorify it. I have a young student of mine who went to Afghanistan and he ain’t the same. Before going over, he was a wit. I’ve known some combat veterans from World War II and Korea and Vietnam and this young man had that same unspeakable qualify about him. There was such a dramatic change in him. I never want to violate that aspect. I remember my D-Day story. I don’t know how the hell I let it go through, but at the end I put the list of the casualties and “was it worth it? It was.” No. It was a tragic cost. Was it worth it? Who can tell? But to say it was worth all these guys who got butchered and maimed and families who would never be conceived. But I was young. And it was of the time. And I wanted to please the editor. Sam always told me, you got to give them what they want. You can’t always be so damned artsy, you’ve got to give them what they want.
You mentioned the film The Long and The Short and The Tall. What was it about that movie that really inspired you and had such an impact?
I didn’t know that they British rather than Australian in Burma. I saw jungle hats and to me a young guy thought only the Australians wore that, but no, it turned out that they were British. I was fascinated but them. By the dialogue. The British way of looking at war was different from the way we were. They were far grittier. To me, that made it far more personal. There’s a little known film with David Hemmings called The Long Day’s Dying about three British paratroopers and a German paratrooper towards the end for he war. I don’t know if you remember Sanho Kim, the Korean artist-illustrator? I had done a story called the the Trek of the Third Platoon dealing with Korea. He was just over from South Korea and he was assigned it. I get a call from a student that this illustrator wanted to talk to me about my story We managed to talk through gesture and language and he took me to this film, The Long Day’s Dying. He wanted me to see it. It was very personal. It was a very powerful film. I was seventeen or I forget how old. I really admired Sanho Kim. He was a very nice man. I wish I could have worked with him more. In all honestly I wasn’t crazy about his art, but it was different and very emotional. The film he took me to reinforced my concept of the British way of telling a war story. Making it gritty and tough. I don’t want to join the British army! Rather than John Wayne waving the flag. That was part of the inspiration for The Iron Corporal.
You mentioned before that you wrote three serials during this time, the third being The Devil’s Brigade.
Fascinated by the armored corps of various nations, I had long been impressed by the British Centurian tank. I developed a storyline of a British 8th Army major whose tank unit is wiped out by the Afrika Korps in late 1942. I seem to recall his having only two remaining tanks, the two Centurions “Father” and “Mother.” He teams up with an American major whose unit of Shermans had also been wiped out. Together, they combine their remaining crews to form a Long-Range Desert Group, or LRDG-style combat team to carry on the fight with German and Italian units of the Afrika Korps. Hence, The Devil’s Brigade. Quite a title, eh?
I had heard a title “The Devil’s Brigade" but thought it a general military phraseology of fear and intimidation. I didn’t know about the beginning of the combined American/Canadian Special Services unit of WWII which would become known as The Devil’s Brigade. There was very little research available at that time. I just thought, those devils in baggy pants. What did the Germans call the Scotsmen? The Ladies from Hell. Because of the kilts that the bagpipers wore. And little did I realize at the time that the British Centurian Tank didn’t see service until 1947!
It was hastily thrown together because Dick Giordano wanted a third series and I was just like, okay! North Africa! Tanks! Which was my first love in the modern military. I always wanted to go into the armored corps, not the infantry. Then when I got hit with the diabetes, oh no. No military, no police, no fire. At the time, in some states you couldn’t even be a teacher. Because you might have an insulin reaction and you can’t be that way in front of a classroom of children. I’m an old man, remember. I’ve been around a long time with this crap. Anyway, the characters were never adequately developed and the series was thankfully dropped when Charlton discontinued the War Heroes title during Sal Gentile’s editorship and therefore they didn’t need the Devil’s Brigade. I was relieved. I think that one only ran like six episodes.
I did want to ask about another story that you and Sam made together much later, “The Eagle.”
Oh wow. [laughs]
Are you laughing because this was a good memory or because it was horrible and you can’t believe I’m asking?
No, it’s a good story. Typical Sam, okay? I forget whether it was Jon Cooke – but he contacted us saying he wanted us to do a story. Sam would only work when he got paid. The only work he would do without a paycheck was anything regarding the Stevens. He had so many paintings of the Stevens. I went to the editor and I said, how many pages can you afford to pay Sam? Eight? Okay. This man had wanted me to do a graphic novel of Gates of Fire, which was about Thermopylae. A terrific book. Talk about a page turner. I said, let me do something ancient. I got out all my books on the Roman legions. I wasn’t reading, I was just looking at these beautiful illustrations. The armor. I gave Sam the type centurions wore. I put the books down, went to bed, woke up the next morning – The Eagle! The Romans lost two to three legions. The Germans just wiped them out. It was a very complex battle. I focused on the Aquilifer, the eagle standard bearer, and the Primus Pilus, the chief centurion. Their concern was, we’re going to lose, we’re going to die, we don’t want them to take our eagles, so let’s bury them. It was a rough story. It had to be edited down. So, I’m talking to Sam on the phone, and he said, why did you make it such a short story, Willy? I said, Sam, you would only work when you got paid! That's why I only made it eight pages! [laughs] He wouldn’t take any money for it because he didn’t like the job he did on it. You’ve got to love him. I remember there was an Iron Corporal story where death – the standard grim reaper – is pursuing Ian Heath through the jungle. And in the end, he’s feverish and he drops and thinks he’s approached by death – and it turns out it’s an Australian patrol that finds him. He’s rambling about death and shadows and I put right in the description, the shadow of the grim reaper will be over all of them. Sam didn’t put the shadow in. I said, Sam, it’s the punchline! But they liked it anyway. [laughs]
Whenever I think of the [U.S.S.] Stevens, I can’t remember the title of the story, but it was about a Chinese family picking up garbage that the sailors were throwing overboard. The sailors were making comments about the girl. And the last line was, warriors, what do they know of war? For all his being a character, Sam was quite profound in his attitude. He has the very aspect of a man who lived through something but didn’t brag about it. And he always told it through other people’s eyes. Maybe because it was too damn painful for himself to relate. I can’t speak for him on that.
It gave him enough distance.
Yeah. But “The Eagle” – I was doing that just so we could work together. I did it for nothing. I didn’t get paid for it. I just wanted to be able to work with Sam. He was like, what are you having me do all this for? He always used to love the research. I would send him my own drawings and ideas for how a scene should look and he would duplicate it. He didn’t put my drawings in, but it was my layout. He loved that. He said, I hardly have to do any work with your work sometimes. We were working on a major strip and this was in 2000, I think. I wanted characters drawn a certain way. It was fiction. A fantasy. And all of a sudden, he goes, “I don’t want no writer telling me how to draw”. I’m like, Sam? I’m not telling you how to layout a page. I’m telling you how I want my character to look. If I want him to look like a young Anthony Quinn, I don’t want him drawn like some candy store clerk. I want him to look a certain way for a reason. It was the only argument we ever really had. Which was shocking. I decided to withdraw the project. His friendship and respect meant more to me than anything I had written. Or was working on. Because of what went on, the story went on and on and on, and I just don’t have the energy to complete it. I started writing it in prose. I got four chapters done and then 9/11 happened. I was doing a lot of writing at the time. I was a front desk operator. I never brought their work home. Never brought the job home with me so I had energy when I came home to write. And then things changed and I didn’t have the energy anymore to continue it. But he and then he asks me, hey, Will, whatever happened to that story? [laughs] I’d blame 9/11. I remember shortly after 9/11 he called me, Willy, what the hell is going on? Regarding that attack. Because he was way upstate and we were still cleaning 9-11 smoke off my windows. I remember that day. We could normally see the World Trade Center from where I worked at that time. I used to spend a hell of a lot of time down around there years ago. I don’t think anyone I personally knew was killed, but I still grieve to this day.
I’ve dealt with two fencing masters. Fine men. They knew I was never a competitor. I trained as a teacher. And yet they took an interest in me. This man’s name was Edward Lucia. I’d sit at his desk and we’d discuss combat, we’d discuss history, we’d discuss technique. The other man, one of his students, was the man I took fighting lessons from. There were very little choreographed lessons. This was, here’s your weapon, let’s go. I was privileged to have known one of the greatest fencing masters of the 20th Century, Giorgio Santelli, who knew I liked old things. He would go in the back of his shop – this was in Greenwich Village, New York – and he would dig out these old saber hilts or epee cups or blades. The first fighting rapiers I ever got, I got from him. To have a man of his experience and knowledge to recognize me and laugh and joke with me. And I never took one lesson from him. So again, I’ve been very privileged to have known men like this. Men like Sam. And to have so many people following what I wrote years ago. I’ve got to be careful not to get a big head. I’m glad that I had the opportunity.
People have followed what you wrote. And it stands out even today.
I hope it wasn’t just an entertainment for people. I hope it made them think. Maybe act differently. As I put it in the introduction, the son of a famous Hollywood man – I don't want to give you his name without his permission – was a big fan of mine and wrote me letters. In early 1969 he called me up. He had to register for the draft and he was registering as a contentious objector. I said, good luck. He said, I hope you don’t mind but I put your name down as one of the influencing factors. Meanwhile a friend of mine was home from Hamburger Hill at my kitchen table edging shrapnel shards out of his forearm and dropping them in a glass ashtray. I genuinely wished him luck. Look, it’s not like he read my work and said I’m a contentious – no. There were other factors involved. It was shortly after that I got dropped from Charleton. I couldn’t get work anywhere else. Joe Kubert at one point said, Will, this is too good. Have you ever considered making it a script and taking it to WBAI radio as a play? I’m like, Joe, I like the whole visual graphic context. That’s the way I work. But I had bills to pay. I couldn’t be exploring anymore. A friend worked at an insurance company and said, we’re hiring clerks, you’re good at accounting. I needed health coverage. You couldn’t get health insurance at all back then if you had a chronic illness. Some of the last stories I did for Charleton under George Wildman I wrote while I was working there. I put people who I worked with in the stories. In “Conflict on a Hill with No Name” I decapitated a Vice President in the first panel! His name was Hank Allen and he was a very nice man. He comes in and says, where can I get copies of this? [laughs]
To me, you shouldn’t feel happy at the end of a war film. You shouldn’t. If you want to go to war after reading one of my stories, then I didn’t do my job. Willy Schultz ended the way I had to end it. I felt that ending Willy Schultz in Vietnam with him being an older man was more in keeping with the time that Willy Schultz was written. Was Schultz a traitor? Technically he was. He bore arms in the army of an enemy nation. That’s it. No excuses. I felt that not was important to show his attitude just like when they’re leaving the concentration camp and Sturmholtz says, this isn’t what I fought for. Schultz says, in the long run, this is exactly what we were fighting for. He understood that as much sympathy and empathy he had for the German grunt, this was the result of their victory. I tried to write it in a way where I can just say to somebody, judge him for yourself. I gave you his reasoning. It wasn’t his idea – other than to survive. His was a story of survival. In the end it was him and Ilse and they survived. That’s what war is about in my book. Survival.
English (US) · 