Last weekend, I accompanied Irene to the New Jersey Romance Writers conference, but I didn’t hang around there with her. All of my fun occurred outside of New Jersey. And serendipitously, each of the three days of my trip delivered a comics-related delight.

On Friday, I headed to the Comics at Columbia exhibit, which was held in the Butler Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Highlights for me included a George Herriman Archy and Mehitabel illustration, a nostalgia-inducing photo of Chris Claremont taken around the time I would have met him in the ’70s, Jerry Robinson’s sketch of Dick Grayson and Bruce Wayne made during class in 1940 when he was supposed to have been taking notes, and this 1970 letter in which Joe Shuster thought he and Jerry Siegel were “very close” to settling the Superman lawsuit.

That last one made me a little sad.

The Columbia University exhibit will continue through January 23, 2015 and is well worth your time. It’s one of the better comics exhibits I’ve seen.

Saturday, I visited the Society of Illustrators to catch an exhibit on Dick Dillin, who was the primary Justice League of America artist of my youth.

The pages of art felt very personal to me, because I recognized every piece that hung on the walls. Even if you’re not as close to the material as I am, I still think it’s worth seeing, but you’d better act fast, because though Dick Dillin: Underrated Comics Genius is also still ongoing, it ends November 1.

The highlight of the weekend, though, comics-related or otherwise, was our Sunday visit with Marie Severin. Mirthful Marie turned 85 in August, and we wish we could have visited on her birthday to help her celebrate. Unfortunately, the World Science Fiction Convention in London prevented us.

But that didn’t stop us from celebrating Sunday!

We took her out for Italian food, and stuffed her with as many baked clams and as much cheesecake as she could stand.

And as usual, once the camera came out, the ham came out in Marie.

Grrr!

We spent most of the day with Marie, who’s as hilarious and happy as ever, catching up and filling her in on the latest about all of her old Marvel Comics pals, but eventually we had to head home.

As we were about to leave, the Mirthful One surprised us by insisting on drawing a sketch of the Hulk. And surprised us again by portraying him bopping Mickey Mouse!

The lady’s still got it.

We never have enough time with Marie.

No one ever could.