If you’ve been following me on social media lately, you’d have learned that earlier this month while trying to verify some information I wanted to talk about on an episode of my Why Not Say What Happened? podcast, I discovered a box containing some early teen writing which had somehow escaped my previous purge of that work. And you’d also know that since my discovery, as of this date, I’ve shredded 1,850 pages of poetry, short stories, and a novel, too, written from 1971 through 1974 … that is, from ages 16 through 19.

Some of you are aghast, and we can discuss that another time, but for now, let me assure you it’s only my own unsatisfactory words which are being made into confetti, not any writing or documents created by others. All those have been saved and will probably be turned over to a university archive someday. One forgotten find within that batch — my invitation from Tom Fagan to the 1972 incarnation of his famed Rutland, Vermont Halloween parade, as well as our correspondence about my attendance there, all from two years before I began working professionally in comics.

When I posted the interior of that invite on social media, someone responded with awe that the 1972 incarnation of that event was the same one celebrated in a crossover commemorated in the pages of DC’s Justice League of America #103, and Marvel’s Amazing Adventures #16 and Thor #207.

Not quite.

The thing is, those issues were more predictive than historical. Because though the parade was scheduled for October 28, 1972, and the cover dates for those issues as printed were after that date, the creation of the stories and their actual on-sale dates were way earlier.

Justice League of America #103, with its cover date of December 1972, went on sale October 10.

Thor #207, with its cover date of January 1973, also hit newsstands on October 10, 1972.

Amazing Adventures #16, with a cover date of January 1973, went on sale one week later than those other two, on October 17.

Once you back up from those dates, the art would have had been sent to the printer sometime in early September, with the books created during the summer. And so all those stories which fictionalized the events of that 1972 parade were looking ahead rather than looking back.

So whatever character I might have dressed as during the Rutland parade of 1972 — which the letters from the time indicate evolved from The Creeper to Morbius to Big Bear — would never have been drawn into the background of one of those stories.

If you’d like to hear me talk about my planned attendance there (which alas, never happened) check out the next episode of my Why Not Say What Happened? podcast.