Unlike Mark Evanier, I never met Marcia Strassman, who portrayed Julie Kotter, the wife of Gabe Kaplan’s character on Welcome Back, Kotter. Strangely, though, I felt as if I had, because I wrote two issues of the DC Comics series based on that TV show, and so got paid to put words into the mouth of an actress who never actually got to speak them.

As I’ve mentioned here before, I believe I was given the chance to script that comic because I was a Sweathog. (Don’t believe me? Just listen to what I sounded like back then.) Which meant that I had far more in common with guys from Brooklyn than those who would marry them after they grew up. (Or, to put it more accurately, after they didn’t grow up.) But still, I did my best to channel the character she embodied.

In my first issue, that consisted primarily of her reacting to the antics of those around her …

… which while accurate to the show, was also what, according to Evanier, had her dissatisfied with it. (more…)

Daniel Keyes, author of the classic short story “Flowers for Algernon” as well as the best-selling novel that followed, died Sunday at age 86. He deserves accolades not just for the tale itself, but also for his determination to resist those who wanted him to turn its tragic ending into an upbeat one, a change which would have robbed the story of its power.

I was privileged to have met him in 2000 when I was Toastmaster at that year’s Nebula Awards weekend, where he was presented with SFWA’s Author Emeritus award.

When I learned earlier today of his passing, I suddenly remembered that though I had a recording of that night and had previously shared with you the presentation of the Best Short Story, Best Novella, and Best Novel awards, as well as my introduction of then-president Paul Levinson and my singing of an Elvis standard, I had never uploaded any video of Keyes being given that honor.

Sadly, it’s now time to correct that omission. Watch as he explains how the character of Charlie Gordon came to be …

“P.S. please if you get a chanse put some flowrs on Algernons grave in the bak yard.”

R.I.P. Daniel Keyes.

I learned a short while ago that the great EC Comics writer, artist, and editor Al Feldstein passed away yesterday in Livingston, Montana. I don’t think I have anything more to say about his influence other than what I already said when I presented him with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Horror Writers Association in 2011.

But since a picture is worth … well, you know … I thought I’d share thirteen of my favorite Feldstein comic book covers. Actually, I’d only planned to share ten of them, but there were so many which had impressed themselves on my memory that I ended up not being able to limit myself.

I feel privileged to have spent some time with him in 2008 at the San Diego Comic-Con and also to have had a story of mine appear in an issue of PostScripts which featured a recreation of one of his most famous covers as its cover.

Which happens to be the first one below …

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I learned Sunday that my oldest friend in the world, Robert Freedman, had passed away a few days earlier. Except for my mother and my younger brother, I’d known him longer than anyone on the planet—54 years, which is a startling length of time to contemplate.

We were in the same kindergarten class at Brooklyn’s P.S. 238, and continued together in the same class through the 5th grade. We were inseparable, with a similar sense of humor, always competing for the title of class clown. We’d trade whatever jokes we’d heard from comedians the night before on TV, which meant we were often chastised by teachers for talking too much or laughing too loud. But that wasn’t going to stop either of us from getting to the punchline of whatever joke Henny Youngman had told on The Ed Sullivan Show the night before! (more…)

I was saddened to learn via a Facebook post from Tom Heintjes that cartoonist Bill Kresse had died. I met Bill when I was a sophomore attending Brooklyn’s South Shore High School. I was probably around 16 years old, and part of a group of students interested in journalism who toured the New York Daily News.

Here’s what Bill looked like around that time, from when I met up with him the following year at a 75th anniversary celebration of the comic strip held in Central Park.

I no longer remember whether Bill ran the tour or was just one of the many people we met along the way, but for some reason, something clicked with him, me and fellow student Eric Shalit. That tour was the beginning of a relationship that led to Eric and me visiting Bill and his wife Lorraine at their home, my attendance at many National Cartoonist Society events, plus Bill providing art and advice when Eric and I put together an underground magazine at our school.

Bill, who was born on June 17, 1933, inked animation cels at Terrytoons immediately after high school, was a prolific “good girl” artist of the ’50s, and drew for the Archie’s Madhouse comic. I didn’t know any of that at the time, though. I only knew him as the artist and co-creator of Super Duper, a fun comic strip about a bumbling building superintendent which ran in the Daily News for five years. (more…)

While the death of Peter O’Toole, whose work I admired in such films as Lawrence of Arabia, The Ruling Class, and My Favorite Year, saddened me, I was far more moved by learning today of the death earlier in the week of Tom Laughlin, who starred in, directed, and co-wrote the 1971 movie Billy Jack. O’Toole was, of course, the far better actor, but in terms of which man affected me the most, there’s no contest. Laughlin kicked me where it counted.

And there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.

I saw Billy Jack multiple times when I was a teenager, had its dialogue memorized, imagined myself standing up for the downtrodden in that famous ice cream shoppe scene (so iconic it was later spoofed by Paul Simon in a Saturday Night Live sketch), and for a time even wore a BILLY JACK FOR PRESIDENT button.

So when Marvel Comics decided to devote an issue of its Deadly Hands of Kung Fu magazine to the phenomenon as a tie-in to the 1974 The Trial of Billy Jack movie, who better to write a think piece about the meaning of it all than the guy who was nuts about the first film? (Beneath that wonderful Neal Adams cover you could also find a second article on the sequel by Black Panther/Killraven writer Don McGregor.) In order to make my point in the essay, I managed to drag in Paul Kersey from Death Wish and Jesus Christ from, you know, The Bible.

As I reread the piece now, I can see that it’s overly influenced by the stylistic pyrotechnics of Harlan Ellison and Tom Wolfe, it suffers from the fact that I was still a beginner at this writing thing, and it contains all the self-righteous earnestness of a college dorm room bull session.

And yet, through it all, my love for the Billy Jack films and the work of Tom Laughlin is evident, so I think it’s still worth sharing on a day like today. (more…)

I was too busy having fun during the World Fantasy Convention to download the new issue of Locus, so it wasn’t until today that I discovered Dick Kearns had died.

We’d crossed paths several times in the early ’80s because he’d attended Clarion in 1978, the year before I did. I doubt we’d seen each other since the late ’80s, but I remember him as being a good writer and a fun person to hang out with. That’s not why I called you all together, though.

His Locus obituary contained a typo that had me scratching my head at first. But once I figured out what was really meant, I thought … oh, that’s wonderful. Dick would have gotten a kick out of it.

It’s a typo I’m sure someone would have mentioned somewhere online had it been read, but as I haven’t seen any of you mention it, I’m guessing, sadly, that no one’s bothered to read it.

Can you spot the typo?

Did you see it? (more…)

The first time I saw Carmine Infantino was at my first comic book convention back in 1970. Or so I assume. After all, he was one of the Guests of Honor there. But being for the first time in the presence of my tribe, I was in a daze, so much of that weekend is a muddled explosion of joy, and I don’t specifically remember meeting him.

The last time I saw him was forty years later at the funeral of Mark Hanerfeld, coincidentally the guy without whom I’d never have made it to that first convention. We chatted a bit, mostly about Mark.

I have no great anecdotes to share about the man who drew the first comic book of the Silver Age, and whose work both in that issue and for decades to come imprinted itself on my soul. I wish I did. And you can find the details of his life and plenty of examples of his talent elsewhere.

But I thought the least I could do to say thanks at a time like this was to share his biography as printed in the program book for that 1970 con which changed my life …

… as well as the back cover, which featured his artwork.

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Angel Arango, one of the founding fathers of Cuban science fiction, died recently at age 86. We met in 2002, when I was lucky enough to attend Cubaficción in Havana. He’d been publishing science fiction since the ’60s, and seemed a piece of living history.

I took to him immediately, and looking back on it now, I suspect that, as he was the Jack Williamson of Cuba, my love for Jack bled over a bit into my feelings for Angel, which is what caused, I think, that instant connection. He’d seen a lot over his decades writing science fiction in that country, and I wanted to learn what his time had been like.

I’m not fully conversant with the details of his life—I’ll leave the telling of those to others—but I did want to note his passing, and to make sure you took a moment to think of him as well.

So I’d like to share what’s perhaps his most famous short story, “El planeta negro,” originally published in his 1966 collection of the same name. I’ve scanned the version below from the 1983 anthology Cuentros Cubanos de Ciencia Ficcion, a copy of which I picked up at a book stall during my time in Havana.
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I never met Edward Brinkerhoff Taylor, Jr., who died a few days ago at age 76, but I’ve got an idea he was a hoot.

I only know the man through his obituary that appeared in today’s edition of the Washington Post, which I read because, hey, I always read obituaries. I like seeing the shorthand of a life, and in this case, those final words made me laugh.

Because “despite his best efforts to the contrary,” Taylor “was honorably discharged from the Army,” owned “a series of convertibles bought and wrecked in his retirement” and regretted that he’d “outlived a number of the more venerable restaurants of the capital region and Midtown Manhattan, of which he was a habitual patron.”

I suspect, though I could be wrong, that Taylor had a hand in crafting his death notice, because of the wit that made it stand out from the other far more traditional notices which filled three pages today. Perhaps it’ll turn out that instead was due to his daughters having inherited his spark, but I’ll bet he gave them a few wry tips before lifting that glass of Tanqueray and saying, “end of story.”

Makes me want to start taking notes for that eventuality which I hope is still many decades off. Why leave it up to others, who in their attempts to be respectful might be far too circumspect to tell any sort of truth?