In 1975, when I was working in the Bullpen at Marvel Comics, I flew to Toronto to appear on a panel at CosmicCon along with Marv Wolfman, Len Wein, and … someone whose name I no longer remember.

Neither does Marv.

And since the reason I dug out this photo was as part of my mourning process for Len, we’ll never know if he might have remembered.

When I recently shared the image on Twitter and Facebook in the hopes someone could identify the face at the far right, suggestions included Bernie Wrightson and Howard Chaykin (I blame the sideburns), but … it wasn’t either of those two.

If you happen to know who that is, please let me know!

UPDATED 9/26/2017: Thanks to Ron Kasman, who wrote this article about the history of CosmicCon, I learned that’s Jim Craig, who worked for Atlas Comics at the time, and went on work for Marvel on such titles as Master of Kung Fu and The 3-D Man.

Here’s a photo of him which appeared a couple of years later in FOOM.

Thanks, Internet, for solving this mystery!

(I struggled Sunday to find the words which would explain how important Len Wein was in my life, but found I could’t bring myself to write the eulogy he deserved. All I could manage was the following series of tweets, which I gather here in lieu of a proper celebration which I hope will come later.)

I first met Len Wein at Phil Seuling’s 1970 4th of July Comic Art Convention. I was member #38. Len was member #65. I was only 15 years old.

A year later, at the Times Square Nathan’s, Len—who’d wanted to be an artist, not writer—drew this sketch of a character he’d created. (more…)

Yesterday, while searching for something completely differently, I came across correspondence I’d received from the Comics Code Authority in 1976 which ordered Marvel Comics to change a panel in an issue of Omega the Unknown I’d written.

I’d referenced this incident about Omega the Unknown #7 (March 1976) when artist Jim Mooney passed, but back then I didn’t have my hands on the CCA note. Now I do!

And you can read it below …

But before you do, look more closely at the villain in that panel as he runs off. Notice anything odd and clumsy about his gait? Or about the position of his right hand?

Well, that’s because something was once in that blank space to his right—a policeman swatted aside by Blockbuster.

A policeman the Comics Code requested we remove.

Why?

Well … (more…)

I’d thought I’d shared all the gems from my Marvel Comics days which I have squirreled away in my subterranean vault … until a query from a Dave Cockrum fan proved me wrong.

I got an email an hour ago asking about a villain I’d come up with for Captain Marvel #55 (March 1978)—Deathgrip!

I’d previously told you how I’d seen artist Dave Cockrum design that character’s costume, and he wanted to know whether any of Dave’s preliminary drawings still existed. And that made me suddenly realize …

Why … yes.

Not sure why I never thought to let you see this aspect of Dave’s genius before, but here it is now—Deathgrip as we in the Marvel Bullpen first saw him.

Amazing, isn’t it?

I’m so glad Dave’s dream—which I recently discovered expressed in an interview published in Fantastic Fanzine #10 (1969)—came true.

Aren’t you?

Forty-three years ago today, on June 24, 1974, I arrived at 575 Madison Avenue for the first day of my new job at Marvel Comics, looking something like this …

… and that was the end of that!

That Bullpen caption contest I shared with you recently wasn’t the only bit of Marvel memorabilia I uncovered during my dive into the vault. I also found the original guide which would have been sent to the printer so they could properly complete the color separations.

Was it Marie Severin who took brush in hand and decided which colors would appear on the cover to Dead of Night #11? Could it have been Glynis Wein?

I’m afraid from this distance, I no longer have any idea. But regardless, the marching orders given to World Color Press are now yours to behold!

While rummaging through the detritus of my Marvel Comics years in search of something other than what I’m about to share, I found evidence of a frequent Bullpen pastime—the caption contest.

Somebody would tape a photo to the wall, and everybody else would attempt to write something funny about it. That this was indeed something done frequently can be seen by the fact that whoever filched the photo from me numbered this particular contest 12,439,874,869,710.

So take a look below if you want a small taste of what it was like to work in the Marvel Comics Bullpen of the mid-’70s.

Some of the jokes will only be funny if you recognize the woman with whom I’m posed.

Do you?

I won’t give it away so that those don’t immediately know who she is have a chance to guess based on the captions themselves, but here’s one hint—I met her at a Halloween party run by the National Cartoonist Society, to which I was invited by Bill Kresse.

As you should all have figured out by now, it’s Margaret Hamilton, the Wicked Witch of the West!

And I was very happy to have been her Munchkin that night.

Seeing Carol Tilley lecture at the National Archives on the letters kids wrote to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Special Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency in 1954 defending comics books turned out not to be the only comics-related thing in my life this afternoon. Because as I was heading back to Union Station for my train home, I came upon the following street art which made political statements by tweaking actual covers from old comic books.

Here are the four I saw, accompanied by the original covers I tracked down.

(more…)

Carol Tilley—who’ll be speaking Thursday at the National Archives about letters kids wrote to the Senate defending comics in 1954—just posted over on Facebook the front page from the August 25, 1940 issue of Fantasy News … and I can’t resist sharing one part of it here.

Thomas S. Gardner, whose short fiction had been published in the ’30s in Wonder Stories, complained that the new science fiction comics were so inane as to cause some readers to give up on science fiction entirely. Plus comics (or so he claimed) were even damaging the reputation of science fiction—and the fans themselves.

Science Fiction is being guffawed, ballyhooed, and ridiculed out of existence. The readers and magazines are being classified as morons as a result of the comic books.

Luckily, though, the prescient Gardner predicted comic books wouldn’t be around for long.

The comic magazines are a fly-by-night affair in all probability. The fact that few appear for the second issue but start out with a new series hoping to sell the first copies is pretty good proof of their impermanence.

Gardner lived until 1963, after the Golden Age of comics had ended and the Silver Age had begun. Wonder whether that was long enough for him to change his mind?

You can read the issue in its entirety over at FANAC.

Sunday afternoon was one of the highlights of my year, because at the end of an extended weekend in New York—during which I recorded four new episodes of Eating the Fantastic—I got to take Marie Severin to lunch and then spend several hours sitting outside in the sun with her on an unseasonably warm October day.

And when I say I did those things, I of course mean we did those things—for any visit to the Mirthful one must include the Impish one—my wife, Irene Vartanoff. (more…)