{{Short description|Scottish-Canadian writer (1946–2004)}} {{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}} {{Infobox comics creator | image = | caption = | alt = | birth_name = | birth_date = {{Birth date|1946|8|30|mf=y}} | birth_place = Glasgow, Scotland | death_date = {{Death date and age|2004|1|6|1946|8|30|mf=y}} | death_place = | nationality = Scottish-Canadian | area = | cartoonist = | write = y | art = | pencil = | ink = | edit = y | publish = | letter = | color = | alias = Joe Dentyn, Stuart Williams, Henry Bergman, Hugh Laskey, Harvey Lazarus, Howie Anderson, Peter Cappiello, Edward Farthing, Victor Buckley | signature = <!-- very optional --> | signature_alt = | notable works = Skywald Publications | awards = Hall of Fame Inductee - 2019: Joe Shuster Award,<ref name="joeshusterawards.com">https://joeshusterawards.com/2019/09/14/the-2019-joe-shuster-award-winners/</ref> 2014: Ghastly Awards<ref name="comicattack.net">https://comicattack.net/ghastly2014winners/</ref> | website = | subcat = }} '''Alan Hewetson'''<ref name=birthcertificate /> ({{IPAc-en|h|j|uː|ɪ|t|s|ən}} August 30, 1946<ref name=warner>{{cite web | url = https://superggraphics.blogspot.com/2011/12/interview-with-archaic-al-hewetson.html | title = An Interview with "Archaic" Al Hewetson | work = Now And Then Times | issue = 2 | date = October 1973| publisher = Reprinted at The Horror-Mood (George Warner, ed.), March 16, 2012 | access-date = January 10, 2013| archive-date=March 4, 2016 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20160304194515/http://superggraphics.blogspot.com/2011/12/interview-with-archaic-al-hewetson.html| url-status=live}} Interview conducted May 26, 1973.</ref> – January 6, 2004)<ref name=arndt-interview>{{cite web|last=Arndt |first=Richard J. |url=http://www.enjolrasworld.com/Richard%20Arndt/The%20Complete%20Skywald%20Checklist.htm |title=The Complete Skywald Checklist [including] A 2003 Interview With Archaic Al Hewetson! |publisher=EnjolrasWorld.com |date=December 2, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100510152923/http://www.enjolrasworld.com/Richard%20Arndt/The%20Complete%20Skywald%20Checklist.htm |archive-date=May 10, 2010 |url-status=live |quote=So I went directly from being a teenaged fan to being on staff at Marvel in 1969, when I was around 22 years old. }} Additional .</ref> was a Scottish-Canadian writer and editor of American horror-comics magazines, best known for his work with the 1970s publisher Skywald Publications, where he created what he termed the magazines' "Horror-Mood" sensibility. He went on to become a publisher of city magazines in Canada.
==Biography==
===Early life and career=== Al Hewetson was born and initially raised in Glasgow, Scotland,<ref name=warner /> the son of James and Elizabeth Hewetson.<ref name=birthcertificate>Extract Entry of Birth for Alan T. Hewetson (1946). Register Book of Births for the District of Govan in the Burgh of Glasgow.</ref> There he read such comic books as ''Classics Illustrated'', ''The Beano'' and ''Eagle''<ref name=cba5p49 /> before his family migrated to Canada when he was 9 years old,<ref name=warner /> in 1956.<ref>Landed Immigrant Status of Elizabeth M. Hewetson (1956). British Passport, Quebec, Canada.</ref> At his new home, he began reading the satirical ''Mad'' and ''Humbug'' magazines, becoming infatuated with the work of writer-artist Harvey Kurtzman. Through his involvement in comics fandom, he began corresponding with such future underground and alternative comics creators as Skip Williamson, Jay Lynch, Robert Crumb, and Art Spiegelman, and published a single issue of a fanzine, ''The Potrzebie Annual'' (no relation to fellow fan Bhob Stewart's ''Potrzebie'').<ref name=cba5p49>{{cite magazine|first=Al|last=Hewetson|magazine=Comic Book Artist|issue=5|page=49|title=Archaic Al Forever!|date=December 2004}} Interview excerpt from {{cite book | first=Al | last= Hewetson | title = Skywald!: The Complete Illustrated History of the Horror-Mood | publisher = Headpress/Critical Vision | location = Manchester, UK | year = 2004 | isbn = 978-1900486378}}</ref>
He became a darkroom technician<ref name=warner /> and then a staff news photographer at what was then the ''Sudbury Daily Star'' of Sudbury, Ontario, followed by photographer jobs at the ''Ottawa Journal'', ''The Montreal Gazette'' in 1967, and Ottawa's ''Canadian Press''.<ref name=cba5p4-50>Hewetson, ''Comic Book Artist'', pp. 49-50</ref> In 1966 and 1967, he worked for Expo 67, and in the middle of 1967 founded an advertising and photographic studio in Ottawa and began doing promotion for rock groups. That ended the following year.<ref name=warner /> Also during this time, he photographed Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker at his office and home,<ref>{{cite web | url = http://sain.scaa.sk.ca/items/index.php/photo-portrait-of-john-diefenbaker-4;rad | title = Item JGD/MG01/XVII/JGD 4044 – Photo portrait of John Diefenbaker | first= Alan | last= Hewetson | publisher = University of Saskatchewan, University Archives & Special Collections, via Saskatchewan Archival Information Network | date= September 1, 1967 | access-date = September 22, 2013}} Similarly, [http://sain.scaa.sk.ca/items/index.php/john-diefenbaker-with-mcandy-2;rad "Item JGD/MG01/XVII/JGD 2271 - John Diefenbaker with McAndy"], c. 1967; [http://sain.scaa.sk.ca/items/index.php/john-diefenbaker-with-mcandy;rad "Item JGD/MG01/XVII/JGD 2270 - John Diefenbaker with McAndy"], 1971.</ref> and would later be photo editor for at least one of Diefenbaker's three 1975-1977 memoirs.<ref name=bails>{{cite web|authorlink=Jerry Bails|last=Bails|first= Jerry|author2= Hames Ware | url = http://www.bailsprojects.com/bio.aspx?Name=HEWETSON%2c+AL | title= Hewetson, Al | work = Who's Who of American Comic Books 1928-1999| access-date= September 20, 2013}}</ref>
===Comics=== Hoping to start a humor magazine with both text articles and comics, he arranged to interview Marvel Comics editor-in-chief Stan Lee in New York City, New York. Then, as Hewetson recalled in a 1973 interview, he phoned Lee, "with whom I’d corresponded for about a year, and asked him for a position and within a few weeks I had the position. That’s how I got into writing professionally."<ref name= warner /> Decades later, Hewetson detailed that not long after conducting the interview with Lee, "I received a phone call from [Marvel production manager] Sol Brodsky offering me a job as Stan's assistant for 'six months,' for a comparatively small salary. Stan had liked me, needed an assistant, and was going to 'introduce new guys into the medium who he figured had potential,' is how I think they put it.<ref name=cba5p50>Hewetson, ''Comic Book Artist'', p. 50</ref>
His duties included opening and answering fan mail, preparing the letters pages for most of the comics, mailing complete sets of comics to Marvel writers and artists, awarding "No Prizes", and serving as Lee's gofer. He also took the Marvel staff and freelancer photos published in ''Fantastic Four Annual'' #7 (cover-dated Nov. 1969). Lee invited him to submit story ideas, but Hewetson's writing style, heavily influenced by Edgar Allan Poe and other 19th-century authors, proved "highly unsuitable for Marvel superheroes", Hewetson said.<ref name=cba5p50 /> He remained at his post from February to September 1969,<ref name=warner /> and was succeeded as Lee's assistant by Allyn Brodsky, no relation to Sol Brodsky.<ref name=cba5p50 />
The following year, Hewetson and veteran artist Syd Shores responded to DC Comics editorial director Carmine Infantino's desire for new concepts in comics magazines and devised a concept {{blockquote|...about a long-haired freak about 27 or 28 years old who was elected to the United States Senate. It was to be produced as a color magazine ... with very adult and very sophisticated artwork and obviously with very adult writing. Syd and I became quite friendly at the time we were preparing this, so we decided to work out a newspaper strip together called ''Tales of the Macabre'', which was for American syndication, as well as ... a {{sic|humo|urous}} strip called ''Dirty Soks.'' Being a Canadian and living in Ottawa, I was interested in releasing something for Canada if I could do so. So, we worked out the thing called ''The Satirists'' which was a parody of Canadian news items as they appeared. ... We sent it around with a promotion to all the Canadian newspapers [and a] number of them replied, but not enough to make it financially worthwhile to go ahead with it.<ref name = warner />}}
Hewetson said ''The Satirists'' was done in 1971, and that ''Dirty Soks'' and a daily and Sunday ''Tales of the Macabre'' ran from 1972 to 1974.<ref name=bails />
Hewetson and Shores did collaborate on Hewetson's one horror story for Marvel, the seven-page "Master and Slave" in ''Creatures on the Loose'' #12 (July 1971); this came after he had already begun writing uncredited stories for rival DC Comics and for the satirical magazines ''Sick'' and ''Cracked'',<ref name=arndt-interview /> and penning his first credited story, the 10-page "4 – 3 – 2 – 1 – Blast Off! to a Nightmare!", illustrated by Jack Sparling, in Warren Publishing's black-and-white horror-comics magazine ''Vampirella'' #3 (Jan. 1970).<ref name=gcd>[http://www.comics.org/credit/name/al%20hewetson/sort/chrono/ Al Hewetson] at the Grand Comics Database</ref>
That had come about, he said in 2003, when he was writing an article for ''Cinema'' magazine about comic-book characters in film:
{{blockquote|I knew [that the Warren movie magazine] ''Famous Monsters of Filmland'' had old movie stills, so I called them up, talked to [publisher] Jim Warren, and he invited me 'round to meet him. He was very helpful providing pictures for my feature, and we appeared to get along immediately. He asked me to write stories for [his black-and-white horror-comics magazines] ''Creepy'' and ''Eerie'', and I did — I sent him stories within about a week and he liked them and asked for more. He never rejected anything I ever wrote for him, even though I admit some of my earlier stories were pretty flimsy.<ref name=arndt-interview />}}
===Skywald=== Hewetson went on to write a number of stories through mid-1971 issues of Warren's ''Creepy'' and ''Eerie'', while also breaking in at the start-up rival Skywald Publications, with "Vault of a Vampire" in ''Nightmare'' #3 (April 1971). Skywald was co-founded in 1970 by Sol Brodsky, whom Hewetson knew from Marvel Comics, and who brought freelancer Hewetson in as associate editor; Hewetson's first credit as such appears in ''Psycho'' #7 (July 1972).<ref name=gcd /> By the following month, Brodsky had returned to Marvel, and Hewetson became Skywald's editor,<ref name=gcd /><ref name=cba5p57>Hewetson, ''Comic Book Artist'', p. 57</ref> managing editorial from his home in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada. As he described the process,
{{blockquote|I write my stories, and edit others' stories, and send them directly to the various artists. The art is sent to New York, when finished, where I collate it. I produce all the editorial production here at home, and when I visit New York I package the entire magazine and do the production for it. And then, in an incredible fat bundle, I mail the thing off to our printers who have nothing to do but perhaps add the occasional, miscellaneous screen and make the negatives for the magazine. Blueprint proofs of those negatives are sent to me which I proof editorially and I make certain changes and approve the package. And the magazine is then printed in Canada and then shipped to Connecticut and from there to various distribution centers, including back to Canada.<ref name=warner />}}
===="The Horror-Mood"==== Soon afterward, Hewetson, both out of personal preference and in an attempt to distinguish Skywald's magazines from those of industry leader Warren,<ref name=arndt-interview /> instituted a stylistic theme he called "Horror-Mood", going so far as to receive approval from publisher Israel Waldman to change the company name to Horror-Mood Publishing Corp. — a move nixed by the low-budget company's accountant, who noted there would be legal costs incurred in a name change, which would also potentially confuse distributors.<ref name=cba5p55>Hewetson, ''Comic Book Artist'', p. 55</ref> As Hewetson described the genesis and specifics of the Horror-Mood in 2003, it
{{blockquote|text=...wasn't patterned after any other magazines that had ever existed, but was inspired by everything that had ever ... had the word horror applied to it. I was particularly enamored of Poe and the classics, and by Lovecraft, who wasn't exactly 'unknown' at the time, but he wasn't exactly a household name either. And by then I’d come to love the old EC horror comics, which I didn’t particularly like as a kid.... So the Horror-Mood was a glass bowl containing everything I respected about horror, including loftier writers like Kafka and Dostoyevsky and Orwell.<ref name=arndt-interview />}}
Hewetson estimates he wrote over 500 published stories for Skywald,<ref name=cba5p47>Hewetson, ''Comic Book Artist'', p. 47</ref> using such pseudonyms as '''Joe Dentyn''', '''Stuart Williams''', '''Henry Bergman''', '''Hugh Laskey''', '''Harvey Lazarus''' and '''Howie Anderson''',<ref name=arndt-interview /> as well as '''Peter Cappiello''', '''Edward Farthing''', and '''Victor Buckley'''.<ref name=cba5p45 /> He also created a public persona, "Archaic Al Hewetson", that would often appear as a mascot, introducing stories.<ref name=cba5p43>Hewetson, ''Comic Book Artist'', p. 43</ref> Hewetson's ongoing "Shoggoth Crusade" feature, which launched with "This Grotesque Green Earth" in ''Nightmare'' #15 (Oct. 1973), envisioned himself and other Skywald staffers hunting subterranean supernatural creatures.<ref name=cba5p48>Hewetson, ''Comic Book Artist'', p. 48</ref> Hewetson also wrote the ongoing feature "The Human Gargoyles", which he called "a Kafkaesque parody of religion, horror, society, family life and pop culture" as seen through the experiences of a family of three gargoyles (technically, grotesques) come to life.<ref name=cba5p45>Hewetson, ''Comic Book Artist'', p. 45</ref>
===Later career and death=== Toward the end of Skywald's existence — which Hewetson was tasked to officially announce in a March 25, 1975, memo to staffers and others — Hewetson became involved with a movie company in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.<ref name=cba5p65>Hewetson, ''Comic Book Artist'', p. 65</ref> It is unclear whether this was Quadrant Films, for which Hewetson, post-Skywald, wrote several paid-for but unproduced screenplays. He recalled in 2003, {{blockquote|text=I wrote a horror movie for [Quadrant] called ''Gaunt'' [about] a 350-year-old sorcerer hell-bound to have his own way about everything. And then I wrote a screenplay called ''Conspiracy'', a Presidential murder mystery; and then ''Murderstone'', a thriller about the diamond business. And then ''Savage Midsummer's Night'', a thriller about illegal dog fights in a rural Canadian community. Then ''Lunatics'', about a dysfunctional family whose many members were determined to kill each other. Then ''Ladykiller'', a thriller about a hit-woman who was engaged to kill her victims in very dramatic ways.<ref name=cba5p71>Hewetson, ''Comic Book Artist'', p. 71</ref>}}
Six to eight months after Skywald ended, and concurrent with his Quadrant screenwriting, Hewetson began publishing a city magazine for St. Catharines, Ontario, and neighboring Niagara Falls, Ontario. He successfully expanded to city magazines in Buffalo, New York, and Windsor, Ontario, the latter called ''Greater Windsor''.<ref name=cba5p71 /> By 2003, he and artist Pablo Marcos, a Skywald compatriot, were working on two graphic novels: ''Labyrinth Street'', a horror anthology series set in New Orleans, Louisiana, and ''Suko: Samurai Time Warrior''. With another Skywald artist, Maelo Cintron, he was planning to create a modern-day Western series, ''Gargoyle Justice'', starring the grownup "Human Gargoyles" child, Andrew Sartyros, as a U.S. Marshal.<ref name=cba5p71 />
==Personal life== Hewetson married Julie Williams in Sudbury, Ontario, in 1968.<ref>Certificate of Marriage for Alan Hewetson and Julie Williams (1968). Sudbury, Ontario.</ref> The couple had a daughter, Wendy.<ref>Statement of Live Birth for Wendy Hewetson. Ontario Office of the Registrar General.</ref> Hewetson and Williams divorced in 1991 in Windsor, Ontario.<ref>Certificate of Divorce for Alan T. Hewetson and Julie Hewetson (1991). Ontario Court (General Division).</ref> From the early 1990s until the time of his death, Al Hewetson was in a common law relationship with Michelle Lemieux in Windsor.<ref name="cba5p71cap">Hewetson, ''Comic Book Artist'', p. 71 (image and caption)</ref><ref name=deathcertificate>Certificate of Death for Alan Hewetson (2004). Windsor Chapel Funeral Home Limited.</ref>
Following the 1982 death of Canadian artist and Skywald contributor Gene Day, rumors circulated for years that Hewetson was dead, which Hewetson attributed to "the word spread[ing] that 'the young Canadian who used to do Skywald is dead.'"<ref name=cba5p65 /> Hewetson survived a heart attack and stroke in 2001,<ref name=cba5p65 /> then died unexpectedly on January 6, 2004,<ref name=arndt-interview /><ref name=deathcertificate /> shortly after finishing work on the book ''Skywald!: The Complete Illustrated History of the Skywald Horror-Mood'' (Headpress/Critical Vision, 2004).
==Awards== In 2014, Al Hewetson was inducted into The Ghastly Awards Hall of Fame for outstanding work in horror comics.<ref name="comicattack.net">https://comicattack.net/ghastly2014winners/</ref>
In 2019, Al Hewetson was inducted into The Joe Shuster Canadian Comic Book Creator Awards Hall of Fame for outstanding achievement in the creation of comic books.<ref name="joeshusterawards.com">https://joeshusterawards.com/2019/09/14/the-2019-joe-shuster-award-winners/</ref>
==References== {{reflist|30em}}
==Further reading== *''Comic Book Marketplace'' #55 (January 1998 ) *''The Comics Journal'' #127 (February 1989)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hewetson, Al}} Category:1946 births Category:2004 deaths Category:Canadian comics writers Category:Canadian magazine publishers (people) Category:Writers from Glasgow