I created my earliest fiction (well, save for the lies I told my parents) somewhere between age 8 and 11. And the story I wrote was an adventure I couldn’t then get from comic books; not because it couldn’t be done, but because comics hadn’t yet evolved to the point where the corporate entities had the will to do it. It starred all of the Marvel and DC heroes of the day in an epic melee, battling across company lines. Because that was a fannish dream—to erase the boundaries between Marvel and DC and put those heroes and villains in one big playground.

I’d have to wait until 1976 to see the real thing, in the first ever company crossover, Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man, written by Gerry Conway.

One of the many documents I’ve been saving since my days in the Marvel Bullpen has been a photocopy of Gerry’s original Marvel-style plot for the book. I haven’t bothered sharing this synopsis online up until now because I was sure someone else must surely have already done it. But an Internet search, as well as a survey of those who ought to know, revealed to me that no one’s ever posted the following outline of Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man before.

And so—because information wants to be free—check out something I’ve been lugging around in a file folder for more than three decades. Enjoy another taste of behind-the-scenes secret history.

The Champions was a Marvel Comics supergroup of the mid-’70s created by Tony Isabella which starred Hercules, Ghost Rider, the Black Widow, Angel, and Iceman. Except for a fill-in issue by Chris Claremont, and one scripting assist by Bill Mantlo, Tony handled the first seven issues.

But with The Champions #8, the October 1976 issue (cover below), Bill took over the title and wrote the book until it was cancelled with #17, the January 1978 issue.

But before he began, he laid out his plans for the book in a two-page memo to Gerry Conway and Jim Shooter. Would you like to be able to compare his plans for the group with what actually happened? Well, thanks to my Marvel memo packrat ways, you can. Because here’s that memo!

I’ll leave it up to someone else to check the memo against the books themselves and provide a point by point comparison.

Why am I sharing this with you now? For those who haven’t seen my other findings from the vault (and by vault I mean the couple of file folders I’ve been lugging around for more than three decades)—

First, Sean Howe, editor of the fascinating Give Our Regards to the Atomsmashers!, is working on a history of Marvel in the ’70s, and I’m trying to make sure he has all the info he needs to make it the best possible book it can be. And since I’m going to the effort of scanning these memos and letting him see them, I figure you should get a look at them, too.

But also—when Len Wein suffered a house fire a few years back, which damaged not only his comic book and original art collections but also many historical documents about the secret history of the business, I started to think … what if my house burned down, and it turned out I had the only copies of some of these memos? So I decided to get as many of them online as I could, because the info doesn’t just belong to me, it belongs to everybody who loves comics.

So when you see other posts like this from me in the future … now you’ll know why.

DC Comics announced today it was abandoning the Comics Code, which makes it seem as if the organization that has cast a pall over the industry since 1954 is on its way out.

So it’s the perfect time to dig into my vault and pull out a 1976 letter written by Gerry Conway (during his brief reign as Editor-in-Chief of Marvel Comics) to Len Darvin (then the head of the Comics Code Authority). Gerry was asking for a requested edit to The Inhumans to be reconsidered, and while the particulars aren’t as controversial as the Blue Valentine brouhaha, it does make for an interesting peek behind the curtain at a custom that has long outlived its usefulness.

Archie and Bongo are apparently the last Comics Code holdouts.

With any luck, soon there’ll be none.