Carl Murphy founded the Omlevex Comics Group in 1961, gathering together a group of talented comic book professionals to release a collection of titles that would take the world by storm, causing a great deal of controversy along the way. We here at Comics World Press had a chance to chat with Mr. Murphy at the Superland Comic Convention in Boston.
CWP: In 1961, you decided to start your own comicbook company. Did you have any prior publishing experience?
Carl Murphy: Oh yes. I had been publishing magazines, mostly of the pulp variety, since 1955, using the name Murphy Publications. We did quite a few magazines every month. We peaked at 11 magazines somewhere around 1957 or '58. It was a rough business. A lot of throat cutting, especially at the distributor level. I made some really bad business decisions that ultimately doomed the endeavor.
CWP: During that time, you purchased the rights to the once-popular pulp vigilante, the Poltergeist. Was that one of your bad business decisions?
Carl Murphy: Yes and no. In the short term, it proved to be the final nail in the coffin. I spent a lot of money procuring the Poltergeist, and I was too naive to read the fine print on the contract. As it turned out, I was only able to use the costume and name. The readers connected with the man inside the costume, not the visage of his crime fighting guise. Not knowing what to do with it, I just scrapped the idea and backburnered the magazine. In the end, I was the one who had the last laugh.
CWP: How so?
Carl Murphy: I ended up making a hell of a lot of money with the Poltergeist, especially later on in the '70s and '80s.
CWP: How did you come to the decision of re-designing the Poltergeist as a comicbook character? Was it something you planned to do all along?
Carl Murphy: Oh hell no, it wasn't my master plan [laughs]. I didn't have any kind of master plan for anything back then. I just kind of did things one at a time for the most part. My decision to re-work the Poltergeist for the comics was a move of desperation. Howard [Mills] turned in a Cliffhanger story that was a few pages shorter than normal. We went over it, trying to find ways to extend the page count, but really it would've come off as being obvious filler. Howard writes very tight and it was a powerful story. I didn't want to cheapen it by adding fluff pages. We almost did five pages of pin-ups but we didn't thing that would settle well with the fans, so we dropped the idea.
CWP: So you opted to insert a quick Poltergeist story.
Carl Murphy: [laughs] Well, not at first. I talked to a friend of mine named John Cantwell, who used to do some comic writing in the early half of the '50s. He agreed to whip up a story to fill the leftover space. Long story short... he didn't come through. With the deadline coming down fast, I came up with the idea for a story featuring a female vigilante. I just couldn't cinch down a name or identity for her. After beating my head on the desk for awhile, I figured maybe I should get some use out of that Poltergeist character I purchased quite a few years before. So, I swapped things around a little and made Poltergeist a gal. Somehow, it worked.
CWP: After the first Omlevex appearance of Poltergeist, you decided to keep it as a backup story in every issue of Cliffhanger. This proved to be a crucial step for your company, in terms of introducing new artists and writers. Was this deliberate?
Carl Murphy: Partly. We knew we needed to keep fresh talent in the pool, so to speak, so this was a great way to showcase new blood. We'd bring in new guys each issue, basically as a chance to strut their stuff and show the world what they could do. The other benefit is that the rest of the staff was already so busy we couldn't see straight. The last thing we needed was to have yet another story to work on each month. This format freed us from one additional responsibility. We killed two birds with one stone.
CWP: That was in 1964. Let's step back a little, to the first now-famous Omlevex meeting. Did you know in your gut that you were onto something big?
Carl Murphy: Not even remotely! [laughs] I distinctly recall making crap up as I was going along. I had no clue what I was doing, but I guess I made them all think I did. I showed a lot of confidence and I think that might've inspired them. They had no clue that I was talking out of my rear end. I was spouting off stuff like, "Don't worry about the comics code, do what you want to do." I'll be honest. Before I started flapping my gums that day, I had no idea that I was going to forego the code. It just kind of came out, so I ran with it.
CWP: Were you worried that distributors would choose not to carry non-comics code approved books?
Carl Murphy: Sure, and a lot of places did just that. They refused to carry us. Especially when they saw Jonah with his pentagram tattooed around his eye. Man, that ticked some of them off. We got letters about that like you wouldn't believe. That's why it took a few years for Omlevex titles to really catch on and gain a solid following: not many stores carried our books. It was disheartening for awhile, but we stuck to our guns and weathered the storm.
CWP: When Reverend Mack Copeland took notice of your "decadent" products, he staged a crusade against Omlevex. How did this affect sales?
Carl Murphy: It was free advertising. Sales at that point picked up tremendously. We became the naughty comics, the ones that your mother would never approve of. We touched upon subject matter that no other company would, and this made us cool in the eyes of teenagers and college kids. And we kept everything really personable, like the readers were our friends. We'd talk directly to them in the comics, particularly in the captioned dialogue. We wanted to involve them as much as possible, and the readers reacted positively to it. We took off like a rocket ship. Copeland's ranting did nothing but help us out. You can't buy that kind of publicity, and here we were getting it for free.
CWP: Did you have a favorite title, aside from Freedom's Trio (which you scripted)?
Carl Murphy: That's a brainbuster. It's like being asked which of your children is your favorite. I loved every single comic we ever published, but Drake Einstein will always be the one that edges out the others. It was hip, it was poignant and it was topical. Add to that the fact that, at his core, Drake was kind of a jerk. Heroes weren't jerks back then, but he broke the mold. Plus all those crazy villains he had. Dean [Robison] had a knack for coming up with these outlandishly campy villains. I had to turn down quite a few of his villain ideas because they were just too "out there". I recall one baddie who was like a human toilet plunger. It was over the top and I didn't feel it would've been a good villain. But most of his ideas were campy but at the same time competant, like they could really give Drake a run for his money, y'know? Characters like Man-Cactus, King Cockroach and Sweetie Pie.
CWP: Since we're discussing the specific titles, how did you feel about American Gargoyle?
Carl Murphy: The final product was magic, but trying to keep Mark [Bartlett] and Roy [Desmond] on the same page was enough to drive a sane man crazy. I felt like an underpaid babysitter at times, and that's not an exaggeration by any means. They fought like cats and dogs. But the work they did was just flat out magical! It was literature in comic form. The idea that the main villain was featured almost as much as the title character was ground breaking. The book could've just as easily been named "Jonah". The readers were as intrigued by him as they were by the American Gargoyle himself. The real star was the interraction between the two of them. It was a strange balance, which made the title so unique.
CWP: How about Cliffhanger?
Carl Murphy: I think if I had to choose, this was my least favorite of the early Omlevex books. It wasn't that Howard [Mills] didn't do good work. He did remarkable work. It's just that I've never been into the whole spy thing. I never understood its appeal, and Cliffhanger was drenched in secret agent trappings, which actually sold a lot of books due to the popularity of James Bond. So from a business standpoint, I supported it fully. But from a personal standpoint, it didn't excite me quite as much as the other titles did, though I did appreciate the concept that Cliffhanger was an aging superhero who couldn't perform at the same level that he did five or ten years before. That was powerful story telling.
CWP: Lacie Delmont?
Carl Murphy: I have a great fondness for horror, so Lacie clicked with me right away. Especially when Janice [Silvey] was writing the book. She took a novelist's approach to the stories, which lent them a non-conventional feel. She was a master of suspense and had a devilish mind for supernatural villains. To me, Spring-Heeled Jack was simply the epitome of what a good villain should be like. When Janice died in that tragic car accident, Alice [Mayfield] took over writing duties. Bless her heart, she tried her damnedest to uphold Janice's legacy, but I felt the series steered too far from its horror roots under her guidance. She brought in supervillains like Brainteaser and played around with the format quite a bit. I don't think it worked very well, though I applaud Alice for giving it her honest to gosh best effort. The spark just wasn't there, which led to the book's cancellation in '69.
CWP: Obviously you were fond of Freedom's Trio?
Carl Murphy: Oh yeah. It was great fun to write because I got to introduce these extremely powerful bad guys, like Grunn and Lazer Man. I really grooved on the inter-personal relationships between Atlas Man, Onyx, and Dust Girl. Each of them represented a different generation, which was totally deliberate. Atlas Man was a man of the '40s who didn't understand modern society. He once chastised Dust Girl for wearing pants. [laughs] Onyx was a man of the '60s who refused to blindly follow society's norms. He questioned the way things were, which didn't make Atlas Man happy. At the other end of the spectrum, Dust Girl was a teeny-bopper. She loved the Beatles and wasn't yet completely mature. This rubbed the other two the wrong way. So, we had this balancing act to mainrtain, but they had to stay together as a team because the Keeper of the Realm let them know that if they disbanded, the world was doomed. But no pressure or anything. [laughs]
CWP: How did you come up with the concept of the Metazon islands?
Carl Murphy: I didn't. Roy [Desmond] did. He came into my office about two weeks into the company's existence and told me that he had an idea that might piss me off. He then went into his salesman spiel where he explained these islands. He said he wanted to set all the Omlevex books on these islands. This took me by surprise considering that American Gargoyle was quite obviously an American. But the more he prattled on about the islands, the more I began to see where he was coming from. I told him that we could do it, but he had to do two things first: Come up with a way to work American Gargoyle into Metazon, and give me a good reason why so much of the superhuman activity goes on in Metazon. An hour later, he strides back in which a notebook crammed with notes. The notes described how Metazon was a territory of the United States and how super powers were granted because of this odd mineral that was found primarily on the islands. It sounded plausible to me, at least for a comicbook, so I approved it.
CWP: Did you call the mineral "Omlevex" at that point?
Carl Murphy: No, we had a hard time settling on a name. We probably went through five or six different names for the mineral before I got the idea to name it after the company. It tied everything together nicely and it sounded good. Back then, we didn't really think we were making literature or anything. We were just making funny books. We had no idea that people would be collecting or reading these comics some forty years later. It just didn't occur to us. So, we didn't take things like names very seriously. It was like, "Oh okay, yeah that sounds good. Let's use it." We didn't worry about whether the name would sound cool decades later or whether the name would attract collectors. If it sounded good, we'd use it.
CWP: Speaking of "Omlevex", how did you come up with that name for your company?
Carl Murphy: [laughs] I think it just fell into the "it sounded good" department. Honestly, I don't remember. What I do remember is that I was talking with some of my old contacts from my magazine publishing days and I told them I was going to start a company that produces comics. They warned me to stay away from it because sales of comic books were really low. I told them that I was going to do it anyway, but I couldn't come up with a company name. All the good names had already been taken. I don't know which one of them said it, but one of them piped in by telling me to make up a nonsensical word and put the word "Comics" after it. So, that's what I did.
CWP: There have been so many rumors about the origin of the name...
Carl Murphy: Oh yes. I've heard them all, or damn close to all of them anyway. My favorite so-called origin is that "Omlevex" was the name of a demon I worshiped. That one gave me a really good laugh at the time, which was sometime in the early '70s I think. Some of the rumors were just so silly that it amazed me how some people could ever have believed them.
CWP: Have you ever had any spooky encounters with nay-sayers?
Carl Murphy: More than I'd care to count.
CWP: Would you share one of these experiences with us?
Carl Murphy: Sure. [pauses] I think the craziest encounter was in 1966 or thereabout. I traveled out to Los Angeles to talk to a cartoon company about an American Gargoyle program, which didn't work out. Anyway, I decided to leave my hotel room one evening and walk down to a little bar and grill that I saw a few blocks from there. About halfway there, a big black car pulled up to the curb, right beside me. The back window rolled down and there was this guy sitting there who looked like every mobster in every crime movie ever made. He asked, "You're that comic book guy, right?" I reluctantly nodded my head. He then preceded to tell me how his son got really mad that Jonah defeated American Gargoyle in one of the issues. This guy was honestly pissed off at me for allowing this. He gave me his address and told me that I was to write his son an apology letter and that I'd regret it if I didn't. It was a weird and frightening experience.
CWP: Did you write the kid?
Carl Murphy: Yeah, but I doubt it was what his father wanted. I said I was sorry that he didn't like the story, but said that it's the fact that Jonah can sometimes win that makes him such a threatening villain and that it makes for more suspense any time they clash. I never received a response, so who knows what they thought of it.
CWP: One final question before we untie you and set you free.
Carl Murphy: [laughs] Shoot.
CWP: Who was the biggest womanizer in the Omlevex Think Tank back in the 1960s?
Carl Murphy: [laughs] Oh brother! Boy, do you know how to close an interview with a bang. I think that honor goes to Moose [Danny Marcoli]. He was a strapping young fellow with a big smile and equally big muscles. He drove the girls crazy! Especially the older girls, the ones in their twenties. Which was older for Moose, because he started working for us when he was still in high school. He was a joy to be around too. He was this outgoing, caring and genuine person and I think that was what attracted the ladies. Plus, he drove a motorcycle, so he had that classic bad boy image too. It's hard for me to believe that he's now married and has kids of his own. Hell, his oldest daughter had a baby not too long ago. So, he's a grandfather, which makes me feel older than dirt because I remember when he was practically a snot-nosed little kid.
CWP: Thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure and an honor to interview you.
Carl Murphy: No, thank you. I've had fun talking about the old days.
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