Hard to believe it’s been almost a decade since we lost Dick Giordano, artist extraordinaire, human being extraordinaire-plus. In the decades we knew each other, he would be an object of my fannish admiration, my boss, my co-worker, my collaborator, someone in my employment as a freelancer, and, always, an inspiration. He was also, on occasion, a mentor, shepherding me through minefields at DC during trying times with a less-than-truthful direct report, and other dilemmas.
I wrote this short tribute to Dick that originally appeared in Charlton Spotlight #6 (Winter-Spring 2011-2012):
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The first time I became aware of Dick Giordano was during his tenure at Charlton Comics. As much as I loved his art (what’s not to love?), it was his editorial transformation of tiny Charlton from major cheese factory to creative competitor that earned him my admiration. Later, Dick loomed large in my career, being the top guy in DC Comics’ editorial when I went on staff in 1991; in fact, it was Dick who essentially hired me. Dick was one of the nicest human beings on the face of the planet, which always struck me as a bad quality to have when you’re managing a large number of people, especially a large number of flaky, creative people. I figured you were better off being able to raise your voice and be mean to get people to pay attention. But Dick knew better. Plus, everyone he oversaw as DC’s editorial director knew damned well that when Dick asked you for something, he was asking you as someone who had done your job before, no matter what your job happened to be. And done it well, likely under mediocre conditions. He had the love and respect of everyone there. Dick always spoke in low, measured tones and we all leaned in to hear what he had to say.
Dick, as was no secret, had a hearing problem and wore hearing aids in both ears. He often missed what was being said, especially in meetings when several people were speaking at once. My voice happened to be pitched to whatever frequency Dick could still hear in, so I never had a problem talking to him.
Dick grew up professionally at Charlton, on staff and as an artist throughout the 1950s and 1960s, but I only ever recall two or three times spending any time talking about the old days with him. The first time was during one of the few and far between lunches we had after he had retired from DC but before I left my editorial position. Over a Rob Roy (or two) and a good meal at a pub down the street from the office, Dick talked about some of the talent he had worked with.
The second was on the drive back to Connecticut (I live in lower Fairfield County, he, at the time, in upper) from Shea Stadium where a bunch of DC staffers had just seen the Mets game, viewed from the Warner Bros corporate box (with wait staff! ballpark hotdogs served on trays! by waiters!), a birthday present to Mr. Giordano from DC’s upper management. I don’t follow sports, not any of ‘em, so I could care less about going to a Mets game, but I went because it was Dick’s birthday and, let’s face it, whether you care about baseball or not, how often do you get to hang in a corporate skybox and get served wieners by waiters?
On the drive home, I asked Dick how long he’d been living in Connecticut and he said he moved up here to work at Charlton in Derby and I just started asking questions about the physical plant and how things worked there and some of the people he’d known. Dick loved the place as you can only love somewhere you spent so much fun and formative years; it’s the way I feel about the “old” DC, the company as it was in the mid-70s at 75 Rockefeller Center, with a staff of maybe 35 or 40 that interacted like one, big sick, dysfunctional family. It was an amazing time to be there, at the nexus of the Silver and Bronze Ages, where you still had Swan and Infantino co-existing with Kaluta and Wrightson. Dick was there for, and instigated, the Charlton equivalent of that time during his Action Hero phase.
The last was in 1991, fresh on staff at DC as an editor, and, having just been handed DC’s revival of the Charlton Comics character, Peter Cannon—Thunderbolt to work on, I found myself invited to lunch at New York’s Society of Illustrators with Thunderbolt’s creator, Pete Morisi, and his old pal and Charlton colleague, Dick. To say that there was ever a more content fly on the wall than me, listening to these two old buddies exchange stories about the good old days.
Even after Dick retired from DC and returned to fulltime freelancing, we kept in touch, most often when I would call him with work for everything from custom comics to an illustration for an issue of Weekly World News. Dick was always happy to hear from me and took the job, delivering precisely what I had in mind, only better than I had envisioned it. Because he was Dick Giordano, one of the masters of the art.
I was fortunate to know Dick as an artist, a boss, and, best of all, a friend.
Tags: Charlton Action Heroes, Charlton Comics, Charlton Spotlight, DC Comics, Dick Giordano, P.A.M., Paul Kupperberg, Pete Morisi, Peter Cannon Thunderbolt, Silver Age, Weekly World News
Very lovely recollections. Dick was a great guy, for sure!