Once upon a time… Marvel had a plan to conquer the universe. Something like, give kids a feeling that Super-Heroes are real. Part of that plan was a Department of Fun known as “In-Store Appearances.” Or maybe just the Marketing Department. Fine; all business up there.
You were a store owner—didn’t matter what kind. Supermarket, comic shop, department store or not; perhaps you had a big office party– you coughed up and one of our Super-Heroes would show up. With a handler. And a big box of Polaroid Film with camera!
Here is a Polaroid taken of my own saintly Mother appearing at some wild party that included a Captain America!
These were the early days of in-store costumes… you can spot Spidey to image right! Since this pic was taken around 1972, I believe it was Staff Artist, Creative and All-‘Round-Nice Person, Paty Cockrum, who got to paint the shield! I think she said she made a half-dozen of them!
ROM Space Knight! Pretty nice costume, just don’t try to bend over! The lady politely holding the door (ROM couldn’t see or hear very well…) is Marcia Rosenberg, another In-Store Program Marketing Diva. This was taken when the offices were at 575 Madison.
Just a couple of years later, now the offices are down at 387 Park Ave. Marcia is still showing off the costumes during test fittings with the actors. Sometimes Marcia gets a little carried away…
Marvel had an early institutionalized form of cosplay several decades ago. This was heralded by the gigantic solid neoprene version of the Hulk! Some lucky company (in Brooklyn?) had the technology and experience at making such things. For what else, I do not know. For all I know, this could have been a proto-typing pattern shop that did full-scale one-offs of things like snow-mobiles or copier machines. Hard to say where this tech would have come from in New York City.
You sculpted a clay original in pieces, taking care to mate the separate parts. You make a plaster cast probably backed up with fiberglass “mother molds” (because it held up and supported a thinner, more delicate mold that captured all the fine details). Then poured in a helluva lot of liquid neoprene which was maybe possible to “lay up” with a brush. Maybe several layers. (Or they had to have a closed-off mold and set up on a tilting rig so someone could slosh around the stuff as a thin layer of it cured, then poured out the excess—much more trouble!) The costume was relatively thin and lightweight for what it was. And flexible.
I’ve talked about this beast elsewhere [see Hulk Walks 575]. To recap a little, the costumes need quite a bit of maintenance, especially this guy. His skin was green flocking spray-painted florescent green—it took very little effort to scrape off the flocking so a lot had to put back.
Here is the first Hulk Doctor I met around late 1978. As I have stated before, I cannot remember her name (I felt pretty bad until I found Robbie Carosella – my partner in photostatic crime – could not either). So I have named her “Mary.” Which is the name that came to mind as I pondered, but cannot say if it is hers.
Here’s Mary—
Awfully nice person—she had worked at the costume shop (?) that made this large-as-life Hulk, making various things and she was given the neat job of fixing up or repairing this Hulk costume as needed. It basically meant she was in about twice a month.
The Hulk Doctor Operating Room was just up the hall from where Robbie and I toiled away. Stand back, OSHA, there’s a box fan in that window. No hazardous fumes to be had. You can see a couple of tools of the trade. A metal can of rubber cement thinner—not used for that but used to thin Barge Cement. Great stuff normally used to attach shoe leather to shoes. Almost completely hidden by Mary’s elbow is a can of spray paint—florescent green! Though could be purple (for the pants!). On the wall to the right is a leather punch for putting on new snaps. There were button snaps used to attach suspenders to the pant waist. Last detail—to the lower right is a wrinkle of fabric which was an Army duffle bag used to carry Hulk parts
“Hey, Mike, I’m ah.. kind’a flammable, y’know?” (Mail Room worker, Mike Kudzinowski guiding The Hulk through the Bullpen. That’s Marketing Guru Nel Yomtov shaking the hand of The Hulk. I know for a fact, he’s never washed it since.
Robbie and I were, of course, smitten by this charming young art student. When she left us, we got her a large art print coffee table book. I think we managed to surprise her.
Yup. In a rare display of heart-in-mouth nervelessness on my part, I asked to take a picture of her tatoo. She said, why not! Round about mid-1979, Mary was gone, flying off to greener pastures. I do wish her well after all these years.
In her place bounded in Jill Breakstone—who followed the from same costume shop learning how to neaten up a Hulk and so many other costumes. Well before that, Jill had her big start at the Filmore East. In the late 60s and for about a decade this was a pretty important music venue. She was involved with the lighting. Apparently there was a lot of it.
As Hulk Doctor, her “day job” was as a graphic artist that worked at CBS-News in midtown. Ahem… wa-a-a-ay back in early television days, when a newscaster spoke on air, some kind of image needed to be whipped up and gotten onto all our screens. Something to complement the story. According to Jill, there was an art director who would sketch up a concept, hand it to one of the artists waiting there and then they would draw it up. It was usually a very small piece of art. For me, the interesting part was that it had to be photographed and turned into a slide. This was a piece of color film where the image you saw was in natural, regular color. It was put in a “telecine” chain, a slide projector aimed at a camera. With a couple of magic passes using a video mixer, it was thrown up on-air (super-imposed) as needed.
A couple of hours for her work and about an hour for the film processing lab work—poof! Used for as long as the person spoke. 20-40 seconds and gone! Apparently, you could do alright if you got one of those per night for the week. A source of constant angst was trying to get into the union [International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees or IATSE – said “ee-Yaht-see” – which is mostly the more technical side of all sorts of entertainment] which, if accomplished, meant you could do much better with ‘one of those per night for a week!’ Alas, that was not to be.
But all the time I knew her, she continued to get “pick up” work during the later TV-news cycle. Hard to imagine these days with the 24-hour news cycle—that there was a time when there were only slices of the day devoted to presenting the news. For example, the “6 O’Clock News” was an important aspect of all three TV networks. But Jill got some work then, more work for the “10 O’Clock News.”
Which meant she could come in during office hours, fix up whatever needed fixing and, if the call was given, go over to the TV studio and do some graphic art. She kept busy during the couple of years spent at Marvel, when we got to know each other. The use of the big ole Hulk costume wound down and it was only brought out once in a great while for office fun—before it went away… (where, I could not say—the trash or a collection—can’t say).
When the editorial offices were uptown, Jill and I only shared the occasional meal. As it turned out, she lived right around the corner from the downtown offices. On the corner of 28th and Lexington. So we managed to share some more lunches and one memorable Indian dinner that still gives me the shivers (she loved Indian food—maybe the reason she moved into that neighborhood which was a veritable “Little India” for food specialty lunch counters and restaurants).
At one point I helped her figure out how to “stretch” an image and maintain the proportions. Some kind of juke box design to be used in a music video. At another, she did set design for a production of Tennesee William’s Something Cloudy. Something Clear that was off, off Broadway (I’ve probably got the play wrong—I have the playbill around here somewhere and when I find it, I’ll show the correct play and post it). I’d had a lot of experience doing many phases of set construction in my amateur theater days. I helped her put things together and make sure they stayed up but could be taken down too.
Here are some shots that she took:
One can see she clearly had a feel for theatrical lighting. She was told that Mr. Williams attended a showing of this production and pronounced it good. It was one of his last plays, he passed in 1983.
This pic was taken just weeks after Marvel had moved downtown (April, 1981). The old severely inadequate desk that held up my typsesetting computer was still in use. Compare this image to the one I used in this Blog’s recent entry: One Shot: ERB’s Custom Typesetting Computer Table to see the wondrous new table built just for this computer!
This is only one of a very few pictures I took of Jill. Not sure why I held back taking pictures of her. It only became a true sadness when I was called by a NYPD Detective asking me if I had a key to her apartment. Seems that her neighbors were getting worried about her. I knew that she had mentioned going to visit her brother over in New Jersey and thought that might explain the quiet in her apartment.
An aspect of Jill’s character was the inability to hold on to her apartment keys. I had found a solution in the form of a wrist key chain which worked for quite a while. But, I did not have keys at the time of the Detective’s call because she had lost her wrist strap and I handed over the last copies.
Alas, once the cops made their way into her apartment, it was found that she had managed to electrocute herself while taking a bath. Another aspect was not being able to think of buying light bulbs. So she ran an inappropriate lamp all over the apartment with her lone bulb.
In retrospect, I was surprised at my lack of reaction to her death. I had had little exposure to it. I was then surprised at myself when, just a few months after her death, near the time of Empire Strikes Back, I remembered that Jill was really looking forward to seeing the new Star Wars movie… and just bawled right there on the street.
©Disney/Marvel
Some time after Jill’s passing I was in the thick of working on the Marvel Universe. One of the drawings I did was of the piece of shorefront property that contained the X-Mansion. Above is a page from that oddball book Guide to the X-Mansion. When I was putting the page together that held that artwork, I spotted Chris Claremont in the hall and button-holed him to ask if I could name the lake after my dead friend. As decisive as he is gracious, he said yes.
Breakstone Lake is now a permanent feature of the Marvel Universe. It was recently referenced in the recent outing of The New Mutants.
Jill Breakstone
1951(?)-1981