Comic book creators - and how they looked in my head.

As we all know, comics are exactly the same as radio, except for the fact that they have no sound and have pictures, while radio has no pictures but possesses sound.

That aside, they do, however, have another thing in common.

And that's the fact that, unlike with television, we don't get to see our favourite stars in action.

In some cases, this may not be a bad thing. There is, after all, a reason why the phrase, "Perfect face for radio," was invented. It does, though, mean we can often have massively wrong ideas about the physical appearance of those who put so much work into entertaining us.

The same effect can happen with comics. And so, in the absence of anything that resembles an idea for a post on this blog, I thought I'd talk about this phenomenon as it affected the comic books of my youth.

And that's the life-or-death question of the hour. Just how many of our favourite comic book creators actually turned out to look like we thought they did?

I think I always knew what San Lee looked like, thanks to him making sure we all got to see photos of him at every possible opportunity.

Others were more low profile. That said, when I finally got to see a photo of Jack Kirby, he looked exactly like I'd imagined him, basically James Cagney. He was, however, much smaller than I'd assumed. I think I'd envisaged him as having a robust build appropriate to one of his dynamic drawing style.

Meanwhile, I always assumed that, during his 1960s stint on Spider-Man, John Romita was a resolutely middle aged man - possibly the most resolutely middle aged man of all time. It was a shock to discover later that he'd been in his mid thirties at the time.

Conversely, I'd always pictured Ross Andru's Spider-Man years as being the product of an eager young man, out to make his mark in  comics, only for me to discover he was actually older than John Romita.

I imagined Barry Smith as looking like Jesus and, while it turned out he didn't really look like Jesus, he did at least have longish hair and a beard, so he was probably as much like Jesus as he could manage to get. Then again, when he became Barry Windsor Smith, he was suddenly a delicate, sickly young man, in the habit of sniffing flowers while reading the poetry he'd just finished writing.

I always pictured Neal Adams as a slim, sensitive soul in a white T-shirt, slaving laboriously over his drawing board, in a dim light. It later turned out that he sort of looked like someone who'd knock on your front door, trying to sell you shoes from a briefcase. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It just didn't fit in with my image of him.

Obviously, my most triumphant gaff was Charlton Comics' Nicola Cuti who I spent forty years thinking was a woman until the internet informed me that he was a man.

I made the same mistake with Sal Buscema, for the not unreasonable reason that everyone knew that Sal was a girl's name. However, unlike, with Nicola Cuti, I discovered my mistake early on and had to resign myself to the fact that there was no such person in comics as Sally Buscema.

Then again, for another person, I got it almost as wildly wrong. Having known of her only through her name, I always envisaged Flo Steinberg as an ageing but delicate spinster, with half-moon spectacles, the sort of woman who'd teach piano lessons on her Sundays off. It was a bit of a shock to discover she was a pot smoking Betty Brant lookalike who'd once published a comic you wouldn't want your grandmother to see.

Jim Aparo looked like his depiction of Jim Corrigan, a rock hard man with steel fists, a tight lip and a permanently clenched lower jaw.

For me, Gil Kane was a man who drew every strip while wearing a suit.

John Buscema, however, turned out to have looked exactly like I'd imagined him.

Sol Brodsky, for me, exactly resembled a 1940s Broadway comedian.

Frank Robbins was a frenzied individual who only drew at night, in an attic whose solitary window spilled light out into the surrounding darkness, letting everyone in the neighbourhood know that the local madman was once more performing forbidden experiments with drawing boards.

For me, Wally Wood looked the way I later discovered Don Heck looked. Heck, in my head, looked like a member of Frank Sinatra's Rat Pack.

Steve Ditko was a question mark, seated in a chair.

Reader, for me, he is still a question mark seated in a chair.