What made me want to go into doing comics was I was working as a laborer with my father, a gardener.

There were eleven publishers in New York City, and when it was all over, I think it went down to four or five, and then finally just the three of them, the Big Three.

What made me want to go into doing comics was I was working as a laborer with my father, a gardener.

Then he took me off Jeannie and he gave me Millie the Model. That was a big break for me. It wasn't doing to well and somehow when I got on it became quite successful.

The first book that they gave me was Jeannie, a young teenager. I went on with her maybe ten books.

Once publishers got interested in it, it was a year in developing, and it was launched, I think, in 1960. But Willie Lumpkin didn't last long - it only last a little better than a year, maybe a year and a half.

I started working with Timely in 1946. Stan Lee hired me.