Today’s my birthday, as hundreds of you reminded me with your wishes on Twitter and Facebook. And as people tend to do on birthdays (and New Year’s Eve, too), I’ve been thinking a bit about how the heck I got here.

And one of the reasons I did get here, got my wife, got my life, is a guy named Duffy Vohland, who’s sort of a forgotten figure in comics. So it’s appropriate that I share today a birthday card I received from him that featured a caricature he had Paty Cockrum (then still Patry Greer, I believe) draw for the occasion.

Here’s the image that was on the front of the card, and as anyone who knew him will tell you … yeah, that was Duffy.

I say that was Duffy because he died in 1982, one of the earliest vicims of AIDS. I wish he was still around so I could thank him today for what I’ve got, but he’s gone, so I’ll tell you instead.

You see, I never intended to work in comics. I was having too much fun being a teenaged fan, hanging around with the pros at conventions, and never wanting to upset that relationship. I figured at the time that if I was seen as only hanging around with the artists and writers because I wanted IN, I’d be seen as predatory, and I wanted them all to recognize me as someone who liked them rather than wanted to use them.

Then Duffy serendipitously moved into my neighborhood in Georgetown, Brooklyn. When the local kids saw him unloading box after box of comics, they told him about another guy who lived a couple of blocks away who also collected comics … me. Even before I met Duffy, I knew him from his fanzine writing, and once we met face to face it was good having someone to talk to nearby who was as crazy about comics as I was.

Duffy had moved to New York because he was doing production work for both Marvel and DC, and when he heard that Tony Isabella was leaving his job as editor of Marvel’s British books, he put my name forward as a possible replacement. And when I was hired, I got more than just a job. I also met my future wife, Irene Vartanoff.

So you could say (and I do say), no Duffy, no Marvel, no Irene, no my son, no my life, no so much else. So thanks, Duffy, for getting me years later to this birthday which you never got to see, but which I sure appreciate.