It’s time to return to the Baltimore Comic-Con for your chance to chat and chew with a second comics creator following last episode’s steak dinner with Tom Brevoort. Get ready to hit one of Baltimore’s best delis with Martha Thomases.

Martha Thomases is a freelance journalist who has been published in the Village Voice, the New York Daily News, High Times, Spy, the National Lampoon, and more. She’s a VP of Corporate Communications at  ComicMix.com as well as a weekly contributor there. From 1990-1999 she was Publicity Manager at DC Comics. She also worked as a researcher and assistant for author Norman Mailer on several of his books, including the Pulitzer-Prize-winning Executioner’s Song, On Women and Their Elegance, and Harlot’s Ghost. She created Dakota North with Tony Salmons for Marvel.  Next year, A Wave Blue World will publish Second-Hand Rose, her graphic novel with Richard Case.

We discussed her theory that your popularity in high school determines whether you’ll move to New York, why she was into DC rather than Marvel at the start of her comics fandom, Denny O’Neil’s explanation of the true difference between Metropolis and Gotham City, the realization she had at 35 as to the true reason her parents allowed her to read comics, the weirdness of Little Lotta and Baby Huey, why she was more nervous meeting Denny O’Neil than she was meeting Norman Mailer, how Dakota North was born, our mutual love for the She-Hulk TV series, selling comics to comics fans vs. selling them to potential readers who don’t yet know they’d like comics, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us for lunch at Attman’s Delicatessen —

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And here’s what you would have seen us nibbling had you been with us at Attman’s Delicatessen —

Martha and Scott at Attman’s

Pickles and Sauerkraut

Homemade Potato Chips

Martha’s Camden Yards Reuben
turkey pastrami, sauerkraut, melted swiss cheese, and russian dressing

Scott’s New Yorker
pastrami and chopped liver

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Coming up two weeks from now — my Capclave lunch with Eric Choi, whose short story “From a Stone” I picked out of the slush pile to publish in the September 1996 issue of Science Fiction Age, and who went on to become the first recipient of the Asimov Award (now the Dell Award) for his novelette “Dedication.”

Thanks for listening!