According to the latest issue of Roy Thomas’ fanzine Alter Ego, artist Odgen Whitney used himself as a young boy as the model for Herbie Popnecker, star of the wonderfully surreal comic published by ACG during the ’60s.

Which kinda boggles the mind.

I mean—have you seen Herbie Popnecker?

Which makes me ask—does anyone out there have a photo of a young Ogden Whitney? Because if Whitney really once looked like Herbie … this I’ve got to see!

I was doing a lot of smiling last night. That’s because I finally carved out some time to read Dewey Cassell’s book Marie Severin: The Mirthful Mistress of Comics. As I’ve told you many times, I don’t just like Marie—I love Marie.

And last night, I relived many of the reasons why. (I was about to write that I “remembered” many of the reasons why, but that would imply I’d forgotten those reasons … and no one could ever forget Marie.) (more…)

I’ve been thinking a lot about the past lately, one reason being that I had to try to re-create it so that Sean Howe’s book, Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, would be as accurate as memory would allow, the other being I’m trying to lead as uncluttered a life as I can, so whatever doesn’t seem absolutely necessary to own … goes.

Which means that not only did I have to recently explain when I was hired by Marvel Comics to be Editor of the British reprint books, how long I worked in that position, and when I moved over to work in the U.S. Bullpen, but I then ran across a document which proved that what I had told Sean … was wrong! Well, not 100% wrong … just wrong enough.

What I’d thought, from this vantage point of three decades after the fact, was that I’d worked on the British books for six months or so, yet a couple of pages I just ran across shows …

… I was only there for three! (more…)

I don’t know what comes to mind when you read the headline, Parkinson’s disease sufferer, 54, held by police at Olympic cycling road race ‘because he would not smile’, but what popped into my head was … well, let’s read a bit of the newspaper report first, shall we?

A father with Parkinson’s disease was arrested as he watched the Olympic cycling road race because he ‘failed to smile or look like he was enjoying himself’.

Mark Worsfold, a martial arts trainer and former soldier, claims that he was thrown to the floor and handcuffed just as cyclists passed by.

If you’re a certain generation of comic book fan, you’ll certainly think of the classic EC Comics story “The Patriots,” written by Al Feldstein and drawn by Jack Davis, which first appeared in Shock SuspenStories #2 (April-May 1952). “The Patriots” tells of another former soldier who was punished for his insufficient exuberance … though in a far more tragic manner.

Wally Wood’s powerful cover to that issue drew its scenario from that tale. (more…)

I know all about Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel’s 1975 letter putting a curse on the company that wouldn’t do right by him. After all, it wasn’t history to me, as I was on staff at Marvel Comics at the time, and we were all well aware of the letter that began—

It has been announced in show business trade papers that a multi-million dollar production based on the Superman comic strip is about to be produced. It has been stated that millions of dollars were paid to the owners of Superman, National Periodical Publications, Inc., for the right to use the famous comic book super-hero in the new movie. The script is by Mario Puzo, who wrote The Godfather and Earthquake. The film is to have a star-filled cast.

I, Jerry Siegel, the co-originator of Superman, put a curse on the Superman movie! I hope it super-bombs. I hope loyal Superman fans stay away from it in droves. I hope the whole world, becoming aware of the stench that surrounds Superman, will avoid the movie like a plague.

And ended—

WHAT AN INFERNAL, SICKENING SUPER-STENCH EMANATES FROM NATIONAL PERIODICAL PUBLICATIONS, INC. We hope the public will never forget this when seeing the Superman character, or National Periodical comic books. Do not patronize Superman because of this injustice.

Amazing, huh? If you want to read the whole thing, you can find it here.

But what I never knew (which surprises me) is that there was also intriguing correspondence out there related to Bill Finger, the man responsible for most of what we like about Batman.

Thankfully, Marc Tyler Nobleman, author of Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman, has enlightened me about those letters and the scenario that spawned them. (more…)

I’ll be heading off to Comic-Con tomorrow, which I’ll be covering on behalf of Blastr, as I’ve been doing since 2007. (Covering Comic-Con, that is, not covering it on behalf of Blastr, since at times I was doing it for the previous incarnations of either SCI FI Wire or Science Fiction Weekly.)

Each of those years gave me the gift of an encounter that stood out above all others, a special moment that had to do with the kid inside of me, and not with the me who was there reporting to the world what was going on in San Diego. (Not that those two me’s can always be separated.)

Here’s a photo a year, capturing those moments.

2007

Catching up with former boss Stan Lee, who dubbed me “Sparkling” Scott Edelman back in the ’70s when I worked for him in the Bullpen—because everyone who works at Marvel needs a nickname, right?

(more…)

We all remember why Peter Parker decided that with great power came great responsibility, right? It’s because way back during his first appearance in Amazing Fantasy #15, Spider-Man decided that “from now on I just look out for Number One,” and let a common criminal get away …

… resulting in … well … you know how that decision turned out. Bye bye, Uncle Ben!

And it was all Peter’s fault.

But if you’d first encountered Spider-Man via his second appearance, you would have found a subtly different origin path. (more…)

A few weeks ago, I was bemoaning the fact that the world seemed to have forgotten EC Comics artist Bernard Krigstein, a thought brought about by two (then ongoing) Heritage original art auctions of complete comics adaptations of Ray Bradbury short stories.

“Mars is Heaven!” illustrated by Wally Wood was expected to bring in between $30,000 and $50,000, while “The Flying Machine” by Krigstein was estimated to go for anywhere from $7,000 to $9,000. This imbalance seemed odd to me, not only because Krigstein was once held in such high regard, but also because Bradbury considered “The Flying Machine” to be “the single finest piece of art-drawing I’ve seen in years.” Not that I have anything against Wally Wood, you understand, it’s just that until I saw those predictions, I’d assumed the two artists were held in equal regard.

Now that the auctions are over, though, I’m feeling a little better about it all.

So how’d those auctions turn out?

“Mars is Heaven!” sold for $54,687.50, and “The Flying Machine” went for $27,500. Which means that while Heritage, at least based on its initial estimates, predicted that the world would value Wood over Krigstein by a ratio of approximately 5-1, the actual ratio turned out to be 2-1.

Because of that, and taking into account that Bradbury’s “Mars is Heaven!” is a far more beloved story (even though I always preferred “The Flying Machine”), I’m much less miffed on behalf of Krigstein.

(And if all this now piques your interest in his unique style, and you’d like to see more, check out this post-EC tale “The Desert Rat,” which manages to cram 73 panels into a single 4 page Stan Lee-scripted story!)

Someone took a look at my Twitter icon last night and said, “Hey, that doesn’t look like you!” Well, it did … once. Or who knows, maybe it didn’t, and perhaps only Marie Severin thought so. Because that’s how she drew me back when dinosaurs still walked the Earth and I left my job in the Marvel Bullpen.

Here’s the long-ago going away card she cooked up when I quit to become a full-time freelancer.

I can sometimes grow melancholy if I look too closely at the signatures on the card, since so many—Dave Cockrum, John Verpoorten, Archie Goodwin, for example—are gone.

Of course, many are still with us, such as my wife there in the upper right corner, and even good old (seemingly immortal) Stan Lee in the upper left corner.

But that’s not the only signature-festooned card I received during my time at Marvel … (more…)

I went to Theater J on Sunday to catch a matinee performance of The History of Invulnerability, a play based on the real-life tragedy of how Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster got screwed out of the rights to Superman, and my feelings are complex. What isn’t complex, though, is my feeling that you should rush to see it if you can, so let’s get that out of the way first. The final performances are on July 8, so you have a few weeks, but don’t dawdle. It’s well worth your time.

But I’ve been wondering, as I struggle to parse my reaction to this play, whether it’s possible to be too close to the material to see it clearly.

Oh, who am I kidding? Of course I’m too close to the material to see it clearly! I’ve been a hardcore comics fan as far back as I can remember, I was working in comics when the first Superman movie was about to be released and justice was being demanded for Siegel and Shuster, I already know all the crimes committed against the Man of Steel’s creators, and last year I even attempted to win some of Jerry Siegel’s hair at auction!

Plus (and this ought to give you an idea of how invested I am in this shameful tale out of comics history) I already had such a feeling of hatred for Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz going in that I literally started hissing at a certain point when one of them took the stage and started speaking, and had to squelch that visceral reaction once I realized what I was doing. So I don’t come to this play with a clean slate, able to judge this play the way I would a different one not based on a topic already embedded in my DNA. (more…)