Tenth Letter of the Alphabet: Creator: Ben Oda

Monday, August 26, 2013

Creator: Ben Oda

BENJAMIN HATSUTARO “BEN” ODA

December 21, 1913 or 1915, Florin, California – November 28, 1984, Englewood, New Jersey
Tomitaro Oda, father, and Tsune Yamashita, mother

1920 United States Census
Name: Hatsutaro Oda [Ben]
Age: 7
Birth Year: abt 1913
Birthplace: California
Home in 1920: San Joaquin, Sacramento, California
Street: Florin Road
Residence Date: 1920
Race: Japanese
Gender: Male
Relation to Head of House: Son
Marital status: Single
Father's Birthplace: Japan
Mother's name: Tsune Oda
Mother's Birthplace: Japan
Occupation: None
Attended School: yes
Household Members:
Name / Age
Tsune Oda, 44 [Widow; Laborer/Basket Factory]
Shimchi Oda, 17 [Laborer/Basket Factory; later adopted the name Frank]
Katsuyo Oda, 14
Haruko Oda, 11
Hatsutaro Oda, 7

1930 United States Census

Name: Ben Oda

Gender: Male

Birth Year: abt 1913

Birthplace: California

Race: Japanese

Home in 1930: Florin, San Joaquin Township, Sacramento County, California
Address: Florin Road

Marital Status: Single

Relation to Head of House: Son

Father's Birthplace: Japan

Mother's Name: Tsune Oda

Mother's Birthplace: Japan

Parents' birthplace: Japan

Household Members:

Name / Age

Tsune Oda / 58 [Widow; Basket Maker]

Ben Oda / 17

California Voter Registration
Name: Ben H Oda
Residence Year: 1936
Street address: Box 36, Florin
Residence Place: Sacramento, California
Party Affiliation: Democrat
Occupation: Student

California Voter Registration
Name: Ben H Oda
Residence Year: 1938
Street address: Box 36, Florin
Residence Place: Sacramento, California
Party Affiliation: Democrat
Occupation: Student

California Voter Registration
Name: Ben H Oda
Residence Year: 1940
Street address: Box 36, Florin
Residence Place: Sacramento, California
Party Affiliation: Democrat
Occupation: Student

1940 United States Census

Name: Ben Oda

Age: 25

Estimated Birth Year: abt 1915

Gender: Male

Race: Japanese

Birthplace: California

Marital Status: Single

Relation to Head of House: Brother

Home in 1940: Florin, San Joaquin Township, Sacramento County, California

Inferred Residence in 1935: San Joaquin, Sacramento, California

Residence in 1935: Same Place

Household Members:

Name / Age

Frank S Oda / 35 [Hawaii; Farmer]

Tsune Oda / 65 [Widow]

Ben Oda / 25

World War II Draft Card
Name: Ben Hatsutaro Oda
Gender: Male
Race: Oriental
Age: 26
Relationship to Draftee: Self (Head)
Birth Date: 21 December 1913
Birth Place: Florin, California
Residence Place: Los Angeles, California
Registration Date: 16 October 1940
Registration Place: Los Angeles, California
Employer: Art Student Chouinard School
Weight: 152
Complexion: Light Brown
Eye Color: Brown
Hair Color: Black
Height: 5 feet 7 inches
Next of Kin: Tsune Oda
Household Members:
Name / Relationship
Ben Hatsutaro Oda, Self
Tsune Oda, Mother
Physical Identification: Scar on forehead
Signature: October 16, 1940

World War II Army Enlistment Record

Serial Number: 39226906
Name: Ben H Oda

Birth Year: 1913

Race: Japanese, citizen (Japanese)

Nativity State or Country: California

State of Residence: California

County or City: Los Angeles

Enlistment Date: 3 February 1941

Enlistment State: California

Enlistment City: Los Angeles

Branch: Branch Immaterial - Warrant Officers

Branch Code: Branch Immaterial - Warrant Officers

Grade: Private

Grade Code: Private (paratrooper)

Component: Selectees (Enlisted Men)

Source: Civil Life

Education: 3 years of college

Civil Occupation: Actors and actresses

Marital Status: Single, without dependents

Height: 66

Weight: 145

1948 New York, New York City Directory

Name: Ben H Oda

Street Address: 601 W 110
Phone Number: MOnumnt 3–1841

Justice Traps the Guilty #56, November 1953

The line-up from left to right:

Ben Oda, Joe Simon, Joe Genalo, Mort Meskin and Jack Kirby.

Mad #13, July 1954

At the bottom of the page, in blue pencil, is Kurtzman’s note:

“Ben! on all pages!” (arrow points to circled number one).

New York Post
January 24, 1961
page 62: Kuni Tamaki with a 143 average is currently pacing the ladies in the Nisei League at Manhattan Lanes. Ben Oda has paced the Miyasaki Travel Team to the top in the pennant race.

Public Records IndexName: Benjamin H Oda
Address: 8 Barbara Dr, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 07632-2302

Jonah Hex #33, February 1980

DC Profiles Number 56: Ben Oda

Ben Oda has been lettering comics since 1945—and not just comic books, either. Ben has, at one time or another, done the lettering for such comic strips as Rip Kirby, Prince Valiant, Flash Gordon, Dondi, On Stage, Quincy, Gil Thorpe, Dr. Kildare, The Phantom, Steve Canyon, Kerry Drake, Secret Agent X-9, The Dropouts, Terry and the Pirates, and Tarzan.

Of course, Ben has lettered virtually all of DC’s major characters, too, including Superman, Batman, Flash, Green Lantern, and Wonder Woman.

Ben is widely renowned throughout the industry as one of the best letterers around. Professor John Adkins Richardson singled Ben out for special praise in his book, The Complete Art of Cartooning. Yet Ben claims there is no special secret to what he does. He uses standard Speedball lettering pens and his own steady hands and keen eye for spacing to produce hundreds of pages of expertly lettered comic books and strips every year.

Ben actually began his career as an apprentice at the Walt Disney Studios after graduating from the Choinard [sic; Chouinard] School of Fine Arts in Los Angeles. But his stay there was cut short in early 1941 when he was drafted into the Army. Some months later the U.S. entered World War II and Ben found himself being transferred all over the country. His Army years provided Ben with an opportunity to further his education and after a tour of duty in France he found himself attending classes at the University of Illinois at Champaign and later at Yale University. While stationed at Fort Sheridan (Illinois) with the First Medic Corps, Ben wrote and drew a comic strip called “Donald Doc” for the camp newspaper.

But Ben’s “best accomplishment” in those days came when the Fort Sheridan basketball team, which he played for, beat rival Camp Grant—just after that team had clobbered the number one college team in the country! “It was my biggest thrill,” recalls Ben. “The Camp Grant commander was so proud of his team—he made sure that any professional athletes who got transferred to his command stayed at Camp Grant and played on his teams. We showed him.”

After the War, Ben found work with Simon and Kirby, and went on to work with a succession of comics publishers—Crestwood, Hillman, Ziff-Davis, EC, Gold Key, and others. Ben worked for MAD at the very beginning and was also in on the start of Warren Publications. These days, though, Ben restricts his comic book work exclusively to DC.

Ben is the father of two sons and two daughters, aged 28, 23, 21, and 19, and lives with his wife of more than 30 years in New Jersey.

The Comics Buyer’s Guide, #585, February 1, 1985

“Ben Oda dies at 68, long-time letterer”

Superman #408, June 1985
“Ben Oda Remembered”
By Andrew Helfer

Department of Veterans Affairs BIRLS Death File
Name: Ben Oda
Gender: Male
Birth Date: 21 December 1915
Death Date: 28 November 1984
SSN: 567127986
Branch 1: Army
Enlistment Date 1: 3 February 1941
Release Date 1: 27 December 1945

New Jersey Death Index
Name: Ben H Oda
Age: 68
Birth Date: abt 1916
Death Date: 28 November 1984
Death Place: Englewood, Bergen, New Jersey

Social Security Death Index

Name: Ben Oda

SSN: 567-12-7986

Born: 21 December 1915

Died: November 1984

State (Year) SSN issued: California (Before 1951)

Social Security Applications and Claims Index
Name: Ben Hatsutaro Oda [Ben Oda]
Gender: Male
Birth Date: 21 Deember 1913
Birth Place: Florin, California
Death Date: November 1984
Father: Tomitaro Oda
Mother: Tsune Yamashita
SSN: 567127986
Notes: July 1937: Name listed as Ben Hatsutaro Oda; 16 November 1988: Name listed as Ben Oda

POV: Point of View

Mark Evanier
[excerpt]

...There's no way of calculating it but I'd guess that if you tallied who has lettered the most balloons, the late Ben Oda would hold the record, especially if you included newspaper strips. At one point, Ben was supposedly lettering twelve daily strips, along with all the comic book pages he did for almost every publisher in and around New York.

He did so much that some editors assumed he had a whole staff back home, trained to letter exactly as he did. This was apparently untrue. There were family members who helped by ruling guide lines and erasing pages, but the lettering, I'm told, was all by Ben. Every downstroke of it.

He was uncommonly trustworthy. Jack Kirby used to say Ben was the most valuable employee of the Simon-and-Kirby shop. Irwin Hasen, illustrator of the Dondi strip, gave Ben a key to his studio. He could depend on Ben to come and go at all hours, picking up the work and bringing it back when needed, or lettering it on the premises if deadlines got tight. “Ben never once let me down,” Hasen said. I never heard of Ben letting anyone down.

The one time I met Oda, it was at a New York comic convention — either ’75 or ’76 — and he took the train in on a Saturday to deliver three (yes, three) pages to Paul Levitz so that Paul could get them to an inker who needed work on Monday. Ben was not there for the con; he intended to just drop work off and split...and he would have, had I not introduced myself, dropped the name of Kirby, and dragged him off for a cola and a chat.

I still have the notes I took at that impromptu interview. At one point, Ben demonstrated a point by taking my Flair pen and lettering a whole line of copy on my pad. Evelyn Woods couldn't read a stop sign in the instant it took Ben to letter that sentence.

The main thing I jotted down was what an enormous fan he was of all the artists whose work he lettered. He also said that, of all the varied employers he’d had, only one or two had ever treated him poorly. (Which I can believe. There are editors who would swap blood relatives for one letterer like Ben.)

Later on, I heard a wonderful story about him. Artists are forever cobbling up presentations for newspaper strips they hope to sell. Many of them wanted to hire Ben to letter their samples, but Ben felt bad about taking money from an artist, especially given how few of these submissions ever pay off. So he finally established a policy: As long as they didn’t need it A.S.A.P., he would letter samples free for any professional artist. If the strip later sold, he would expect the job of lettering it, but that was not mandatory.

The artist who told me this said it was not a matter of Ben trying to drum up work. “Ben always had all the work he could handle,” he explained. “It was just his little gift to his fellow professionals.”

The Silver Lantern
John Workman
[excerpt]

JW: Harvey Kurtzman hated the Leroy lettering at EC. There were this guy and his wife who had worked for Bill Gaines’s father and did all the Wonder Woman lettering. It was all Leroy-lettered. It’s a type of mechanical lettering that's done with a sort of a stylus, and all the letters have no difference between them. It was used a lot in drafting. But here it was in comics. I actually kind of liked it. I thought it gave the EC’s a unique look, but part of that was the fact that this fellow and his wife would do only the lettering itself. The titles, the sound effects, and the balloons were done by the individual artists, so you’d get these beautiful brush balloons done by Wally Wood where he didn’t ink it with a pen. He used a brush. Then there’d be a big, drippy Graham Ingels balloon and the sort of free floating wonderful things that Al Williamson did. That uniform lettering actually helped to magnify the individuality of the artist’s style. But Kurtzman hated it. When he got a little say in things up there he brought in Ben Oda to hand letter the stuff that he worked on.

Prof: Frank Springer told me a great story about Ben. He said that Ben must not have slept and he had the keys to the places of a lot of the artists and he’d show up at all hours of the day to knock out a few things and Frank said, “Perhaps it’s a good thing Ben’s not with us any more because he probably could have written a tell-all that would have had all of us heading for the hills.” (Mutual laughter.)

JW: You’ll have to talk to Irwin Hasen. He’s got a great story about that exact thing with Ben. Bob LeRose told me a story about the time when Bob used to work for Johnstone and Cushing and an 18-year-old Neal Adams was there doing wonderful stuff. Ben lettered a lot for them, and Bob was once awakened by a phone ringing at 3 in the morning. It was Ben, who’d been locked in the building. He'd stayed in there and was working, and he couldn’t get out. So Bob drove into town and rescued Ben. (Laughter.) Ben was also an incredible athlete. He was, I guess, almost a professional level bowler. His sons made part of their college tuition by bowling, they did so well. He was also very good at basketball. He was about my height, 5'6" or 5'7" and I remember one time the DC guys were in Central Park and we were playing a warm-up baseball game. It was Steve Mitchell and me and Bob Rozakis and Jack Harris and all these guys in their 20’s, but the two best athletes on the team were Ben Oda and Bob LeRose, both of whom were in their 50’s. It was really something to see.

POV: Point of View
Irwin Hasen
[excerpt]

M.E.: Ben Oda.

Hasen: Oh! Ben Oda was the letterer to the stars. Ben Oda had five strips...

M.E.: I think he had a lot more than that at times.

Hasen: He may have. He was a wonderful person...a Japanese-American who’d fought in World War II as a paratrooper. He was a wonderful person and a slave to several of us cartoonists. He lettered On Stage, The Heart of Juliet Jones, Dondi, a couple of others...

We would all give him the keys to our apartments and Ben would come in the dead of the night, like Santa Claus. He’d slip in and the strips were on the drawing board. He’d sit right down, and it didn’t matter how late he had to work...two, three o’clock in the morning, whatever. But he’d do the lettering and then he’d leave, as quiet as a mouse...

There's a funny story about me and a lady one night but I don’t think I can tell it here...

M.E. Sure, you can. [And with prompting from the moderator—who has heard the story and loves it — various audience members demand its telling.]

Hasen: All right. (laughter) I have a large apartment—a Brownstone. A gorgeous apartment with high ceilings. My desk is over here (gestures), there's a little garden outside the second floor...bedroom over here...living room...and this is my studio.

One night I'm entertaining a lady friend and we started getting intimate in the living room on the couch. There’s a coffee table right in front of us. The lights are out and we're sitting there and I’m about to make my big play...and all of a sudden, I hear, “click” — the door! And I thought, ”Oh, my God! It’s Ben!” Quickly, I whisper to the lady, ”Get underneath the coffee table!”

We slid off the couch. We slid under the coffee table so he wouldn’t see us. Ben comes in, puts on a light...doesn’t say a word. He puts a light on by my drawing table, takes his coat off, lights a cigarette, rolls up his sleeves and goes to work. I thought we were going to have to stay like that 'til he’d lettered a whole week of Dondi! (Audience laughs hysterically)

I should have just said something when I heard the click but no, I had to be a wise guy! So it ended up with the lady and me...we finally crawled slowly, so Ben wouldn’t hear us, into the bedroom. On our hands and knees. But to this day, I’m sure he knew. He just didn’t want to embarrass us because, you know, he was that kind of gentleman.

M.E.: Did she understand who he was?

Hasen: Oh, yeah. But Ben was that kind of man. It was very sad...he died of a heart attack. He smoked incessantly. When I went to his funeral in Jersey, there was that line where the family stands and you pay your respects. Now, I’m prone to guilt anyway, but when I got up to her, his wife said, “You had him up working lot of nights, late.” Oh, boy!

The Silver Lantern
Frank Springer
[excerpt]

FS: Of course there was Ben Oda years ago.

Prof: Yeah, Gaspar told me in his typical unpretentious way that Ben Oda was the real genius

FS: Ben Oda lettered Phoebe Zeitgeist. He lettered the whole thing.

Prof: There was plenty to do, too.

FS: Yeah, and he lettered for everybody. He lettered for George Wunder when I worked on Terry and the Pirates. He would show up with this portfolio that weighed a ton. It was this huge portfolio just jammed with strips and he worked for Stan Drake, he worked for Leonard Starr, he worked for Hal Foster, he worked for George Wunder, he worked for Milton Caniff, he worked for this, he worked for that…

Prof: Wow, he really ran the gamut.

FS: He was in the studios of all these people and we thought if Ben ever wrote a book about what he saw in some of these studios, everybody would have to leave town. (Mutual laughter.) He was just terrific. A World War II veteran. He saw combat in Italy with the Nisei, the Japanese-Americans unit there while his family was interred in Wyoming.

The Comics Journal #274

Mike Ploog

[excerpt]

Michael Dean: Did you go from P*S to Warren?

Mike Ploog: Yeah. There was a letterer. Ben Oda, he was fantastic. He used to come up to the office all the time and say, “Hey listen, you'’ve got to do comics.” So one day, I was still on P*S when I went over to [James] Warren, because who could afford to work for Warren without another job?

Dean: [Laughs.] You were between two skinflints.

Ploog: Oh God, they were the cheapest men that God ever put on Earth. And again, you had to like the guy, he had the nerve to actually do it. I went over there and did a couple of stories for Warren.

Dean: Now, Warren, at some point, did revive The Spirit. Was Eisner at all a connection to Warren, or did that come later?

Ploog: Not really. Jim knew I was working with Eisner, but Ben Oda was the guy that actually sent me over there, and had spoken with Jim, so that was more or less the connection.

Comics: Between the Panels (1998)

…In a move reminiscent of the Golden Age, when publishers hustled out ashcans to secure the copyright on specific titles Warren called in Goodwin and a letterer, Gaspar Saladino. “Utilizing some inventory material from Creepy [Warren’s flagship title] as well as some material already printed, the three of us cobbled together a pamphlet-sized little magazine emblazoned with the Eerie logo already designed for us by our regular letterer, Ben Oda,” Goodwin said. “Warren had simple line repro printing done on it overnight. By the next morning, there were about 200 copies of Eerie #1 in existence.”

Creepy and Eerie Confidential
by Russ “Unca’ Creepy” Jones

...Kable News Company did distribute another monster magazine, and that was one of the many reasons Warren wanted out of his contract with them. It was Castle of Frankenstein, published by Calvin Beck, and edited by Bob Stewart. In fact, Bob did pretty much the whole magazine, from design to completion, but COF had no real schedule. It was supposed to be a bi-monthly, but on average, two issues a year was about it. Kable wanted a title that would really be on a schedule, and that meant getting it to press ontime. We settled on the title, Monster Mania, and Ben Oda did our logo. Lee was to handle the mail order from his home in Elkins Park, Pa, and I would be responsible for the editorial chores from the studio at The Clifton....

Grand Comics Database

Who’s Who of American Comic Books 1928–1999

Wikipedia

Jack Kirby Museum
Ben Oda photos

The Hayfamzone Blog
OdaBalloon font

Murder, She Wrote
“The Dead File”, November 15, 1992 air date

I mentioned this episode to Larry Hama and he explained that Gerry Conway was a story editor on the TV series. Having worked at Marvel and DC Comics, Conway knew many of the industry people. For this episode, he combined the names of letterers Ben Oda and Irv Watanabe to create Ben Watanabe. The character’s late night work schedule was based on Oda. Below is a partial credit’s list and description of Ben Watanabe’s screen time. Spoiler alert!

Angela Lansbury as Jessica Fletcher, mystery writer
Harvey Fierstein as Stan Hatter, cartoonist
Rodney Kageyama as Ben Watanabe, letterer
Kris Kamm as Teddy Graves, Hatter’s assistant
Susan Kellermann as Sergeant Martha Redstone
Jon Polito as Lieutenant Peter DiMartini

Ben Watanabe is a comic strip lettering artist. At 4:45 in the morning he enters cartoonist Stan Hatter’s dark apartment. He walks to a table, sets down his tool box, opens it, pulls out gloves and puts them on. He walks to the drawing board, sits down, turns on the light and begins lettering the word balloons in the “Hatterville” comic strip.

Sometime later, walking down the stairs of the National Cartoonist Society headquarters, Watanabe and Teddy Graves are following Hatter who is talking to mystery writer, Jessica Fletcher. He tries to convince her that he did not do the strips with a character modeled after her, Jessica Fox, that have appeared in the newspaper. He points out details in the drawing style but Fletcher is not convinced. Grave’s points out the hand, and Watanabe adds, “And that’s not my lettering, Mrs. Fletcher.” Stan can’t explain why this is happening. The newspaper syndicate editor shows up to bring bad news to Hatter.

Later, Watanabe shows up at Hatter’s apartment at 3:45 in the morning. Seeing the drawing board lamp on, he walks over and picks up the artwork. He realizes something is wrong with them but turns his attention to a noise in another room. He walks slowly toward the room when he is struck on the head and collapses face up on the floor. Later, the police are all over the outside of Hatter’s building. A chalk outline on the sidewalk indicates where Watanabe’s body was found. Sgt. Redstone, who has been questioning Hatter, tells Fletcher that Watanabe died of massive head trauma. They go to Hatter’s studio. Hatter says Watanabe “had everything to live for, a wife, two daughters and a house in Scarsdale.” Fletcher asks about the statuette with a cracked base on the drawing board. Graves says it’s a Reuben Award, the comic strip equivalent of the movies Oscar. The sergeant speculates that Watanabe was behind the forged comic strips. Hatter says Watanabe was strictly a lettering artist. The sergeant persists and says Watanabe was the mastermind of the scheme but he became disconsolate and committed suicide or his partner murdered him.

Fletcher has her own theory, so later she and Lt. DiMartini reexamine Hatter’s studio. At the police precinct the two explain their theory to Redstone who is still unconvinced. Fletcher calls Hatter’s studio and leaves a message. At 2:15 in the morning, Graves enters the studio, walks to the potted plant, lifts the base and removes a glove. The lights go on and Redstone tells Graves he is under arrest for the murder of Watanabe and extortion. Graves confesses to forging the strips but didn’t intend to kill Watanabe. On the evening of the murder, he explains that he was working and took a coffee break when Watanabe arrived an hour early and saw the forged strips. Graves said he accidentally bumped something and Watanabe, who has a black belt in karate, walked in his direction. He said Watanabe “looked like he was ready to kill.” Graves said he grabbed the Reuben Award statuette and struck Watanabe on the head, then he dragged the body to the balcony and pushed it over. He hid the glove under the plant just in case the police stopped and searched him outside the building.