Every Two Weeks We ALL Knew Where We Gathered

Far image-left, back to the camera, is Harry Candelario stat-man in training. Turned half to us is Robbie Carosella stat-man extraordinaire. A few people back on line, with the cartoon-villain moustache is one of the Bullpen’s Production people, Barry Shapiro. Finally, at image-right and regarding me with outright suspicion is Bullpen’s own Letterer Jack Morelli.

Every two weeks, come hell or high water, we trod the well-worn ruts in the carpet at ChemicalBank (or so it looks, I can’t remember which bank Marvel used!). I used to call it the “new” Trail of Tears. We weren’t paid a lot of money in the Bullpen. Yes, some of us had the opportunity for overtime. That was very rare and generally only offered to us stat camera operators or the typesetter.

The run-of-the-mill Bullpenners had the sweet taste of freelance. There were all manner of production jobs that couldn’t be done during the daytime and so were offered up to anyone who could stay late. Often, “pasting up” was involved. Or, the White-Out-the-backs-of-lettering-on-vellum. Fairly sloppy and getting your own rubber cement can was expensive. You also needed a jug of the stuff and don’t forget the rubber cement thinner which had its own specialized dispenser.

A comic-specific techie note: “White Out.” Now, what we had back then was actual White Out, a professional graphic arts product that was a very nice super-white fluid that you could paint with. And the Bullpen used that. But what we really liked was this literal white lacquer paint. Can’t remember its proper brand name, but we just called it “white out” as well. John Romita Sr. figure out it was auto-body retouch paint. The stuff needed a lacquer thinner to get it “just right.” It was so darn good, we even had box-fulls of empty two-ounce bottles and the lids had a little brush built in. All the letterers had their own—the freelancers were encouraged to come in and get their own too. We had gallons of the stuff!

One of the aspects of this stuff that made it so good was that you could work again right on it, in ink or even pencil—even notoriously difficult “non-repro” blue pencil. On other products, the ink would bead up and just sit there, mocking you. Touch it too soon, smear. This stuff dried very quickly and lay down like a trained dog.

Ahhh… money. The eternal balance of time spent and money made. Fine artist and former Bullpen Letterer, Rick Parker, made the point that, sure we could get more work and do pretty well, but we could also get a part-time job at a gas station too. Mind you, freelance lettering was only a little cleaner than being a gas station attendant.

A last note is that this picture was taken about a week to ten days before the Marvel offices moved from 575 Madison down to 387 Park. The move was the third weekend of April, 19882 so this would have been around the second! As fantasy driven as the world of comics might be, the landlords needed their money!