Creator: Irv Watanabe

HITOSHI IRVING “IRV” WATANABE
February 10, 1919, Maui, Hawaii – January 7, 1993, Kamuela, Hawaii


1920 United States Census
Name: Hitoshi Watanabe
Age: 11/12 [11 months]
Birth Year: abt 1919
Birthplace: Hawaii
Home in 1920: Makawao, Maui, Hawaii Territory
Race: Japanese
Gender: Male
Relation to Head of House: Son
Marital Status: Single
Father’s Name: Hiroshi Watanabe
Father’s Birthplace: Japan
Mother’s Name: Some Watanabe
Mother’s Birthplace: Japan
Household Members:
Name / Age
Hiroshi Watanabe 32 [Laborer / Sugar Plantation]
Some Watanabe 33 [Laborer / Sugar Plantation]
Hiroko Watanabe 3 1/12
Hitoshi Watanabe 11/12 

1930 United States Census
Name: Hitoshi Watanabe
Gender: Male
Birth Year: abt 1919
Birthplace: Hawaii
Race: Japanese
Home in 1930: Makawao, Maui, Hawaii Territory
Marital Status: Single
Relation to Head of House: Son
Father’s Name: Hiroshi Watanabe
Father’s Birthplace: Japan
Mother’s Birthplace: Japan
Occupation: [blank]
Education:
Military Service:
Rent/home value:
Household Members:
Name / Age
Hiroshi Watanabe 41 [Widower; Owner / Sugar Farm]
Hiroko Watanabe 13
Hitoshi Watanabe 11
Saburo Watanabe 9

Guidebook for Homemaking in Hawaii
Caroline Wortmann Edwards
M.J. Fortie, Editor
New Freedom Press, 1938
Drawings by Hitoshi Irving Watanabe, Commercial Art Student and Graduate, McKinley High School, Honolulu (approximately 150 drawings)

Catalog of Copyright Entries, Part 1, Books, Group 1, 1938 New Series, Volume 35, Number 11

Edwards, Caroline Wortmann. Guidebook for homemaking in Hawaii, by C. W. Edwards. Edited by M. J. Fortie. Drawings by Hitoshi Irving Watanabe. © Feb. 28, 1938; 2 c. Aug. 22: aft. Oct. 24; A 122301; New freedom press, Honolulu, Hawaii. 14348

1940 United States Census
Name: Hitoshi Watanabe
Temporarily Absent: Yes
Age: 21
Estimated Birth Year: abt 1919
Gender: Male
Race: Japanese
Birthplace: Hawaii
Marital Status: Single
Relation to Head of House: Son
Home in 1940: Paia, Maui, Hawaii
Street: Store Camp

Occupation: [blank]
Sheet Number: 11A
Household Members:
Name / Age
Hiroshi Watanabe 50 [Widower; Foreman / Sugar Cane Plantation]

Hitoshi Watanabe 21
Hiroko Watanabe 23
Katsuko Watanabe 12

Brooklyn Daily Eagle (New York), July 21, 1941: Golf scores: Van Cortlandt—...Irv Watanabe, 69...

Biro-Wood Staff Christmas Card, circa 1949, from Joe and Jim Simon’s The Comic Book Makers (2003)

True Comics
#34, April 1944
Truly Comic! (letters page)

A lady hurriedly entered the drug store and asked the man behind the soda fountain. “Are you a doctor?” Smilingly, he replied, “No, but I’m a fizzician!”
Irving Watanabe, New York, N.Y.

1950 United States Census

Name: Irving Watanabe

Age: 31

Estimated Birth Year: abt 1919

Gender: Male

Race: Japanese

Birthplace: Hawaii

Marital Status: Married

Relation to Head of House: Head

Home in 1950: Queens, Queens, New York

Address: 9922 42nd Avenue, 1st Floor

Hours Worked in Week: 40

Occupation: Commercial Artist

Trade: Biro & Wood

Enumeration District: 41-796

Sheet Number: 1

Line: 26

Household Members

Name / Age

Irving Watanabe 31

Tamiko Watanabe 24

Selected pages from Daredevil #88, July 1952

Daredevil, art and lettering for “The Little Wise Guys Scrap Book”

#109, April 1954 (attributed to Watanabe)

#112, July 1954 (signed)

The Comics Journal, #282, April 2007
Fred Guardineer was interviewed and said: 

…I did a lot of work for Charley Biro and Bob Wood in their crime comics. All their lettering was done by a guy of Japanese descent named Irv Watanabe. He was an excellent letterer. He lettered all of their books, including mine. I used to get the story and then I’d draw the thing up in pencils the best I could. I would letter roughly, so you knew how much space it took up. Then I would turn, what they called the pencils, turn them into Bob Wood and Charley Biro or at Gleason’s, which was their publisher. The fellow would letter them in ink and then I would pick up the pencils, take them home and finish the job. I would bring in the full job a couple of days later….

Long Island Star Journal, (New York), July 14, 1959

Buddhists to Celebrate

Many Queens families will join in the city’s 10th annual Buddhist festival from 7 P.M. to 10:30 P.M. Saturday on Riverside Park Mall at 103rd street and Riverside drive in Manhattan. It will celebrate with traditional street dancing and oriental music embellished with Japanese lanterns.

…Mr. And Mrs. Irving Watanabe and their son, Craig, of 87-10 37th avenue, of Jackson Heights…

Who’s Who of American Comic Books 1928-1999

Who’s Who said he contributed to the Picture World Encyclopedia (1959).

Hogan’s Alley
Funny Business: The Rise and Fall of Johnstone and Cushing
By Tom Heintjes

...The company was able to hire the best talent because the advertising industry’s demand for comics-style advertising was great, and the agencies paid an art service like Johnstone and Cushing accordingly. As the company assembled a staff, they hired Jack Frost and Irving Watanabe for balloon lettering, Floyd Bonar for logo lettering and Eliot Batchelder for coloring and mechanicals production....

Rawhide Kid #67, December 1968, lettering

Amazing Adventures #8, July 1980, lettering

Amazing Adventures #11, October 1980, lettering

Correspondance

Three letters by Irving Watanabe to Jerry DeFuccio who was working on a Charles Biro biography. Watanabe’s letters were offered on eBay. I acquired one letter and copies of two others.

January 24, 1984

page 1, excerpt

Dear Jerry—

Marie told me about you & your project on Charles Biro,

who I consider an innovator & a genius in his days. He wrote,

penciled, inked all of his strips until a few years before leaving

the field to go to NBC. I don't know what his title was there.

I first met Charlie in 1940, while I was at MLJ. He was

always fun loving & had to be the main attraction. I think he

was kind & generous. He used to give story plots to Joe Blair

many times & in return would receive free lunch.

When at MLJ I was receiving 50 cents a page for lettering but

it soon ended when Charlie offered me $1.00.

Charlie did things the last minute so we got caught in the

crisis deadline. I used to work 2 days & nights—sometimes

3 without much sleep. We went to his apartment, first at Sunnyside

then Jackson Heights, Queens. He used to start off with a big first

page splash then worked on 6 panels & often he'd run out of

pages & wound up with 15 to 20 panels on the last page!

He penciled the whole 1 to 16 pages & left dialogue to the last

but at times I insisted as he went along. So grudgingly he'd

put copy on 6 or 8 pages then finished the story. Meantime,

Norman Maurer, Joe Kubert or Carl Hubbell would tackle

inking in figures. I also did the backgrounds on nearly all

the stories. After Charlie penciled & put copy in, he'd take a

snooze for about 30 minutes & then come back to put only

the faces (ink) of all the leading characters. Later to simplify things

we'd have hundreds of heads in different poses & sizes on stats

& he'd paste them in.

Charlie did all the covers of every mag he put out. He even

designed all the logos & copy on the cover & even the editorials.

He loved to write.

page 2, excerpt

Later in his career when he was popular & financially

successful, he relegated his stories to Fran, his wife, who I

think was a very good dialogue writer. Charlie would

first tell her the plot & she'd letter in the copy as Charlie

continued penciling. This was in 1942, '43 '44. Charlie would

put in the first phrase in pencil & she'd put in the rest. After

she finished Charlie edited it & then I took over.

page 3, excerpt

Charlie was very good to me. During the war years he

raised my salary from $100 to $190 per week. In those years

that was pretty good for anyone. When we started to go downhill after the war

he cut it to $150. Everybody took a cut to offset the $10,000 deficit.

Within 6 months he paid everybody off.

page 4

His innovation with cowboy stories was to draw a gun or

hat that would tell the story. It was very wordy I might say

upon my part because of too many captions. For Biro to do

this was not normal for he loved pictures to tell the story rather

than too much explanations.

A thing about his creation of a strip—everything was in his

head. He created his strips as he went along. He never worked

from a script or penciled a rough sketch. All he did was

rule the pages, blocked them and put notations on a few

of the panels (2 or 3 on a page) the rest was blank & knew

what to draw. He tried element of surprise when you turned the

page over. It was amazing how he worked.

There was a time when we needed a 6-page story filler for

the Crime Does Not Pay book. The artist had not started it. So

we looked up all the outside artists to see whether they had a

speculating story. Fortunately someone had a five-pager.

It had to be done overnight. So Charlie & I drove over to

Brooklyn & saw the story. It wasn't good but we had no

choice. He quickly redid the splash page, cut up the in-between

panels, created a page with panels from here & there, penciled

in & let the original seller of the strip to ink them in

so the story looked liked the same artist did it. The artist

got paid for the 6 pages. The 3 worked for 4 hours because

there were quite a few panel changes & I had to duplicate

the lettering.

He observed deadlines fanatically. It was Friday afternoon

5 o'clock & 6 pages had to [be] delivered from the messenger service

to us. Charlie got an extension for Monday a.m. first thing. Bob

Fuje, the artist, had sent them in the early afternoon. So we rushed

to the messenger office—nobody there—door was open. We looked

through their files to see the owner's address & phone. We contacted

him in Westchester where he was to go out for an important dinner.

I could still see Charlie fuming & threatening him. Reluctantly the manager

came down & went through the files to see who the messenger was. He

lived in Brooklyn. We rushed over. It was about 9 p.m. We

asked many people where the address was. It took us 2 hours

or longer—everyone giving us bum steers. When the 3 of us

finally got to the street—no light from any of the windows could

be seen. It was pitch black except for one lonely light on

the 3rd floor. It was our only chance. Luckily the landlady

page 5, excerpt

opened the door because we made such a racket. It was the correct

address & we asked about the name—if he lived here. It was his

light on the third floor. We knocked, he opened the door, he was

drunk. We got the 6 pages, he got fired on the spot. It was after

1:30 in the morn when I reached home.

Aloha,

Irving

February 24, 1984

Dear Jerry—

Thank you for Fran’s address. I am very happy to

hear that she moved in with the Ortells. Fran is excellent

with kids & a great mother-in-law to have for anybody. I

know she is leery about discussing Charlie’s career in comics.

She was a devoted wife & mother.

The strip was Peter Scratch (I think) not Match. It was

written by Kaplan, Al Capp’s brother. If you know Jack Sparling

he can tell you of an excellent woman artist that worked for Parents’

Magazine’s comic book. I never saw her but I just marveled at

her drawings of famous personalities. Elliot Kaplan was my

editor at Parents’ Magazine & Jack was one of the artists there.

George Tuska used to drive from Bethpage area to my home in Queens

to play golf with me at Clearview golf course. He is a dear friend.

Because of his hearing problem he was very quiet but had a

great sense of humor. He loves to tease but has his serious moments.

I did a few Airboy stories but do not know the artist.

I knew [Frank] Volpe before he was inducted. As I recall he

used to say he never paid income taxes. I wonder if he’s behind

bars.

Yes, Bob Dunn should give you wonderful stories about Biro’s

social escapades. Ask him about the trip where the guests were

fleeced by gamblers on the society benefit trip.

I remember Warren King as a serious & dedicated artist—

always talking about techniques and trying to better himself. I

think Bob Dunn knows more about him. Bob used to come to

our office every now & then & I met him. He is full of life &

used to give every one a nickname—mostly complimentary. I

was no match to associate with that group although I played

golf with some of the cartoonists.

Joe Blair’s second wife was Nadine, a beautiful girl. I don’t

know how she fell for him, but Joe was a handsome smooth talking

guy. Later after divorcing Joe, I heard she married Warren King.

Wolverton did gruesome but charming caricatures and should

be admired by Mad Magazine fans. It was very amusing to see

those drawings in the old days & I think his uniqueness caught

Charlie’s eyes. At times Charlie didn’t appreciate the grotesqueness.

I think he sort of put things off.

I have never met Jill Elgin or Marcia Snyder. I think Ben Oda[?]

may know. I think Ben is an excellent person to interview [illegible] lives

of various artists because he dealt with so many, besides he is a very

nice guy—modest & always busy. If you see him, say “hello” for me.

With warm aloha,

Irving

Undated letter

page 1, excerpt

Dear Jerry—

It brought to my recollection that I left Biro-Wood

Productions around 1954 or ’55 & joined Johnstone &

Cushing, comic advertising, so after that I had no dealings

with either of them.

When Biro had his associations with prominent society

circles, he assigned most of his work to Norman Maurer

& his wife did the lettering, very good I might say. Charlie

& his wife did no typing, so the script must have been

done with pencil comp drawings & copy & descriptions. You

should ask Norman about it. Kubert & Maurer were

very good pals & I hope Kubert is still in touch with him.

Norman could tell you more details because he took over

pencilings & inking all by himself. I think his wife's

name is Joan, daughter of Moe Howard of the 3 stooges.

Frances Biro was a most devoted wife. She was the

right woman for Charlie because they always concurred on

the subject of comics especially the stories. Charlie was a

genius story teller & everybody listened. He loved an audience.

During the war many of the leading cartoonists went

on tours for the war effort—like Goldberg, Caniff etc.

Whenever they got on stage for chalk talk, Charlie got

the biggest ovation to the dismay of the other cartoonists

simply because kids understood comic books & not

syndicated artists.

page 1, excerpt

With aloha,

Irving Watanabe

P.S. I think Marie is a

sweetheart of a person—kind,

understanding, humorous & a

good listener.

Public Records Index

Name: Irving Watanabe
Address: 154 E 29th St Apt 10F, New York, NY, 10016-8135 (1990)

Name: Irving Watanabe
Address: PO Box 29933, Honolulu, HI, 96820-2333 (1993)
[PO Box 2157, Kamuela, HI, 96743-2157 (1989)]

Name: Irving Watanabe
Street address: PO Box 2157
City: Kamuela
County: Hawaii
State: Hawaii
Zip Code: 96743
Phone Number: 808-885-4682

Social Security Death Index
Name: Irving Watanabe
SSN: 576-05-8112
State of Issue: Hawaii
Date of Birth: Monday February 10, 1919
Date of Death: January 1993
Est. Age at Death: 73 years, 11 months
Last known residence:
City: Kamuela
County: Hawaii
State: Hawaii
Zip Code: 96743

Who’s Who of American Comic Books 1928–1999

Who’s Who said Watanabe’s frst name was “Hiloshi”.

Watanabe’s comic book credits are at the Grand Comics Database, as Irv and Irving.

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