Posted By Dan Greenfield on Jan 29, 2024 | 1 comment

A BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE: The celebrated Mr. K honors an old colleague…

By PAUL KUPPERBERG

There was always something different about the stories of Steve Skeates (January 29, 1943 – March 30, 2023). I think I recognized it from the start, when I first began noticing his work in the Tower and Charlton Comics of the mid-1960s. I was 11, 12, 13 years old when I was reading his stuff, but something about the work told me this guy had it. Maybe it was because this new guy was working on these fascinating new properties like the Charlton Action Heroes and the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents with artists like Steve Ditko, Dick Giordano and Mike Sekowsky…

… Except even when Steve went mainstream on DC heroes like Aquaman and Teen Titans, his writing still stood out from the pack. Steve was 25 years old when he took over writing Aquaman, much closer in age to the demographic reading comics than his predecessor, 42-year-old Bob Haney. I love Bob’s Silver Age comics, but even as a kid I was bugged by his outmoded beatnik slang that he passed off as teen dialogue on the Titans, and it was obvious that Skeates (and the other newbies slowly seeping into the business like Roy Thomas, Mike Friedrich and Gerry Conway) were writing different sorts of stories. Stories that were about more than just the gimmick of the month.

After graduation, the Rochester, New York-born Skeates went in search of a career in journalism and, having discovered the wonders of mid-’60s Marvel Comics, also applied for a job at the House of Ideas. Steve got the job as Stan’s assistant, but it quickly became apparent that Skeates lacked the qualifications for the position. Stan replaced him with Roy Thomas and his lost income with assignments writing Western stories.

Steve parlayed that short gig as Stan’s assistant into writing assignments for Charlton, DC, Tower, Red Circle, Archie, Gold Key and Warren Publishing, and found consistent work through the 1970s. He didn’t live in New York City like most freelancers, preferring instead to live in his native upstate New York region; I remember talking to him on one of his visits to the city when he was up at DC to see his friend Denny O’Neil and Steve telling me he was living in a tent up in Alfred.

Steve stepped away from comics in the 1980s and became a bartender. He did keep his hand in comics, writing and drawing a strip called The Adventures of Stew Ben and Alec Gainey for his local Allegany-area newspaper, the Sunday Spectator. In his lifetime, Steve was a three-time Shazam Award winner, and he was given the Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing in San Diego in 2012, and he would dabble in comics and fandom later on, including for Mort Todd, Roger McKenzie, and myself for our Charlton Neo line of comics in 2014.

Here then, MY 13 FAVORITE STEVE SKEATES STORIES:

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T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #6 (July 1966). NoMan in “To Fight Alone.” Art by Steve Ditko.

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Judomaster #95 (June 1967). Sarge Steel in “Case of the Village Moneyman,” art by Dick Giordano.

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Abbott & Costello #1 (February 1968). “Smear Tactics,” art by Henry Scarpelli.

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Showcase #75 (June 1968). The Hawk and the Dove, “In the Beginning,” scripter over artist Ditko’s plot.

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Aquaman #50 (March/April 1970). Aquaman in “The City on the Edge of Nowhere,” art by Jim Aparo.

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The Teen Titans #28 (September/October 1970). “Blindspot,” art by Nick Cardy.

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Creepy #42 (November 1971). “The Amazing Money-Making Wallet,” art by Joe Staton.

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Plop! #1 (September/October 1973). “The Gourmet,” art by Bernie Wrightson.

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Adventure Comics #432 (March/April 1974). Captain Fear in “Night of the Slaves,” art by Alex Nino.

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Star*Reach #2 (April 1975). “The Return of the Fish,” story and art by Skeates.

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Blackhawk #250 (January/February 1977). “Wheel of Death,” art by Ric Estrada and George Evans.

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Super-Team Family #10 (April/May 1977). The Challengers of the Unknown in “Multi-Man Rules the World,” art by Jim Sherman and Jack Abel.

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Crazy Magazine #72 (March 1981). Howard the Duck in “Howie’s Minute Mystery,” art by Pat Broderick and Armando Gil.

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MORE

— 13 GREAT AQUAMAN MOMENTS: A STEVE SKEATES Tribute. Click here.

— PAUL KUPPERBERG: When STEVE DITKO Joined DC — 55 YEARS LATER. Click here.

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PAUL KUPPERBERG was a Silver Age fan who grew up to become a Bronze Age comic book creator, writer of Superman, the Doom Patrol, and Green Lantern, creator of Arion Lord of Atlantis, Checkmate, and Takion, and slayer of Aquababy, Archie, and Vigilante. He is the Harvey and Eisner Award nominated writer of Archie Comics’ Life with Archie, and his YA novel Kevin was nominated for a GLAAD media award and won a Scribe Award from the IAMTW. Now, as a Post-Modern Age gray eminence, Paul spends a lot of time looking back in his columns for 13th Dimension and in books such as Direct Conversations: Talks with Fellow DC Comics Bronze Age Creators and Direct Comments: Comic Book Creators in Their own Words, available, along with a whole bunch of other books he’s written, by clicking the links below.

Website: https://www.paulkupperberg.net/

Shop: https://www.paulkupperberg.net/shop-1