[The Australian Panther]

I was never introduced to CC Beck till later in my teens. While the British MarvelMan was available in Australia I was blissfully unaware of Fawcett or Captain Marvel. So   

Fatman the Human Flying Saucer 1 was my introduction to CC Beck's work. It was a refreshing corrective to the more 'adult oriented' Superhero material then dominating comics. I loved it.
I hope there are those out there who read this and are being introduced to it, and I hope you enjoy it.
So here is:-
Fatman the Human Flying Saucer 1
https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=11850

Happy reading!
 

[Andrew999]

Now that

[gregjh]

This one is not my style but I'll join you guys for a reading session soon.

[SuperScrounge]

I have copies of this issue and the next (dog-eared & with missing pages) since I was a kid and have enjoyed rereading them over the years.

Introducing Fatman the Human Flying Saucer - Fun. Nice to see pages that were missing from my copy. ;-) The opening splash page really feels like something from a Golden Age comic (which makes sense considering the artist), but wasn't something I noticed when I read this scan a few years ago. 'Course if some young'uns were ta read this they'd probably decry the fat shamin'.

The Saucerer's Science Sorcery - Still fun. :-)

Anti-Man, Enemy of Mankind - I liked this story as a kid, but rereading it now it was a lot simpler than I remembered. Never thought of it before, but amphibious, powered by radiation, hmmm... kinda sounds Godzilla-ish...

Our Space Age - Kind of an interesting tidbit of the past. Once upon a time I was really interested in these things, nowadays I wonder what the person really saw, or what they were on, or if they made it up. 

Fatman Meets Tinman! - Fix the problem with chemicals... what a '60s concept.  And inspiration from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde... wowwwww... A nice introduction to Tinman, who made a good sidekick to Fatman, which is odd that he gets sent away at the end of issue 2, and doesn't appear in issue 3.

My Favorite Joke - Eh, some cute jokes.

The Battle of the Century - Fun.

[Robb_K]

I was introduced to Binder and Beck just now, as I stopped reading US comic books in 1966, and never read any "superhero" comics, other than a Superman and a Batman story in the late 1940s, and didn't like them enough to read any more. 

I don't remember ever seeing this line of comics when looking through 2nd hand comics during the late 1960s and beginning of the '70s.  I imagine that its circulation was not very much outside the East Coast.  I find it interesting that the publisher address is the same St. Louis address as ACG had had, and it was published out of New York.  I wonder if this is Jim Hughes' continuation of comic book publishing, just after ACG was closed down, for good? 

I'm glad they chose to make the first issue 68 pages, instead of the standard 36, so that the individual stories wouldn't be tiny and choppy, considering that by the late 1960s 36-page books averaged a paltry 20 to 23 pages of drawn comics; and that most editors didn't limit their books to only one story, to get enough pages to have enough room to properly flesh out an adventure.

I appreciated that the artwork was simple, and uncluttered, unlike so many "superhero" comic book stories I've seen, as well as their parodies, in the "Mad" clone  parody comics.  I'm glad they used the 1940s 3-tier page layout style, rather than the cramped 4-tier style, that made the panels too small.  That helped give the stories the '40s feel.

The main hero's introduction story has an interesting premise, and was carried out reasonably well. The humour is decent - nothing earth-shattering.  It held my interest, but lacked enough adventure feel to fulfill the promise that kept me turning pages.  And given that there wasn't much adventure, or believable danger, implying that the series is totally done for emphasizing the humour and parody aspects, the quality of the humour wasn't good enough, to my taste, to make up for that.  I found that to be true for all of the book's stories.

The only real "villain", "The Enemy of Man", was an interesting idea.  And having him made unavailable for joining the super-trio of fighters against crime, or for being take seriously as being a realistic super-villain foe for the rotund hero in just his second story, is, I believe, not worth the funny gag of his being dominated by his wife.  That puts a lot of pressure on the series' writer, to continuously come up with new villains, for each book, having the reader assume that the series is concentrating totally on comedy, rather than a blending of comedy and adventure.

Having the hero's alter ego be so inconspicuous is a good idea, as is his ability to morph into a space vehicle (which will be useful in his work as a villain-fighter.  The morphing happens too fast to even see happening.  I'd have preferred (at least for its first time shown) to see it happen gradually, and had some reasonably or somewhat plausible scientific or pseudo-scientific explanation for how and why it can happen.  That might have happened best through a chance meeting of the future Fatman with a scientist who is clandestinely working on a special project.  Perhaps he'd be an alien, working on Earth, to keep his work hidden from his own race from his planet.

The same is true for The Tinman.  We have no idea how his transformation is possible.  His arms and legs are squeezed into such narrow pipes.  That must hurt terribly!

Just a wild guess, - but I suspect that this series didn't last very long.

[Mr. Magnificent]

I had these when they first came out. As I remember, it lasted for three issues. I bought the first two, which were a quarter when regular comics were 12 cents.
At the same time as Fatman, another 25 cent comic came out called Super Green Beret. This was, of course, during the Vietnam War. I thought at the time it was published by the same people as Fatman. Any information? And is it in the public domain? It might be an interesting piece of history. (Or propaganda).

[The Australian Panther]

Mr. Magnificent,
You will see an ad for 'Super Green Beret' in one of the issues of Fatman. Publishing any comic about Vietnam at that time was pointess. Destined to fail.
Lightning comics, of which there is very little information, only published these 3 issues and 2 Super Green Beret's   [All written by Binder] and then went out of business.   
Robb, the publishing details and distribution speculation you give are interesting. This comic was available on the stands in OZ, but at that time we got all US and English published material at least 3 months later. I have always suspected that Australia was at the end of the food chain and that a lot of what arrived here was already remaindered.
Yes, it only lasted 3 issues, but I have always believed that the reason was because that was a bad time to launch new companies and also that only a half-hearted attempt was made to promote and sell the books.
It seemed to me that at that time there were still people in the US industry that saw comics as a field in which you could spend little money or effort and make a quick buck. As always it was the creators who got shafted. Skywald. which launched at around the same time, also only lasted a very short time. As did Wally Wood's venture with 'Thunder Agents' 
And I would say to you all, reading the book and stating your thoughts, take a closer look!   
Cheers!

[Robb_K]

I get the feeling that the owner of the rights to the bulk of the ACG product also ended up with the rights to Milson's Lightning Comics, because "Fatman" was reprinted together with ACG's "Herbie" in Canadian "Herbie" Comics during The 1990s.  That leads me to guess that both came from the same source, whover ended up with the rights to Jim Hughes' ACG series.  Hughes, an ex-partner of Ben Sangor in The Sangor Studios, had been a junior partner with Sangor in ACG, until he bought Sanger out in late 1948, when the latter retired from the publishing business.  Hughes ran ACG until it went bankrupt in 1967.  I'm wondering if he founded Milson Publishing (maybe with a rich financier partner). All 3 of Creston Publishing,  ACG, and Milson, listed the same St. Louis address for their publishing house, and had a New York address for their editorial office (both Hughes and Sangor were headquartered in New York), except for the few years that The Sangor Studios were headquartered in Miami, because Fleischer's Animation Studio was there then, so Hughes operated Sangor's East Coast studio there, as its editor.  Ex-Fleischer and Disney Animator, Jim Davis, ran Sangor's studio in L.A.  When Fleischer moved his studio back to New York, Hughes brought Sangor's East Coast studio back there.  But their Creston and ACG comic book publishing office was always at that same St. Louis address that Milson used.  And Milson started later in the same year that ACG closed down.I think that Hughes got together with Binder and Beck, in a last ditch effort to make some money in the comic book industry.  I think they saw that the super-hero comics were getting stale, and too formulaic, with not enough innovation.  It seems they thought doing a parody, with an untypical but somewhat sympathetic hero, would inject some new energy into superhero comics.  And using the talents of Beck and Binder, with an old-fashioned 3-tier '40s style, would mix in a classic feel to the stories.  I'll bet they had a lot of fun writing and drawing them.

The experiment failed, because most kids weren't into comic books as much as they had been during the 1940s and early '50s.  When I was growing up during the late 1940s, 1950s, both in Canada, and Holland, MOST kids read comics.  In Holland, right after World war II, the country was a mess, and struggling to recover its economy.  Most people were poor,  and didn't have extra money.  No one had TV in their homes.  The cinema was an expensive luxury when their wasn't much money in the family.  There were the comics in the newspapers, which kids collected, and soon collections of them appeared in books.  Disney Comics (Donald Duck) first came in 1952, with lots of Barks, and other good series.  But, we got Disney from Belgium's "Mickey Magazine" from 1949-52.  There were some action series too, from USA and elsewhere, and some Dutch series' comics.  EVERY family I knew in Den Haag, that had children, had lots of comic books in their houses. 

Same was true in Canada and USA.  In Manitoba, we had no TV in most normal people's homes until 1955.  Kid's main evening and blizzard entertainment was comic books, board games and card games.  EVERY boy I knew read comic books, and most collected masses of them.  My cousins I visited in Chicago also had scads of them- both superhero, and funny animal, and also western, and crime/police, war/combat, and, later horror.  Girls read the "cutesy" funny animals and girl-oriented (Little Lulu, Little Eva), Archie/teen comics, and romance comics. 

But, during the 1960s there were LOTS of kids that didn't read comic books.  There were LOTS more types of affordable entertainment that weren't around during the '40s or weren't affordable, and many that weren't available in the '50s.

To many us, who grew up during the 1940s and 1950s, comic books were and are essential and sacred. To almost all the rest of the kids who grew up then, they were a very enjoyable way to pass time, and they now bring back many great nostalgic memories.

The percentage of all kids who grew up in The USA and Canada with those attitudes towards comic books shrunk quite a bit for those who grew up during the 1960s, and moreso, probably exponentially, during each successive decade afterward, up to today (despite Manga's relative popularity.

I dare to guess that it has gone a similar way in The UK and Ireland, albeit degrading more slowly.  In Europe, comic books, especially graphic novels remained popular for a long while.  But, regular standard US-sized comic books have lost a lot of popularity starting in the 1990s.  Manga is doing very well, while the traditional titles are continuing to decline in sales.  Comic books have a hard time competing with animated films, animation on You-Tube, hundreds of TV channels, theme parks, digital games, etc.

[SuperScrounge]

I don't think this was restricted to the east coast as the second issue has letters from kids around the country. Also I probably got my copies at a flea market in Washington state (they usually had a bundle of coverless copies for sale).

As for the company's failure, I think part of it was the 25 cent price at a time when most comics were 12 - 15 cents. Yeah, that extra 13 - 10 cents got you more than double the pages, but I think more kids probably consider how many books they get rather than pages. Also these were not pre-existing characters with track records for entertainment. Maybe they should have started with 36 page books at 12 or 15 cents to build an audience first?

[crashryan]

A very, very old prejudice made it difficult to judge this book fairly.  I didn't see Fatman the Human Flying Saucer when it came out, and I never read Marvel Family titles when I was young. By the time I started buying comics the Captain had been gone for several years. My introduction to him came through comics history books and C. C. Beck's fanzine appearances in the 70s. I developed an immediate dislike of Beck. He kvetched endlessly about how crappy modern comics were and how his way of doing them was better than any others. As a young, passionate (and arrogant) fan of "realistic style" comics, I was offended by his rants. By the time I saw real Beck CM stories I was already inclined to dislike them, which I did. Though my opinion of the Beck/Binder/& co. stories has softened over the decades, I still think Beck was a self-aggrandizing blowhard.

Okay, we got that out of the way. Straining to put aside my preconceptions I read this comic a couple of times. I liked it more than I disliked it, but it didn't move me. Instead of going story-by-story as I usually do, I'll just list my pros and cons.

I like the off-the-wall character. Turning into a flying saucer is a funny idea. I like that though the stakes are high--the familiar Destruction of  All Human Life--the whole thing is treated lightly without the thundering and hand-wringing one would find in, say, a Marvel comic. The battle between Tinman and Anti-Man is so silly that it's great fun. Somehow it reminds me of Scott McCloud's Destroy! I like that Anti-Man turns out not to be such a bad guy after all and that Fatman even asks him to join the team.

I dislike the way that Fatman can generate any ability or equipment he needs. The gimmick is used as a deus ex machina too often. I can't imagine it holding up over multiple issues. Eventually Binder would have to settle on a specific set of powers. Binder overuses the "tease" captions as well. Beck's simplistic art is fine for the purposes of the story, but a bit generic. The exception is Anti-Man. His expressions during the battle royal are great. I don't care for Tinman. I'm not sure why they figured Fatman needed a partner. He doesn't add that much to the concept.

My biggest dislike is how Binder beats the fat angle to death. Making fun of fat people was acceptable then; I get that. But every expletive, every thought, every caption mentions either his weight or his appetite. All those expressions like "Holy tomato soup!" and "Sizzling cruzettes!" get old really fast. Herbie Popnecker was fat, too, and he knew it, but he didn't harp on it in every panel.

The overall impression I get of Fatman is that it's the product of middle-aged guys trying to write for modern kids while being stuck in the past. Like Jerry Siegel on The Mighty Crusaders or DC's Silver Age writers when they tried to write hip during the Go-Go Checks era. Take for example the old wheeze of the henpecked husband. That was already off the youth radar by 1967, but both Binder and Siegel milked it (Siegel in his incarnation of The Web). I don't hold it against them for failing. I shudder to think what I would do if I tried to capture the 21st-Century zeitgeist in a comic. I'm sure the Batman-spawned Camp craze fed into Fatman as it did The Crusaders, though thankfully Binder doesn't try as desperately as Siegel to ride the trend. Maybe it was the Batman craze that convinced Milson Publications, whoever that was, that it was a good time to launch a new comic.

In all, worth the read, but C+/B- for a grade.

[crashryan]

I speculate that the 25c cover price was a gamble, an attempt to keep comics profitable while sales were declining and production costs rising. Comics always had a tiny profit margin, a few pennies a copy after the dime was split between publisher, distributor, and merchant. And a dime was worth a heckuva lot less in 1967 than it was in 1940! Dell had tried the other tack, increasing the price of standard 32-page comics to 15c, but they were too early and dropped the price back to 12c. I'm guessing it didn't cost twice as much to publish a 25c giant as it did a 12c standard comic. Publishers figured everyone on the food chain could pick up a few extra pennies per copy sold.

As I recall, weekly allowances hadn't kept up with inflation. I could still easily buy all of a month's 12c Marvels. Things changed when comics broke the 15c barrier. Prices shot up quicker and quicker and I had to start choosing which titles to buy. When THUNDER Agents came out, 25c was quite a bite, but I loved the books so much I paid the premium. Not so with Tod Holton, Super Green Beret.

[mopee167]

Milson Publications

[mopee167]

Neglected to mention the money men behind Milson were twins brothers Bernard and Saul Miller of Miller & Miller Real Estate in Manhattan. Bernie Miller and Will Lieberson ran into each other in 1966 and the two discussed putting out their own line of comic books, hence the name Milson. Bernie, incidentally, had written the bulk of the

[Robb_K]

Thanks for The Milson/Fatman history, Mopee.  I don't think the 25

[narfstar]

My recollection, accurate or not, is that I discovered Fatman in my uncle's barber shop. I was blown away. I thought it the coolest thing in the world. It shot up to be a favorite. I have the opposite bias of Crash. I can not help but still love it. I think the Batman camp backlash killed any chance they had. Did they even really have chance? Probably not because Marvel was making comics grow up. I have a different take on the quarter. I had limited funds and they fooled me. I never counted the pages. they looked bigger than two regular comics. I thought I was getting more for my money. I suspect that I was not the only one fooled. BTW: Super Green Beret I liked at the time also but it does not hold up to me now.

[paw broon]

I was always aware of Fatman comics as I remember seeing a copy in a local newsagent back then.  Didn't buy it.  I have all 3 issues digitally and read them a few years ago.  They were o.k.  Amusing but nothing like Herbie, whose traits and ideas seem to have been "appropriated", well, some of them.
Reading #1 again, I liked Tinman's origin.  It made me smile.
As for why it failed, I think it was and would have been too samey each issue.  The price wouldn't have made much difference to me - and I can't remember what the sterling price was - as the comic looked beefier than most of the other American titles I was used to. But there were other comics in that double size and the thrill of first feasting my eyes on Thunder Agents #1 was way beyond any charge I got from Fatman.
As someone who looks for and enjoys the unusual - and obscure - in comics, anything that was a thicker book or different format peeked my curiosity. The other thing that interested me a bit was, this is another body exchange hero and I like that idea - just not enough in this case.

[lyons]

The creators of Captain Marvel show once again why no limits on the weird can be thoroughly entertaining.  Otto Binder and C.C. Beck showcase their talents in Fatman.  My critique - it was short-lived.  A good read.  Thanks Panther.   

[Morgus]

See, this is why I keep coming back to this site; I learn stuff. Never even THOUGHT of seeing what CC Beck did after Captain Marvel. Until now. This one, I remember from being a kid at my aunt's. Funny what sticks with you. I enjoy these guys trying to push the limits and go a bit further then DC did in terms of making super heroes funny and fun.  I just wish the jokes had been better. Maybe if it had caught on, they could have settled into a groove and gotten some traction, who knows? I think I spent more time reading over the ads then any one page...ah, the heart break of those x ray specs!

[Robb_K]

See, this is why I keep coming back to this site; I learn stuff. Never even THOUGHT of seeing what CC Beck did after Captain Marvel. Until now. This one, I remember from being a kid at my aunt's. Funny what sticks with you. I enjoy these guys trying to push the limits and go a bit further then DC did in terms of making super heroes funny and fun.  I just wish the jokes had been better. Maybe if it had caught on, they could have settled into a groove and gotten some traction, who knows? I think I spent more time reading over the ads then any one page...ah, the heart break of those x ray specs!

Their parody idea was good, but only as a one-time joke.  The characters and scenario were not inspired enough to be developed into situations that could be different enough in each future issue to support an ongoing series.  I think that even if they brought in a new interesting villain each month, the hero and his sidekick weren't very sympathetic characters, who would be liked enough by readers to care about them, even if the writer(s) would attempt to humanise them by introducing a lot about their idiosyncracies, hopes, and dreams.  The joke element of their characters made it difficult to make them characters with whom we readers could identify closely, and want to see succeed.  It would have been a lot easier to just start over with new characters in a new, non-parody scenario.  The only possibility I could see of the series lasting long, would have been to have avoided the temptation to use Tinman as Fatman's sidekick, and to find a classical hero type, who becomes Fatman's sidekick (becoming Fatman's "straight man"), and eventually the latter takes over the series, like Captain Easy did with Wash Tubbs.  Then, trying to make Fatman more sympathetic and not severely curtail his comedic effectiveness, would have been a tough challenge.

[Captain Audio]

Tinman reminds me of Bender Bending Rodriguez from Futurama.

[Morgus]

 Yes!!

[The Australian Panther]

Okay, This has been a good choice I think, considering the response.

The opening splash page really feels like something from a Golden Age comic (which makes sense considering the artist)

Yes, Exactly! I wouldn't have noticed this myself when I first read it.

I'm glad they chose to make the first issue 68 pages

The significance of that didn't register with me either, I think I was already working at the time, so the price was not an issue. Also, as elsewhere pointed out, Thunder Agents was on the stands at roughly the same time.

The humour is decent - nothing earth-shattering.  It held my interest, but lacked enough adventure feel to fulfill the promise that kept me turning pages. 

Point!

The experiment failed, because most kids weren't into comic books as much as they had been during the 1940s and early '50s.

Excellent point.Stan Lee, I believe deliberately aimed Marvel at a High School and College Audience, and that audience would have been less interested in something like FMtHFS.

I developed an immediate dislike of Beck. He kvetched endlessly about how crappy modern comics were and how his way of doing them was better than any others. As a young, passionate (and arrogant) fan of "realistic style" comics, I was offended by his rants.

Obviously you read some of them,and from the perspective you [and others] had you were somewhat justified.
On the other hand he did call his column ' The Old Curmudgeon' which indicates he knew perfectly well what he was doing.   

My biggest dislike is how Binder beats the fat angle to death. Making fun of fat people was acceptable then; I get that. But every expletive, every thought, every caption mentions either his weight or his appetite. All those expressions like "Holy tomato soup!" and "Sizzling cruzettes!" get old really fast. 

 
two points here, I don't think he is intending to be negative about the 'rotundly-challenged' but rather was making a point that a hero needn't be a visually superb man or woman but could be any body shape at all. After all he had already created 'Uncle Dudley' for Captain Marvel. The second point I will make shortly.

The overall impression I get of Fatman is that it's the product of middle-aged guys trying to write for modern kids while being stuck in the past.

I think that's exactly right but I think that they were absolutely aware of it, and quite  deliberate about doing it. That would have been part of the fun for them. They got to cut loose in a way they loved and they did.

It would have been a lot easier to just start over with new characters in a new, non-parody scenario.

Of Captain Marvel, Beck wrote, '

"Billy Batson and Captain Marvel were drawn in cartoon-comic style because they appeared in comic books. They were never intended to be taken seriously, and for that reason were not drawn realistically (by me)."

It other words, as far as Beck and Binder were concerned, this wasn't parody, but a return to the kind of comics they began with. 
OK. A bit of perspective.
From this article.
Bill Parker, C. C.Beck, Captain Marvel And - Shazam! - The Great Initiation Mystery
https://toobusythinkingboutcomics.blogspot.com/2010/06/bill-parker-c-cbeck-captain-marvel-and.html

Long derided by many aspects of fandom in his later years as something of a crackpot, as an old man way out of his age who'd quite failed to understand how times had changed and he hadn't, C. C. Beck was in truth something of a wise old coot whose thoughts on superhero comic books are well worth the reading now. As a prophet too, he can today be seen to have scored pretty highly with his foresight, for he understood how the superheroes' domination of the market was heading with the force of a disastrous industrial process to exactly what we have today, a great sea of muscle-bound power fantasies too-often presented with a fetish for "realism" and an obsession with "continuity". That Mr Beck was also often something of a puritan, and a know-nothing where the idea of mainstream comics for anyone that's not a child, is true, of course, but few prophets are efficient at disentangling their vision from their preferences.

Also

One of the most endearing qualities of C. C. Beck was his refusal to take credit for anything beyond his own artwork. He emphasized time and time again how he wasn't the creator of Captain Marvel, for example, but merely the artist that first brought the concept of the Big Red Cheese to life on the page. (*2) And Mr Beck was similarly plain and modest on what his job had actually involved, namely, to his mind, merely illustrating the scripts placed before him with as much charm and efficiency and as little individual pretension as possible. Once and only once did he write a Captain Marvel story, 

Now, that changes things, does it not? It implies strongly that Otto Binder, as much as, if not more than Beck, was the creator of Fatman and the other characters that people the three stories.
It's clear to me that we can read considerably sub-text into the work. A couple of obvious points. Fatman's costume is basically Captain Marvel's with a colour change.Tin-man's alter ego is visually Billy Batson. All the verbal Fat references? Maybe they can be read as commentary on the banal 'Holy .... Batman!' comments in the TV show - which after all were a swipe from 'Holy Moley!' were they not?
And if you start to see this, you will find a lot more both obvious and oblique digs at what were then contemporary comic book and media references. Definitely not obvious to the average teenage reader at the time. Including myself.
Like Beck, Binder's time, [creating the 50's Superman universe for DC] was up, this was one last opportunity for them to get together and pull out the stops. I doubt there was an editor as such, they didn't need it. I suspect they were aware it wasn't going to last long.   
I also find myself wondering if at least one of them wasn't 'rotundly-challenged' at the time?   
I've only been able to make this analysis after reading all your comments. I couldn't have got there without you. I learn so much doing this.thank you.
And here is CC Beck's 'The Seven Deadly Sins of Comics Creators'
https://www.twomorrows.com/alterego/articles/06sins.html

I don't necessarily entirely agree with him. I have seen excellent creators break the first two, to start with.
Cheers! And happy reading!
     

   

[SuperScrounge]

One of the most endearing qualities of C. C. Beck was his refusal to take credit for anything beyond his own artwork. He emphasized time and time again how he wasn't the creator of Captain Marvel, for example, but merely the artist that first brought the concept of the Big Red Cheese to life on the page. (*2) And Mr Beck was similarly plain and modest on what his job had actually involved, namely, to his mind, merely illustrating the scripts placed before him with as much charm and efficiency and as little individual pretension as possible. Once and only once did he write a Captain Marvel story, 

Now, that changes things, does it not? It implies strongly that Otto Binder, as much as, if not more than Beck, was the creator of Fatman and the other characters that people the three stories.

The book Panel Two: More Comic Book Scripts By Top Writers prints Binder's script for Fatman Meets Tinman and there are clear differences between the script and the finished pages.

[The Australian Panther]

Well Spotted Scrounge! So while Beck (lets say rarely) wrote a script, he did interpret it visually. And working with Binder, the old partnership, he would probably felt free to do that.
Cheers!

[Robb_K]

Well Spotted Scrounge! So while Beck (lets say rarely) wrote a script, he did interpret it visually. And working with Binder, the old partnership, he would probably felt free to do that.
Cheers!

I thought I just read on this thread, that Beck wrote only 1 story in his career (or was that just for Captain Marvel?  IF he DID write only one story in his whole career, that makes him even with Tony Strobl, for drawing over 4,000 comic book stories and writing only one story.  Many artists were not storywriters, but it would be difficult to avoid getting co-writing credit on a few stories out of thousands, because changing the staging in a sequence, can affect the storyline enough, that if approved, can often result in getting co-writing credits.