Here’s the third and final Ethics column of mine which appeared in The Comics Journal in 1985. I’d go on to publish four more of them in 1986, and write two more after that which were never published. Now that the decades have passed, I’m not sure why those final two never saw print. I’m sure if I dug out my correspondence with the editors, I’d be able to dredge up the memories, but I’m not in the mood to do that right now.

Give it a read, if the first two installments haven’t scared you away, and then join me on the other side for some thoughts my 2009 self had about what my 1985 self thought of my ’70s self.

And now, a few random comments:

1) Those fanzine photos I mentioned on page 1, column 3? You can find them here, here, and here.

2) Writing on page 2, column 2 in 1985 about the years from 1974 through around 1980, I said that “looking back on the years working in comics, what sticks in my mind are not the fun times, nor the joy of seeing my work turning into pictures at the hands of another, but instead the setbacks.” How amazing it is to read this from the perspective of 2009 and realize that now, the opposite is true. As I shared in my notes to the first two installments, all of the negative emotions my younger self felt have been erased, and instead I look back on the entire experience with fondness. I may know intellectually that there were issues, but I no longer feel any of them. And writing these columns played a big role in lifting the negative fog. Catharsis can happen.

3) On page 3, column 1, I mentioned that I’d sold 19 short stories by that time. Now, 24 years later, I’ve sold around 55 more. I was about to type “only” around 55 more. To some extent, that’s from continuing to rise to opportunities, as per the next comments.

4) At the time I wrote this installment of my Ethics column, I’d sold a single tale to Tales from the Darkside. There would end up being three episodes based on my stories. So much for not being seduced by, well, the Darkside. You can found out more about them here.

5) And what about the questions I asked at the end of the column? Did I learn from my pre-1986 experiences to bar the door when opportunity knocked? That I ended up editing a professional wrestling magazine and two unauthorized biographies of wrestlers will give you the quick and dirty answer to that question.

As for the all the opportunities answered since then which have resulted in the number of stories written and published post-1985 not being greater, well, of all the columns I wrote under the Ethics heading, this is the one most in need of a Part II. My constant struggle against distractions could use an updating and additional analysis.

Someday, someday.

Meanwhile, there’s a short story I need to finish if I expect a certain editor to ever speak to me again …