The Author

He was at Titus Comics up until the shift from Golden to Contemporary, before the nephew came in and everything changed and he was drowned out of the business slow in an altogether cowardly way. He had changed his name for print, changed it from Jacob to Jack, from Kurtzfeld to Curtiss, with the encouragement of his first boss. The decision would haunt him every time he signed a check until he died at 76. But when he first wrote Hysteria! in the years following the war before his wife died and after the first time he’d stopped drinking—he was still happy. You could see that in his work, in the way he walked, in how he still bought new shoes. Hysteria! went two full years before Moth appeared within its pages, Issue #24, October 1956. Locust appeared two issues later, wrote in as the son of Spring Heeled Jack (see Hysteria! #26). Both characters were abandoned after three issues. Marmalade never made it to the presses, she was left at the drawing table, thought too intelligent for her own good and therefore easily mistaken for pink around the edges. Both Moth and Locust were featured in The Immortals some years later, neither character stuck around for very long.

He couldn’t have been called a young man, but his face still became flushed when he drank. He still had the courage to dance. His hair hadn’t yet grayed to the point where his head would match his shirts and even if it had it probably wouldn’t have mattered. His secretaries held close to their hearts deep-seated feelings for him. Other artists, many of them younger, would often ask his opinion. Their wives would ask him over for dinner. He would not accept. In the war when he was found out to be in comic books he became a scout. Often he would cross enemy lines to draw plans of bases or supply routes. He suffered severe frostbite on his hands and feet. He later stated it was the only time he regretted being an artist.

The night he met Myra—exactly one year before they would marry—the sky was moonless. It was his birthday. He was 23, she was 27. They slept together within hours of their first dance. She was his first, he was her third. By the end of that first week she kept a nightgown in his apartment. He bought her a toothbrush, bought more towels.

Sometimes you just know.