Yesterday, I shared the first in a series of Ethics columns I wrote for The Comics Journal in which I attempted to make sense of the time I worked for Marvel Comics. Here’s the second installment, which appeared in that magazine’s September 1985 issue.

But first a few comments from the perspective of 24 years later—

1) One of the editors at TCJ—I can’t remember who it was, though I’m sure I have the correspondence around here somewhere—insisted on formalizing the names of all of the people I mentioned, changing Marv and Len and even my wife Irene to Wolfman and Wein and Vartanoff, not at all the way I thought of them or should have had to refer to them. They were adhering to a journalistic style I didn’t think fit a memoir or personal essay, and it still seems strange to me when I reread the pieces, as if I’m holding at arms length those whom I should be embracing. If I ever collect and republish these essays, I’ll give my friends (and my wife) back their first names.

As for my other two comments, I think I’ll leave them until after you read the following, if you do bother to read the following.

2) I have no memory whatsoever of the fear I described at the bottom of the first column of page two. I remember the CPL essay, but I have no memory that once it appeared, I was worried about the repercussions. I think that ties into something I said in response to a comment on my previous Ethics entry—that time does heal all wounds. Many of the negative memories I had of my Marvel experience are gone, and the bile you’ll see in some of these installments has vanished. Some of that cleansing, as you’ll see later if I continue posting these columns, came through the very act of writing, which had an extremely exorcising effect.

3) All of the highly emotional details I wrote about the circumstances of my departure from Captain Marvel are also gone. If asked today to tell you what happened then, I could sketch in the vague details of Archie Goodwin’s unhappiness, Jim Shooter’s betrayal, and my own ineptitude at stating my case, but they would be factual only, coming from the head and not the heart. I am truly a different person, and those ancient emotions no longer resonate. But I share them here because, well, they’re honest to who I was then, and those who’ll want to know what it once was like at Marvel will get a more honest answer out of the me of 1985 than the me of 2009.

Next up—”Opportunity Knocked.”