A package arrived this afternoon delivering yet another Marvel Comics reprint volume containing stories of mine from the mid-’70s. I’ve been in seven of these over the past few years.

The latest, Essential Marvel Horror Volume 2, contains—along with tales of the Living Mummy, Brother Voodoo, the Golem, and other monsters—my two stories about the Scarecrow which originally appeared in Dead of Night #11 and Marvel Spotlight #26.

As these books keep showing up unbidden at my door, catching me by surprise, I keep remembering what Faulkner wrote, how “The past isn’t dead, it isn’t even past.”

There’s no escape from yesterday!

Thanks to The Comics Reporter, I’ve been wandering The Little World of Harvey Kurtzman, a site devoted to the first editor of Mad magazine.

Perhaps I’m weird (scratch that—I know I’m weird), but I found this old Mad magazine letterhead fascinating. If you check out the site, you’ll find other examples.

Which leads to me believe that maybe I’m not the only one intrigued by old stationery. With that in mind, at left is a sheet of Marvel Comics letterhead from the old days when the company was at 635 Madison Avenue, with a detail at right.

I can’t remember what span of years Marvel would have been at that address, because by the time I started working there in the mid-’70s, the company was already down the street at 575 Madison Avenue.

I’ll leave it to someone else who has more free time to dig through old comics and figure out exactly when this letterhead would have been in use.

Meanwhile, treat this artifact responsibly, and don’t go forging any old letters from Marvel staffers!

Yesterday was the 56th birthday of Gerry Conway, the writer who killed and then brought back Peter Parker’s girlfriend Gwen Stacy in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man—which makes this the right time to share another hidden bit of comics history.

When Gwen Stacy returned in the final panel of the May 1975 issue of Amazing Spider-Man, this is what readers saw in the published issue.

But what those who weren’t lucky enough to be working in the Marvel Bullpen at the time never saw was the alternate version originally handed in by artist Ross Andru. (more…)

When Irene and I went through our old photo albums earlier this week as part of our anniversary celebration, I found a few photographs taken in the Marvel Comics Bullpen during the mid-’70s. So get ready for another flashback …

First up is me at my desk, in a picture probably taken in 1976. My sleeves are rolled up and I’m ready to work. I could probably figure out the exact month and year by tracking down the dates of the issues on the wall of covers behind me, but I’ll leave that exercise for some other time.

Next up is a group shot. That’s me standing with Bonnie Smith, while Chris Claremont kneels between us and takes a photo of our photographer. We’re bracketed by my future wife Irene Vartanoff on the left and Roger Slifer on the right. (more…)

In a dream this morning, Irene and I were working for the same company, though I had no idea what it was or what we did there. We were getting ready to leave for the day, but before we did, I had to find my jacket.

When I finally did, it was one of my leather ones, but sadly, it was covered with a white mold. I looked further and found a second one of my leather jackets, and that one was also covered with mold. As I began wiping away the mold, someone walked by out in the hallway, and I when I turned I was startled to see that it was John Verpoorten. He was hectoring some poor freelancer for being late with an assignment.

“But … he’s dead,” I said to Irene. (In the real world, John, who’d been the production manager at Marvel Comics, died in 1977.)

Irene explained to me that it had become the fashion nowadays for people to disguise themselves as John. Everybody was doing it. Only those of us who’d known John could see through the disguise.

The bogus John moved on, and Irene and I moved out into the hall. Paul Levitz was there, who in the real world I’ve known since the early ’70s, as this photo proves. This Paul was the Paul of today, though, and I suddenly realized that the office we were in belonged to DC Comics, and that I had just started working on staff there.

I asked Paul whether I’d now have to salute him, and jokingly raised my fingers to my forehead. (Paul had edited some of my comic-book stories when I freelanced for DC, but unlike Irene, I was never on staff, so this was the first time he’d officially be my boss.) He said that it wouldn’t be necessary.

And then I woke.

So there I was, sitting in the Marvel Bullpen in the mid-’70s, proofreading away, the original artwork for the latest issue of Luke Cage, Hero for Hire spread out before me.

When my Assistant Editor position called for me to proof, I had to keep my eye open for many different types of problems, ones which don’t turn up when dealing with straight text.

Accidental typographical errors made by a letterer. Costume mistakes drawn by an artist (perhaps the webbing in Spider-Man’s armpits was penciled or inked incorrectly, or the wings on the Submariner’s ankles were drawn too high on the leg). Inaccurate references by the writer in those editorial boxes at the bottom of panels which would point back to earlier issues. Or even something deliberate that one of these creators was trying to get by the editorial department and sneak into print as a joke that wouldn’t make the company laugh.

On the very last page of the issue, I did indeed find something which needed changing. (It might help if you click on the image above once, then again, to see the original artwork at its largest size.) Looking at the excerpt from an unidentified issue of Luke Cage, Hero for Hire (unidentified because, though I may I have kept a photocopy of the panel, I don’t keep track of everything, so it will be up to someone in the blogosphere to track down the issue number), can you spot the faux pas that I needed to get changed?

According to Heidi MacDonald over at The Beat, you’ll soon be able to buy a complete collection of Stan Lee’s “Stan’s Soapbox” columns, which were originally published as part of the Marvel Comics’ Bullpen Bulletins pages from 1967 through 1980.

When I was a kid, it was that interstitial writing, as much as the comics themselves, which made me into a True Believer. Stan somehow made me feel as if I had a pal.

The book, which will be available in November, is being published as a fundraiser for the Hero Initiative, a federally chartered not-for-profit corporation which provides a safety net for comic-book creators in need of emergency medical aid or other financial support.

In additional to the columns themselves, the collection will also place Stan’s columns in their correct historical context via essays by current Marvel editor-in-chief Joe Quesada, Marvel Studios President of Production Kevin Feige, former Marvel editor-in-chief Roy Thomas, and others.

But one thing I’ll bet the book won’t contain is scans of the original typed copy for those Soapboxes, direct from Stan’s hands. Why, to read something like that, you’d probably have to have been working at Marvel Comics in the mid-’70s so you could go through the trash next to the typesetter’s desk.

Well … either that … or else, lacking a time machine, you could just take a look below. (more…)

OK, James Owen—here’s one more take on the Edelman mug. Unfortunately, time has turned this particular artist into a mystery man.

My first job at Marvel Comics was to edit a line of reprint books which appeared only in the UK. After 3-6 months (I can no longer remember the exact length of time), I transferred over to act as an Assistant Editor on the U.S. line of comic books. To commemorate that move, one of the Bullpenners drew the caricature at right. The reason for the hole at the top is that I kept the sheet pinned to the wall behind my desk as long as I remained on staff.

The artist’s first name was Peter, as you can see on the drawing, and he was hired by Marvel to help make the art corrections that we proofreaders would find. But he left to go freelance after only a few months, and I never saw him again.

What’s worse, I can no longer even remember his full name, and as you can see from the illustration, the last name of his signature is unreadable, so I’ve been unable to solve the mystery. Anybody have any idea who did this?

Regardless, it’s a perfect likeness of me at the time, as you’d know if you ever saw my drivers license from those days.

As good wishes for Gene Colan light up the blogosphere, I’m reminded of the fact that when I first became aware of his work, that work wasn’t appearing under his own name, due to the comic-book traditions of the day. Back then, it was taboo for artists and writers to openly accept assignments from multiple companies, and so if they wanted to work for other than a single outlet, they had to do so under a pseudonym, creating a different house name wherever they went.

For example, when DC inker Mike Esposito first started working for Marvel Comics, he appeared under the name Mickey Demeo. Frank Giacoia became Frank Ray, Gil Kane was reborn as Al Stak, and so on.

From this vantage point, it all seems a polite fiction, because who could read the works of any of these creators and not know who really wrote or drew them, whatever the pen names? Surely the editors and publishers of the day could see right through the ruse. But I guess they were primarily concerned that the readers think that all of their favorite artists and writers were exclusive, and in those days when comic-book fandom was just being born, the powers that be probably felt that no one would be able to tell what was really going on. (more…)

While looking through the March 1977 issue of Omega the Unknown yesterday in order to write about Jim Mooney, I came upon this blurb in the Bullpen Bulletins page that issue. It would have run in all Marvel Comics published that month, which meant you would have been reading this in December 1976 or January 1977, depending on the lead time off the cover date back then.

(And depending on whether you were born yet, as well. And if you’d been born, whether you were old enough to read. Yes, I’ve been married a long time.)

Considering the fact that I was the one who wrote the Bullpen Bulletins pages at the time (well, except for the Stan’s Soapbox section), I guess there was no way that announcement wouldn’t have been there!

And I also guess that considering Irene’s recent behavior (as I reported earlier), there’s no arguing with the fact that I seem to have made the right choice over 31 years ago!