BGuthrie Photos: MD -- Bethesda -- Zapp! Comic Books and the Arts (w/Jerry Robinson and Lee Marrs)

MD -- Bethesda -- Zapp! Comic Books and the Arts (w/Jerry Robinson and Lee Marrs):

Bruce Guthrie Photos Home Page: [Click here] to go to Bruce Guthrie Photos home page.

Description of Pictures: Comic-con: Come see our new VisArts building, and this Comic Book exhibition and convention, and our inaugural exhibit, Zapp! Comic Books and the Arts. Speakers include Jerry Robinson (who began work on Batman and Joker beginning in 1939) and Lee Marrs.

Recognize anyone? If you recognize specific people (or other things) in the pictures which I haven't labeled, please identify them for the world. Or fill in any other descriptions you can. Click the little pencil icon

underneath the file name (just above the picture). Spammers need not apply.

Slide Show: Want to see the pictures as a slide show? [Slideshow]

Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

Connection Not Secure messages? Those warnings you get from your browser about this site not having secure connections worry some people. This means this site does not have SSL installed (the link is http:, not https:). That's bad if you're entering credit card numbers, passwords, or other personal information. But this site doesn't collect any personal information so SSL is not necessary. Life's good!

Help? The Medium (Email) links are for screen viewing and emailing. You'll want bigger sizes for printing. [Click here for additional help]

Share: Facebook Twitter Digg
[1] ZAPP_071117_003.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[2] ZAPP_071117_006.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[3] ZAPP_071117_018.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[4] ZAPP_071117_020.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[5] ZAPP_071117_028.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[6] ZAPP_071117_039.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[7] ZAPP_071117_044.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[8] ZAPP_071117_046.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[9] ZAPP_071117_051.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[10] ZAPP_071117_053.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[11] ZAPP_071117_058.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[12] ZAPP_071117_065.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[13] ZAPP_071117_067.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[14] ZAPP_071117_068.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[15] ZAPP_071117_076.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[16] ZAPP_071117_079.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[17] ZAPP_071117_081.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[18] ZAPP_071117_087.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[19] ZAPP_071117_089.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[20] ZAPP_071117_094.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[21] ZAPP_071117_098.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[22] ZAPP_071117_102.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[23] ZAPP_071117_105.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[24] ZAPP_071117_106.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[25] ZAPP_071117_107.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[26] ZAPP_071117_112.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[27] ZAPP_071117_124.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[28] ZAPP_071117_129.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[29] ZAPP_071117_135.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[30] ZAPP_071117_140.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[31] ZAPP_071117_144.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[32] ZAPP_071117_155.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[33] ZAPP_071117_158.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[34] ZAPP_071117_167.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[35] ZAPP_071117_175.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[36] ZAPP_071117_181.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[37] ZAPP_071117_197.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[38] ZAPP_071117_200.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[39] ZAPP_071117_203.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[40] ZAPP_071117_205.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[41] ZAPP_071117_208.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[42] ZAPP_071117_210.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[43] ZAPP_071117_214.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[44] ZAPP_071117_226.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[45] ZAPP_071117_235.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[46] ZAPP_071117_243.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[47] ZAPP_071117_245.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[48] ZAPP_071117_256.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[49] ZAPP_071117_257.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[50] ZAPP_071117_259.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[51] ZAPP_071117_262.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[52] ZAPP_071117_264.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[53] ZAPP_071117_267.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[54] ZAPP_071117_269.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[55] ZAPP_071117_271.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[56] ZAPP_071117_273.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[57] ZAPP_071117_275.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[58] ZAPP_071117_276.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)

Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. ZAPP_071117_003.JPG: Ellen Vartnoff
2. ZAPP_071117_006.JPG: Jerry Robinson From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jerry Robinson (born January 1, 1922 in Trenton, New Jersey) is an American comic book artist best known for his work on the Batman line of comics during the 1940s. Early life and career: Jerry Robinson was a journalism student at Columbia University in Manhattan when he began working for writer-artist Bob Kane in 1939. Kane, with writer Bill Finger, had shortly before created the character Batman for National Comics, the future DC Comics. Robinson rented a room from a family in The Bronx near Kane's family's Grand Concourse apartment, where Kane used his bedroom as an art studio. He started as a letterer and a background inker, shortly graduating to inking secondary figures. Within a year, he became Batman's primariy inker, with George Roussos inking backgrounds. Batman quickly became a hit character, and Kane rented space for Robinson and Roussos in Times Square's Times Tower. Approximately a year and a half after being hired by Kane, National Comics hired Robinson and Finger away from Kane, making them company staffers. Robinson recalled working in the bullpen at the company's 480 Lexington Avenue office, alongside Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Jack Kirby, Fred Ray, and Mort Meskin, "who was one of my best friends, who I brought up from [comics publisher] MLJ." Robin and the Joker: By early 1940, Kane, partly inspired by the Junior character from the Dick Tracy comic strip, and Finger discussed adding a sidekick. Robinson suggested the name "Robin," after Robin Hood books he had read during boyhood, saying in a 2005 interview he was inspired by one book's N.C. Wyeth illustrations. The new character, orphaned circus performer named Dick Grayson, came to live with Bruce Wayne as his young ward in Detective Comics #38 (April 1940) and would inspire many similar sidekicks throughout the Golden Age of comic books. Batman's archnemesis the Joker was introduced near that same time, in Batman #1 (Spring 1940). Credit for that character's creation is disputed. Robinson has said he created the character. Kane's position is that "Bill Finger and I created the Joker. Bill was the writer. Jerry Robinson came to me with a playing card of the Joker. That's the way I sum it up. [The Joker] looks like Conrad Veidt — you know, the actor in The Man Who Laughs [the 1928 movie based on the novel] by Victor Hugo. ... Bill Finger had a book with a photograph of Conrad Veidt and showed it to me and said, 'Here's the Joker.' Jerry Robinson had absolutely nothing to do with it. But he'll always say he created it till he dies. He brought in a playing card, which we used for a couple of issues for him [the Joker] to use as his playing card." Robinson, whose original Joker playing card was on public display in the exhibition "Masters of American Comics" at the Jewish Museum in New York City, New York, from Sept. 16, 2006 to Jan. 28, 2007, and the William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum in Atlanta, Georgia from Oct. 24, 2004 to Aug. 28, 2005, has countered that: “Bill Finger knew of Conrad Veidt because Bill had been to a lot of the foreign films. Veidt ... had this clown makeup with the frozen smile on his face. When Bill saw the first drawing of the Joker, he said, 'That reminds me of Conrad Veidt in The Man Who Laughs.' He said he would bring in some shots of that movie to show me. That's how that came about. I think in Bill's mind, he fleshed out the concept of the character.” In 1943, when Kane left the Batman comic books to focus on penciling the daily Batman newspaper comic strip, Robinson took over the full penciling, along with others such as Dick Sprang. As was customary of the time, only Kane's name appeared on the strip. Later career: Robinson went on to work on numerous other characters and for several publishers, at one point even doing free-lance illustrations for at least one textbook publisher. Following his departure from DC Comics, Robinson's most popular creation was his syndicated feature True Classroom Flubs and Fluffs, which for most of the 1960s ran in the Sunday comics section of several newspapers, most notably the New York Sunday News (later incorporated into the Daily News). He was president of the National Cartoonists Society from 1967 to 1969 and president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists in 1979. In 1978 he founded Cartoonists & Writers Syndicate/CartoonArts International. Awards: For his work in comics, he won several awards, including the National Cartoonists Society award for the Comic Book Division in 1956, their Newspaper Panel Cartoon for 1963 for Still Life, their Special Features Award in 1965 for Flubs and Fluffs, and their Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000. Robinson was inducted into the Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2004. On May 26, 2007, DC Comics announced that Robinson had been hired by the company as a "creative consultant". The press release accompanying this announcement did not describe Robinson's duties or responsibilities.
3. ZAPP_071117_044.JPG: Lee Marrs From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Lee Marrs is best known for her comic book series, The Further Fattening Adventures of Pudge, Girl Blimp. Created from 1973 to 1978, it chronicles the Candide-like journey of a young girl to get laid amid the turbulent 1960’s San Francisco. The framework of discovery allowed Marrs to comment on both the eternal concerns of all youth and the trends and fads of the day. Today it is a window into the late ‘60s culture. Funny, insightful and honest, it is a cult classic. Underground comics: Marrs was a frequent contributor to underground comics and one of the “founding mommies” of the Wimmen’s Comix collective. She provided stories for Wet Satin, Manhunt, El Perfecto and Gates of Heaven. Her parodies – often substituting lesbians in place of heterosexual figures – in the long-running Gay Comics livened that title’s pages. As one of Mike Friedrich’s Star*Reach regulars, she expanded her writing and art style to include serious fantasy fiction in “Stark’s Quest” (1977-79), a study in ESP, politics, and social engineering. From this body of work, “Waters of Requital” (1977) is especially powerful. Using the more illustrative of styles, she created short futuristic graphic tales for Heavy Metal magazine, Epics Illustrated and Imagine magazine. Of these stories, “Freeways” (1979) stands out as a mute, moving testimony to inspiration and rebellion. Mainstream comics: Marrs had a mainstream comics career at the same time - one of the few comic book creators to do so. She was introduced to the DC editor, Joe Orlando by Tex Blaisdell, an artist she had worked for on Prince Valiant and Lil’ Orphan Annie. After a start with DC’s Plop, Weird Mystery and House of Secrets, she created “Crazy Lady” (1975), a series about growing up female for Marvel’s Crazy magazine. But most of her mainstream comics work was as a writer, in Wonder Woman : Annual 1989, Viking Glory: the Viking Prince (1991), and Zatanna: Come Together (1993). She captured the adventurous tone and humor exactly right for Dark Horse’s series Indiana Jones and the Arms of Gold (1994) and Indiana Jones and the Iron Phoenix (1995), stories drawn exquisitely by Leo Duranona. In the foreword to Viking Glory, comics genius Will Eisner said “Marrs is a 1982 Inkpot Award winner with a substantial experience in animation. This is evident from the kinetic movement of the characters her plot ordains.” The same could be said for the Indiana Jones tales. Animation: Indeed Marrs has had another career, that of an animation director – parallel to her comics work. An Emmy Award-winning art director, she has run Lee Marrs Artwork, a digital design & animation company for many years. The company’s slogan : “Serving the Cosmos Since 1972”. She pioneered in 2D digital animation in the early 1980s, Her clients have included Disney/ABC, Apple Computer, IBM, Time Warner Inc., Children's Television Workshop, Nickelodeon, Electronic Arts, and MTV.
4. ZAPP_071117_076.JPG: Mike Rhode and Larry Malakhoff
5. ZAPP_071117_259.JPG: Lawrence Malalkhoff, ???, and Lee Mars
6. ZAPP_071117_271.JPG: Jerry Robinson and Mike Rhode
Limiting Text: You can turn off all of this text by clicking this link: [Thumbnails Only]
Multi Column: Number of columns of thumbnails to appear per page (normally defaults to 3): [1 col] [2] [3] [4] [5]
Bigger photos? To save space on the server and because the modern camera images are so large, photos larger than 640x480 have not been loaded on this page. If you need the bigger sizes of selected photos, email me and I can email them back to you or I can re-load this page temporarily with the bigger versions restored.
Same Subject: Click on this link to see coverage of items having the same subject: [Comic Books]
Featured Folk: Some of the people here can also be seen on other pages on this site.
- Marrs, Lee appears on:
  - 2019_CA_SDCCP05_190720 San Diego Comic-Con International 2019 -- Panel: 50 Years of Kitchen Sink
  - 2019_CA_SDCCP01_190719 San Diego Comic-Con International 2019 -- Panel: That '70s Panel
  - 2019_CA_SDCCP04_190718 San Diego Comic-Con International 2019 -- Panel: The Pros of Comic-Con
  - 2018_CA_SDCCP04_180720 San Diego Comic-Con International 2018 -- Panel: Revolutionary Ink: The 50th Anniversary of Underground Comix
- Rhode, Mike appears on:
  - 2020_DC_SIPG_Humboldt_Folks DC -- Donald W. Reynolds Center (SAAM) -- Exhibit: Alexander von Humboldt -- Folks At...
  - 2020_DC_King_200307 DC -- Dupont Circle -- Fantom Comics -- Tom King
  - 2020_DC_Mann_200226 DC -- Corcoran School of the Arts and Design -- Event: Onward: Meet and Greet with Pixar's Head of Story, Kelsey Mann
  - 2020_DC_Wuerker_200216 DC -- Word Bubble Party @ Matt Wuerker's
  - 2020_DC_Lancon_200125 Politics & Prose @ Union Market -- Philippe Lan�on ("Disturbance: Surviving Charlie Hebdo") w/Elliot Ackerman
  - 2019_DC_Open_Borders_191104 Cato Institute -- "Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration" (w/Bryan Caplan and Zach Weinersmith)
  - 2019_MD_SPX_Other_190915 Small Press Expo (2019) -- Other (Sunday)
  - 2019_MD_SPX_Other_190914 Small Press Expo (2019) -- Other (Saturday)
  - 2019_DC_Hernandez_190912 Library of Congress -- Event: Jaime Hernandez in Conversation with Gary Groth
  - 2019_DC_Johnston_190912 DC -- Embassy of Canada -- Opening Reception for "For Better or For Worse: The Comic Art of Lynn Johnston"
  - ...More (List all 103 pages with this person)...
- Robinson, Jerry appears on:
  - 2009_CA_SDCCP5_090723 San Diego Comic-Con International 2009 -- Panel: Golden and Silver Age of Comics
  - 2008_CA_SDCCP2_080727 San Diego Comic-Con International 2008 -- Panel: Jack Kirby Tribute
  - 2006_CA_SDCCP06_060720 San Diego Comic-Con International 2006 -- Panel: Batman: The Golden/Silver Age
  - 2006_MD_BCCB_060909 Baltimore Comic-Con (2006) -- Harvey Awards
  - 2010_MD_BCCA Baltimore Comic-Con (2010) -- Artists
  - 2010_CA_SDCCA San Diego Comic-Con International 2010 -- Artists
  - 2009_CA_SDCCA San Diego Comic-Con International 2009 -- Artists
  - 2008_CA_SDCCA San Diego Comic-Con International 2008 -- Artists
2007 photos: Equipment this year: I used the Fuji S9000 almost exclusively except for the period when it broke and I had to send it back for repairs. In August, I bought a Canon Rebel Xti, my first digital SLR (vs regular digital) which I tried as well but I wasn't that excited by it. Trips this year: Two weeks down south (including Graceland, Shiloh, VIcksburg, and New Orleans), a week at a time share in Costa Rica over my 50th birthday, a week off for a family reunion in the Wisconsin Dells (with sidetrips to Dayton, Springfield, and Madison), a week in San Diego for the Comic-Con with a side trip to Michigan for two family reunions, a drive up to Niagara Falls, a couple of weekend jaunts including the Civil War Preservation Trust Grand Review in Vicksburg, and a December journey to three state capitols (Richmond, Raleigh, and Columbia). I saw sites in 18 states and 3 other countries this year -- the first year I'd been to more than two other countries since we lived in Venezuela when I was a little toddler. Ego strokes: A photo that I took at the National Archives was used as the author photo on the book jacket for David A. Nichols' "A Matter of Justice: Eisenhower and the Beginning of the Civil Rights Revolution." I became a volunteer photographer at both Sixth and I Historic Synagogue and the Civil War Preservation Trust (later renamed "Civil War Trust").. Number of photos taken this year: 225,000.
Photo Contact: [Email Bruce Guthrie].