When I was interviewed by Dewey Cassell about the origins of Marvel’s Scarecrow for an article which was to appear in Back Issue magazine #60 (October 2012), one of the things he wanted to know was—who was originally intended to be that character’s first artist?

The reason that even came up was because back in the the pages of Dead of Night #11 (August 1975), I’d mentioned in an essay that “the artist who the assignment was given to had since disappeared into the wilds of the city.” So Dewey asked … which artist?

It had been more than three decades since he had vanished, but I had a pretty good idea who that artist had been—Bill Draut. After a little research, though, I began to doubt my gut, and as you can see in an excerpt below from Dewey’s published article, I’d decided I must have been wrong.

But thanks to the latest installment of Comic Book Legends: Revealed, I learned today that I’d been right all along!

According to Tony Isabella, the reason an issue of Ghost Rider was forced to contain a reprint back in 1975 was because the artist who was supposed to draw the issue disappeared. And that artist was … you guessed it … Bill Draut.

Sal Buscema had done very tight layouts from my plot for “The Desolation Run” (which ended up appearing in Ghost Rider #11). I had scripted the issue and it had been lettered. That’s where the problems started.

The finisher was supposed to be Bill Draut, a terrific artist who had worked with Joe Simon and Jack Kirby on Black Magic and many other classic comics. Most recently, he had been drawing stories for Joe Orlando’s mystery titles over at DC.

For some reason, Draut wasn’t getting work or enough work from DC. He came to Marvel and we all thought his style would work well on Ghost Rider. What I didn’t know was that Draut was going through some serious personal problems. I won’t speculate on the nature of these problems, but, whatever they were, we never received even a single page of finished artwork from him. Worse, he didn’t return any of the penciled and lettered pages either.

Out of desperation, I grabbed the biggest assistant editor I could find—Scott Edelman—and took a taxi to where Draut lived. Where he lived was some sort of enormous welfare hotel in Hell’s Kitchen. The cab driver refused to wait for us. He said he would circle the block for ten minutes and then he was out of there. I was usually too stupid to let stuff like that scare me, but this time, it did. When Draut refused to answer his door, we returned to Marvel empty-handed. I figured a reprint issue was a small price to pay for my and Scott’s lives.

Aha!

So Bill Draut did have a relationship with Marvel in 1975, the same year the first Scarecrow story was supposed to have been drawn, and the reason I couldn’t find any credits for him during that time period was because he’d for some unknown reason dropped the ball.

I have no idea how I could have forgotten that dramatic trip to Hell’s Kitchen, which now that Tony has tickled my memory is slowly surfacing, but regardless … I now return to my initial certainty.

The original Scarecrow artist was meant to be Bill Draut.

I shall never doubt my gut again!