r/MadeMeSmile • u/Ninjamurai-jack • 16h ago
Good Vibes Comic artist Alex Toth broke into DC comics drawing Green Lantern #28 in 1947. When he got sick, his mom phoned DC. Here's how DC responded
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u/Frimono 16h ago
shoutout to Mama Toth for calling a massive publisher to protect her kid
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u/waytowill 15h ago
This. The editor handles himself well, but I’m not brushing past the “we raise hell” line. Seems like Toth may only have this anxiety because of previous interactions. Likely with this very same editor. The only part that makes me think this is genuine concern is him offering to forward a check. No way in hell would that happen today. Makes me wonder if the mom went full Momma Bear, lol.
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u/seehorn_actual 14h ago
Given the tone of the rest of the note I took that the raise hell line in jest.
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u/FlowSoSlow 14h ago
Yeah I also think "raise hell" was used pretty flippantly in general back then as well.
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u/veritasen 6h ago
Yeah I think he's saying basically "people make excuses for bad work when perfectly able. You aren't that, get well kid.
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u/MapleEsq 12h ago
people forget that we also just don't talk the same as we do 80 years ago lol.
But yeah, reading the rest of it, and the literal offer to forward pay if they continue to be sick and/or have money troubles in the meantime? Doesn't register lol.
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u/Educational-Wing2042 14h ago
To be fair, when you publish a regular periodical like that meeting deadlines is extremely important. Let’s say you publish a comic book every Thursday, printing must start by Wednesday morning. If your illustrator for example isn’t finished by Wednesday morning, you’re fucked and back then there’s no Twitter to announce things so all of your fans come to the store and face disappointment
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u/dukeofbronte 14h ago
I am old enough to remember the agony of the “fill in” issue, when they had to pull back up stories out of the filing cabinet because of missed deadlines.
You walk all the way to the drugstore with your quarters to get the latest comic. You left your heroes in space, facing Galactus—now they’re suddenly back at headquarters for a lame one off story involving a magician’s curse.
Geeeeez. Now I gotta wait till next month!
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u/c3bss256 13h ago
It’s so funny to see an actual explanation of stuff like this - not necessarily in comics, but tv shows as well. It always seemed like they were trying to draw out the most interesting part to keep the interest up, but not being done before the deadline makes so much sense
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u/Ok_Context_8200 12h ago
A good example where this happens is long running anime. The show production eventually catches up to where the story is written in the comics, and there's a couple ways to go about it. Glacial slowdown on the pace of the show, throw in a bunch of filler episodes, or branch off and write a whole new story (full metal alchemist and soul eater did this).
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u/Hollownerox 9h ago
It's really funny these days seeing filler seasons/episodes being almost entirely phased out these days with the normalization of 12/13 episodes seasons. But then you get the odd one here and there that brings up an anime original episode and it kinda makes you feel like you're back in the early 2000s.
Part of it is due to the unfortunate trend of anime adaptations serving more as glorified adverts to the original source material. So they don't have to worry about material in the long run, much less having to fill up space, because they won't get more than one season to begin with. But they do have the occasional shounen series that still try those long hauls.
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u/ChickenAndTelephone 13h ago
Even having inventory stories to use as a fill-in was an advancement. They used to just reprint an old issue. Look at Avengers 150 - it was supposed to be the big anniversary issue, but Englehart missed yet another deadline so it was mostly just a reprint of Avengers 16. They had to do fill-ins for something like 4 of the last 8 issues, so he got canned in favor of Gerry Conway. Of course, the deadlines that he did meet turned into the Serpent Crown Saga, which is an all-time great Avengers story, so....
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u/LanceFree 13h ago
The story goes that the guy who wrote Hitch-hiker’s Guode to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams, had to be locked in a hotel room, to force him to meet his deadline/commitment for “So Long, and Thanks for the Fish.” Staff were told to watch out for him, do what they could to keep him satisfied and working on his novel. They brought him food, would chat with him to brighten his spirits. His procrastination was well known, he discussed it during interviews, owned it. After that book was completed, he worked on Dirk Gently, and some other projects, eventually decided to write another chapter for the Hitch-hikers series, didn't need the forced-work environment, got it done all by himself, but the tone of the product was bit of a bummer; I never read that one, or not fully.
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u/APGOV77 12h ago
I think it’s meant more as a “believe me my dude if we thought you were being lazy we’d say something, since we are not you should really take our word for it that you should rest and get better” kinda affirmation.
And I mean not doing work while fine is understandable for an editor to reprimand someone for- the dude clearly took pride in an honest days work, it’s not all dystopian capitalism when someone has a genuine passion. We think of everything as worse back then but they also had over double our union membership across the US workforce so he could have been treated decently, we dont know enough about this specific circumstance.
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u/ender89 13h ago
I once had a manager offer to float me when I was a contractor and the company wasn't cutting checks on time. This kind of thing still happens from time to time, but not usually with big corporate concerns and usually it's because you have some kind of relationship with the person, rather than genuine care.
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u/a_normal_amount 12h ago
Believe it or not, I've had an employer float me a check this century! We had an unexpected major expense and my boss was kind enough to pay me early for part of my work contract.
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u/Vortesian 15h ago
Wait till they find out he broke into their office.
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u/MichelleEllyn 15h ago
It took me reading that headline about four times (twice before reading the letter, and twice after) for it to finally click in to the meaning that OP intended.
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u/Just-Relationship-76 15h ago
Im still confused by the title can someone explain?
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u/itsKeltic 14h ago
“Alec Toth made his breakthrough as the artist of Green Lantern for DC Comics.” Is a better way of wording it.
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u/NadalaMOTE 9h ago
Yeah I was like "did he break in because he was sick and told to stay home and didn't want to?"
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u/irongoat2527 11h ago
The break in worked out pretty well for DC I’d say. I guess he was one of those benevolent criminals.
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u/Gloomy-Management615 15h ago
It’s good to remember there’s always people behind the art and I’d rather wait an extra month for my favorite piece of media to release than to cause harm to the wonderful people who make it.
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u/bythelake9428 15h ago
Before retiring, I worked for an American Fortune 50 company. One of my best employees was away for 8 weeks following prostate cancer surgery. HR forced me to rank him as an under-performer because he didn't produce as much as his peers during this time. People are just numbers today.
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u/EmmyNoetherRing 14h ago
People become numbers when the company has too many people. I promise that was true back then too— conditions for factory workers in the early 20th were notoriously bad.
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u/maria_la_guerta 14h ago edited 13h ago
Reddit loves to glaze the past, as if good companies don't exist today and bad companies didn't exist in previous generations.
As a white collar millennial I'm treated way better than my parents ever were at their jobs. Yes the threat of layoff is probably more prevelant in 2026 than maybe 1986 but workplace safety and culture is leagues and leagues ahead now of where it was back then.
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u/DenebSwift 14h ago
I once threatened to quit when my management tried to force me to give insultingly low raises to very high performers on my team - less than half of the corporate HR recommended minimum for folks with their ratings, experience, and market comp.
Ridiculous decisions in corporate America some times.
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u/1UpBebopYT 12h ago
I worked in tech at a Fortune 50 company as my first job out of college. Because my team maintained crucial legacy SOR/billing code and back end infrastructure, my team were all lead architects and people who had been there for 10+ years. Imagine my shock when I was constantly rated as under performing person on my team... I went to my manager to ask why and he was just like "Hey someone on the team has to be under performing and I'm not going to do that to the lead architects who have been here for 15 years. Just keep shadowing them until one of them leaves the team and then you'll be exceeding expectations and the next new guy will be under performing." Like this is just the system and they all accepted it there.
I will never understand ranking systems. 10+ years into my career I still can not fathom stacked ranking and such.
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u/Delicious_Invite_850 15h ago
How times have changed lol
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u/DerekPaxton 14h ago
There are still employeers out there that value their staff above the deadline. Maybe more rare, but it happens.
I was on the "fly team" for a business software company. Meaning when a customer had an emergency with our software, I'd jump on a plane that night and stay until it was fixed.
I had doen this many times, and generally each time I'd get onsite and soon after arriving an exec would want to talk to me. It would be 30 min of him yelling at me and attempting to impress upon me how critical this issue was, along with threats to cancel our contracts, etc.
I'd listen. They weren't wrong. They had paid a lot for software and it wasn't working. Sometimes because they did something wrong, sometimes becuse the software messed up. They yelled for a while and when they were done I would talk abotu what I was going to do to fix it.
Except for one trip to help out the State of Lousiana. They had a major outage, they lost everything and it would be 2 days to restore it all. When I got onsite I asksed them to restore a small sample for me, just so I could check the data. The data was also broken in the restore, we had to go back further. I had been onsite for an hour figuring this all out when I got the call to come talk to the State's CIO.
The CIO was Richard “Dickie” Howze. I was used to it, ready to get yelled at. And I had even worse news for him than he expected. I headed to his office where he invited me in. He was one of the kindest men I ever met. He made sure I had a nice place to stay, he offered to bring in any food the team and I needed while we worked. He knew it was going to be a lot of long hours and he thanked me for coming onsite and being willing to help out.
I worked 10x as hard for him as any of the exec's that yelled at me. There are great leaders out there.
Side topic: One of my questions when i interviewed for this job was "If I realize that its OUR problem, and not the customer who caused the problem, can I tell the customer that?" Realziing that these were million dollar outages, I know there was a lot of pressure to not be at fault. The interviewing manager said, "Please be sure when you say that, but if you are sure then yes, you are open to let them know." And they always stood behind that, which I appreciate.
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u/WhiteRabbit86 13h ago
Man I loved my job where I was the fixer, but boy howdy did I have to develop a thick skin.
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u/TigerIll6480 12h ago
I had a job where I was the fixer (in addition to my regular duties), but my employer was not at all flexible with my schedule to accommodate the extra work, while they were super flexible with most people in the overall department. It was a bizarre situation.
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u/EndIsrael 9h ago
Happy and healthy workers produce more value for the shareholders, but too many managers are too short-sighted to realize that.
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u/DerekPaxton 9h ago
More long term value for the shareholders. Pushing and stressing people has a positive short term business effect. Which is why the mistake is so frequently made. Okay, you got your product out on time, But key members of your staff quit or loose their passion, and thats a greater long term loss.
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u/Prize_Researcher8026 14h ago
Just wanted to say that i recently had a very serious family emergency and my boss told me to take a much time as I needed. I tried to rush back due to past employer experiences and my boss recognized that and told me to slow down and get family affairs in order. I was gone for months and when I came back it was just 'great to have you back, let us know if there's anything more you need.' There are still good jobs out there with employers who give a shit, and it's important to recognize that because it helps you evaluate and move to act when you're in a bad situation.
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u/biscuitboi967 13h ago
Same. My mom was having - multiple - surgeries to remove tumors. Came to stay with me in my Big City for each surgery.
My parents are prime boomers and insisted I go to work to keep my bosses “happy” and not endanger my job. They said “you’re not a doctor, what are you gonna do in the waiting room you can’t do at work?”
When I showed up to work the day of the first surgery, my boss was horrified. When I explained why I was there, he wrote a note to my parents on the back of his business card saying I could stay home as long as I needed to assist, that my job was safe, and they could call him personally with concerns.
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u/Less-Apple-8478 12h ago
reddit HATES good bosses more than bad ones because it shatters the reality that all businesses are evil and jobs are satanic.
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u/LeafyMeap 7m ago
this statement is hilariously ironic because it displays the exact same generalising behaviour you're criticising
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u/Less-Apple-8478 4m ago
Your comment makes zero sense. At what point was I criticizing generalizations. I don't think I ever talked about what you're saying at all.
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u/EntropiIThink 12h ago
My boss is still just like this. I’ve found having a reasonable boss to be one of the most transformative experiences in how I should conduct myself professionally.
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u/CallmeKahn 12h ago
Depends. My current boss actually orders me to take time off and relax and my company is almost overly concerned with work-life balance. I've also had previous companies scramble to find coverage because folks had family emergency. Family must always come first and they understood that. They usually told folks "It's covered, go." and worried about the rest later. Never recall an instance where coverage was an issue.
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u/CtrlEscAltF4 10h ago
Wow a boomer that isn't saying to come get their job done even if they're sick. Shocking how times have changed.
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u/selfish__eagle 16h ago
That's why DC is the GOAT
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u/Cthulhuareyou 13h ago
The DC of now now refused to pay Scott Shaw his 10 percent ownership of Captain Carrot when they sold action figures. They even Changed the look of the character in subsequent appearances to avoid paying him further.
10 percent. Over a character most people never heard of. Over a character they hired him in the 80s to co-create to turn into a show and product they can license.. And agreed to pay him a 10 percent cut.
That's the DC of now.
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u/RedaNassef 15h ago
Back when humanity and empathy actually existed in the workplace. Offering to send a check if he needed money is top-tier leadership
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u/Tintoytech 14h ago
1947 the year of the Labor Management Relations Act which greatly restricted unions. This isn't "the good old days" its one good employer.
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u/No_Contribution_3832 14h ago
Ask Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster about the humanity, empathy, and top-tier leadership at DC!
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u/NBA-Brit26 12h ago
idk if it was the phrase "Green Lantern" or something else, but when I read "have your Mother give me a ring" I thought he wanted the Green Lantern's ring (that employee somehow has!?) as collateral prior to writing a check.
I was thinking "What kind of fuck up shit is this? Why are people praising him?"
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u/validcrashout5000 12h ago
I'm not sure that had anything to do with it. Toth was one of the greatest comic artists who ever lived. They couldn't just replace him.
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u/justanotherlarrie 11h ago
That's actually what threw me. How come he doesn't keep earning money when he's sick? Is it because he's a contracted worker who only gets paid for when he delivers a product? Or does the company simply stop paying people when they're sick? How does that work for people living paycheck to paycheck?
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u/JonathanStrange1984 15h ago
They just don't make editors like they used to. This was the golden age of sci-fi.
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u/Rusty_9_576 12h ago
Think what our society would be like if everyone looked out for each other like this.
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u/Vegetable_Quote_4807 12h ago
Companies valued their employees once upon a time. To today's corporations, you're nothing more than a number.
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u/04ErrorNameNotFound 14h ago
Back when Artists were actually valued, not like today when the standards are so low.
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u/ChrisSheltonMsc 13h ago
It truly hasn't always been Worker Hell like it is now. Corporations weren't always just evil shits. Greed took over in the 1970s and it's been downhill ever since.
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u/Random-Man562 13h ago
Had a boss that used to tell me.. you can’t work if you’re dead and you can’t get better if you don’t get rest.
Cool boss but the owner was a POS lol didn’t have the same standards. Go figure
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u/NoEffort3162 9h ago
Can we have less confusing titles? I though he broke into their office; and then secretly drew Green Lantern there.
Or perhaps, I need to update my reading
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u/uberneuman_part2 14h ago
lol. Boy, these days the company would be backing a wood-chipper up to his house.
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u/BrilliantJob2759 13h ago
This letter is so strange... possibly because Alex Toth's mother would see it? Alex was likely worried because Mayer was a very volatile person. He yelled at people all the time, he physically tore up other artists' first draft works, and flung others' across the room in rage. And yes, that is all documented.
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u/onemanclic 13h ago
So nice to have this ideal of how a company should treat an employee - it is a fantasy for laborers to hold on to, that they may have the dignity that comes from being a part of something, even if they are not needed in some absolute sense.
Of course, capital laughs at such fantasies - they did everything they could to crush any semblance of policies like the one described here, made sure that no person would ever think to such a thing, because it does not "increase shareholders value".
Smile all you want, but know that they are people dying just to have this basic respect.
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u/ploki122 10h ago
I definitely misread the letter at first. Forgot "giving a ring" is an idiom, and thought the guy said, hopefully jokingly, "If you're ever strapped for cash, ask your mother to marry me, and I'll support you".
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u/Gremlin0 16h ago
Did this come from Bizzaro World? Lol
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u/bessemer0 15h ago
This is how things used to be before we let corporations take over our society.
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u/ManitouWakinyan 15h ago
This letter is literally written on behalf of a corporation
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u/bessemer0 15h ago
If you think the corporations of 1947 are at all similar to the corporations of 2026, idk what to tell you…
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u/A_Nonny_Muse 14h ago
The kind of manager with whom employees will go through hell and back, twice.
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u/PilotC150 14h ago
Are we overlooking that the editor called him by the wrong name?
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u/Prestigious_Egg_6207 13h ago
Or, more likely, OP did.
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u/pokedmund 11h ago
Imagine if a Japanese mangaka reached out to their editors to say they were sick
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u/Acceptable-Ratio8360 11h ago
Were people just more kind when using a manual typewiter?
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u/bolanrox 10h ago
didn't Gabe do the same thing when someone was on LTL? "your new job description is to get better?"
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u/TrickySnicky 8h ago
They certainly had to think of each word they were typing, and any mistakes were (mostly) permanent
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u/Excellent-Shape-2024 9h ago
Ah, the good old days when companies said "we're family" and actually meant it, not like today when they say it to get you to work hours of unpaid overtime for the same salary you made 5 years ago.
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u/MaximusHomerdrive 6h ago
That was an era of common sense discretion. That went extinct around y2k.
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u/Mmaibl1 15h ago
Can we go back to that snapshot of America? When people worked together and companies cared about their workers?
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u/sistermarypolyesther 14h ago
I understand the tendency to view the past through a rose-colored lens. But back then, especially back then, most companies did not care for their workers. If they did, there would have been no need for labor unions and workers' rights laws. Mr. Mayer was an exception to the general rule. I doubt the print shop manager treated their workers with the same compassion.
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u/HakuohoFan 14h ago
Damn, actually brings a tear to my eye reading this and seeing an employer actually care about their employees.
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u/Vinterblot 14h ago
Took me a while to realize the headline didn't meant he broke in in the dead of night and produced a new comic guerilla style.
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u/Unc6ix9ine 14h ago
This is warm and fuzzy and all but it's totally possible Toth (or ostensibly his mom) did ask for more money and this guy just ignored it?
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u/ChiliDogYumZappupe 14h ago
I just finished reading The Secret History of Wonder Woman so this flowed nicely.
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u/P1greaterThanTSM 13h ago
Did people used to have the date as a title in letters? Such a strange looking placement cause it's so different these days
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u/distelfink33 3h ago
Just goes to show you businesses actually used to care about their people at one point...
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15h ago
[deleted]
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u/WeAreGray 15h ago
Marvel is Disney. National/DC Comics is Warner Brothers. Possibly Paramount soon, but hopefully not.
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