Roberts:
How did you first become interested in comics?
Goulart:
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Comic books and I came along at about the same time back in the 1930s.
And even before that I was fascinated with the Sunday funnies. My dad
was a fan of Segar's Popeye strip and used to recount former stories to
me. In the 1930s comic books were all over the place, in drug stores,
markets, dime stores, etc. So I had access to them and was able to
start buying them--wheedling money from my mother--from about the time I
was four or so.
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Early on I figured out that people actually drew this stuff. My uncle
had a buddy who liked to copy caricatures out of magazines and he'd give
some to me. I figured I could do the same thing and started trying to
draw while still in a highchair.
Roberts:
What was it about comics that appealed to you?
Goulart:
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They just seemed like a medium aimed at me. I liked the stories, the
characters and particularly the individual cartoonists. By the time I
was 13 or so I was writing fan letters to everybody from Milton Caniff
to Basil Wolverton. And usually getting answers and drawings.
There's a visual gratification that the best comic art produces for
me. If you don't see it, you don't. But I tended to see it in a wide
range of stuff.
Roberts:
How did you become involved in comics professionally?
Goulart:
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Firstly, I decided to see if I could add to my income by writing about
comic strips and comic books. I'd already done free pieces for fanzines
that people like Don & Maggie Thompson were putting out back in the
1950s. Gradually I was able to sell articles to some of the men's
magazines. I even sold a piece about sports cartoonist Tad Dorgan to
Sports Illustrated.
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Keep in mind that when I wasn't toiling in an advertising agency back
then, I was struggling to maintain myself as a freelance writer. Mostly
in the SF and mystery fields. But gradually,as I said, I began to find
a few markets for nonfiction dealing with popular arts.
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When we moved East from California in the late 1960s I started selling
books to Ace. The late Terry Carr was one of my editors and he
mentioned that they were starting a nostalgia line. So I suggested a
book on pulp fiction--another of my interests. That led to the
Nostalgia Book Club picking up hardcover rights and then to my selling
them directly a book on adventure strips of the 30s.
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As to writing for comic books. That came about in the 1970s, when I
got to know Gil Kane. He was a new neighbor in Connecticut and was
familiar with my science fiction. He brought me in to Marvel and I wrote
a few scripts there. Eventally we did a comic strip called Star Hawks
together.
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When I worked with William Shatner on the Tek War series, I also wrote
the first 18 issues of Marvel's Tek World comic book.
Roberts:
Picking up from part-way through your answer to the last question...
You said you started writing books for Ace, but most folk remember all those
yellow-spined DAW books. How did you come to start writing for Donald Wollheim?
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Goulart:
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I started selling SF in 1952. I had taken some writing classes that
Anthony Boucher taught out of his living room--those I started taking,
once a week, while I was in high school. Boucher became a sort of
mentor to me and I sold my first two things to F&SF in 1952. Phil Dick
always maintained that he attended that class, too. But as I recall his
then wife would bring his stuff to the sessions. This was in Berkeley,
California--my home town. I'd first encountered Phil in one of the
record shops he worked in. But we didn't become friends of sorts until
many years later.
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After I got out of college I went into advertising in San Francisco.
I'd been picked to try out for the job because one of the partners had
seen my stuff in the college humor magazine at UC, Berkeley. The agency
specialized in humor--called "offbeat copy" back then--and handled food
accounts exclusively. I worked on Skippy Peanut Butter, Regal Pale Beer
and, eventually, some of the Ralston cereals.
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For the next few years I didn't sell anything--or even write much
outside of TV commercials, radio spots, magazine ads, etc. But I
eventually left the agency and started freelancing. I started selling
to Boucher again, although he was soon to quit the magazine for other
things.
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After a spell of living in NYC, I returned to Frisco in 1963. That's
where I met my wife, who was working as a copywriter at the same agency
I'd worked at. After a somewhat bumpy courtship, we married in June of
1964. It occured to me, if I wanted to earn a living, that I ought to
work on novels and not concentrate on short stories and articles.
So in 1968 I finally sold a novel--I'd sold a couple of nonfiction
books earlier. That was The Sword Swallower, the first book about Ben
Jolson and the Chameleon Corps. That went to Doubleday for the handsome
sun of $1200.
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We moved East in 1968 and, against the advice of my then agents, I
started selling paperback originals. I sold to both Don Wollheim and
Terry Carr at Ace. And I sold a couple more hardcovers to Doubleday.
When Don began DAW, I started selling stuff to him there. I think all
told DAW did 17 or so of my books. Don rarely commented on my work, he
simply would drop a note and say he was buying the book. What I always
send out is 3 or 4 sample chapters and an outline. Or, if it's somebody
who knows me, just an outline.
Roberts:
Back in the '70s, there was the suspicion (fostered by Donald Wollheim, himself)
that the name Ron Goulart was a pseudonym. Rumors ran wild as to your "real identity."
Possibilities ran the gammut from popular self-help authors to the possibility
that you were really a woman (like Andre Norton). Did you ever hear any of these
rumors? Did you find them amusing?
Goulart:
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No, I'd never heard rumors that I was a penname. Anybody who'd been
paying attention to the field would have been aware that I'd been around
for 20 years before those DAW books started coming out.
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Plus which, by that time I was also selling stories to Ellery Queen and
Hitchcock's magazines. And a couple to Playboy.
Roberts:
I have to ask - why were there multiple story lines for Jake Conger, the invisible man?
Goulart:
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I have no recollection of multiple story lines in the Conger books.
But I did do a few books where I switched focal characters.
Roberts:
You included a number of one-liners about Harlan Ellison in books of that era. Was there
ever anything personal between you?
Goulart:
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Harlan Ellison and I have been buddies for about 40 years or more. I
used to, on a modest basis, hang out with him when I lived in Southern
California in the early 60s. And I've run into him--and now and then
visited his manse in LA--off and on over the years.
Harlan says he reads most of my stuff, so I started putting in
references to him. You'll also find quite a few references to William
F. Nolan and to Walter Reisberson. That latter was a onetime penname of
one of my longtime friends.
Roberts:
You parodied everything from the Grateful Dead to H. G. Wells . . . from the Secret Agent
genre to Adventure stories. To what do you attribute your wonderfully zany sense of humor?
Goulart:
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One of my ambitions in my youth was to write humor pieces of the sort
turned out by Robert Benchley, James Thurber and S.J. Perelman.
However, the market for that sort of thing seemed to have dwindled by
the time I got out of college. SF, however, always seemed to have room
for humor. Boucher himself had written a lot of humorous fantasy and SF
and so had other writers I admired--Fred Brown, Alfred Bester, etc.
Roberts:
Are we ever going to learn more about the Barnum System?
Goulart:
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I'll have a new story about my interplanetary hack, Jose Silvera, in an
upcoming Brian Thomson-Marty Greenberg anthology called Sea of Space.
That's set in the Barnum System.
-
Whether I'll ever return to Barnum in a novel remains to be seen.
Roberts:
When will the new Jose Silvera story be published?
Goulart:
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I don't know when the new Silvera story will appear. I sold it about 3
months ago.
Roberts:
You've mentioned William Shatner's Tek War series - can you tell us how you became involved in that project?
Goulart:
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What I'm allowed to say about working with Shatner is--my literary
agents also represent him. About a dozen years ago, my agent asked me
if I'd be interested in working with him. They thought an SF book with
Shatner listed as author might sell. They showed him some samples of my
books, he agreed to work with me. We had lunch when he was in New
York, kicking around ideas. What eventually came forth was TEK WAR and
the other subsequent novels in the series.
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When I write my memoirs I may go into more detail.
Roberts:
In retrospect, it seems almost inevitable that you would wind up writing for
comics. What was it like working with Gil Kane on Star Hawks?
Goulart:
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Gil Kane was a neighbor of mine in Connecticut when we worked on the
strip. I'd already done a couple of Marvel jobs in collaboration with
him. It was a very time consuming, and educational, experience. We'd get
together every few days at Gil's place. I'd have a synopsis of the
week's continuity. Then we'd break it down by days. Gil would do
thumbnails of each panel. It might take several hours to do this,
since we'd usually digress into discussions on comics, cartoonists,
movies, books, mythology, etc. Gil had been in comics since the 40s and
was an enormous fan of the field.
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I'd take the thumbnails home and do a breakdown of my own, adding
balloons and copy. Then I'd type up the scripts, submit those to United
Media. Gil would take his roughs back and, once the syndicate gave us an
okay, start blowing them up, etc.
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Star Hawks, being a two-tier strip, was innovative. But, in a time when
adventure strips were out of fashion and room on the comics pages was
shrinking, we didn't have much of a chance.
-
If you'd like more on my experiences--I contributed to the Comics
Journal memorial salute to Gil that was in a recent issue.
Roberts:
Do you want (or plan to) write for comics again?
Goulart:
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I write--and draw-- a strip of my own, which I include in my very
irregularly printed newsletter--I'll send you a copy. But I have no
plans to write for comics.
Roberts:
You're perhaps best known today for your writing about comics history.
Could you fill us in on any other projects you're working on?
Goulart:
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I'd like to think I'm best known for writing science fiction and
fantasy. And to a lesser degree for mysteries.
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What I'm working on now is the 5th book in my Groucho Marx mystery
series. St Martin's Press is publishing these.
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Aside from maybe doing a few pieces for Comic Buyer's Guide, I don't
have any comic history projects in the works.