While being interviewed the other day by Shaun Clancy about Captain Marvel for an article which will appear in an upcoming issue of Back Issue magazine, I got to talking about my first published comic book—which also happened to be the first appearance of Marvel’s Scarecrow. And when Shaun mentioned in passing that the character came out of a painting, right, I told him that, yes, he did, and I have that painting.

Which may leave you thinking … huh? But the painting from the story wasn’t real … was it?

If you ever read the initial Scarecrow story in Dead of Night #11, you’d have seen that painting as the fifth page of story by artist Rico Rival, which is first an action scene and later an object being auctioned.

But what you never saw, unless you were working beside me in the Marvel Bullpen back in the ’70s, was the original art for that page.

If you look closely at the credits bar along the bottom of the page, you’ll note that both Rico Rival’s first name and Glynis Wein’s full name were corrected. I’d love to tell you why, but nothing bleeds through when I hold the page against a bright light, and I won’t be peeling up the corrections themselves to find out.

But about the painting these pieces of art inspired …

Duffy Vohland, without whom I’d neither have worked in comics nor met my wife-to-be, commissioned a painting of the Scarecrow from Paty Cockrum. It was a gift, but from this distance, I can no longer remember whether it was for my birthday, or Christmas, or in celebration of the publication of my first comic.

Nifty, huh?

And here, to give you a sense of scale, the comic book splash along with the real-life painting.

In any case, I do currently own, and have owned for nearly forty years, the same painting the Cult of Kalumai had been so eager to obtain in the comics.

Well, not exactly the same. I mean, no Scarecrow has come forth from the painting …

Yet.