The journey to the meal you’re about to share — my dinner with Don McGregor, who I worked beside in the Marvel Bullpen of the mid-‘70s — began a year ago, as I was returning home from Readercon and learned from former guest Paul Di Filippo — Episode 62, check it out — that Don had moved back to Rhode Island, not very far from the airport out of which I’d be flying. That’s when I started making plans for an episode I hoped I’d be able to pull off on the way home from this year’s Readercon.

I reached out to Dauntless Don — we all had nicknames back them; he was Dauntless, I was Sparkling — and said, hey, how about if when I’m on the way back to the airport at the end of Readercon, I swoop down, take you out for dinner, and we chew over the old times. And that’s exactly what we did, at the Safehouse in East Greenwich, Rhode Island, along with Dauntless Don’s wife, the Marvelous Marsha, whose voice you’ll occasionally hear in the background of this episode.

Don started out his career in comics by writing some of the best horror stories to appear in the pages of Creepy and Eerie — and I remember well reading the first of them in the early ’70s. When he moved on to Marvel Comics, he did groundbreaking work with such characters as Black Panther, Killraven, and Luke Cage. In fact, his two-year “Panther’s Rage” arc was ranked as the third most important Marvel Comics storyline of the ’70s by Comics Bulletin. In 2015, he was awarded the Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing at San Diego Comic-Con International.

We discussed how meeting Jim Steranko led to him selling his first comics story, why when he was 13 years old, he wanted to be Efrem Zimbalist Jr., what he learned from Naked City creator Stirling Silliphant, how his first meeting with future Black Panther artist Billy Graham could have been disastrous, why the comics he wrote in the ’70s wouldn’t have been able to exist two years later, the reasons Archie Goodwin was such a great editor, how he convinced Stan Lee to allow the first interracial kiss in mainstream comics, what life lessons he took from Westerns in general and Hopalong Cassidy in particular, why he almost stopped writing Lady Rawhide, and much more.

Here’s how you can share some sirloin with us—

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Here’s what we chowed down on for dinner that Sunday night in Rhode Island—

Signature Calamari
hot pepper rings, garlic butter

Boston Cut Sirloin
potato croquette, aspargus

Center Cut Rib Eye
roasted shallot compound butter, balsamic dressed arugula,
potato bacon hash

Banana Waffle Sundae
fresh bananas, brown sugar glaze, chef-made waffle,
vanilla ice cream, whipped cream

Chocolate Chip Cookie Skillet
vanilla ice cream, caramel drizzle,
whipped cream, strawberry garnish

If you’re a comics fan who’s checking out Eating the Fantastic for the first time because getting to hear the Dauntless One’s voice brought you here, might I suggest you give a listen to my lunch with Marv Wolfman in Episode 54? Lots of comics goodness there!

If you enjoyed this episode and want to support my mission of breaking bread with creators of the fantastic while letting you eavesdrop, there are a few ways you can help bring this podcast to the attention of potential new listeners looking for science fiction, fantasy, and horror ear candy—

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Please join me next episode for sushi with Pat Cadigan, who — among many other accomplishments — won a Hugo Award for her novelette “The Girl-Thing who Went Out for Sushi.”

Thanks for listening!