Last month, while I was off at San Diego Comic-Con, my wife was having a Comic-Con of her own. And while she was envious of my trip, I was even more envious of hers—because she got to spend the day with Marie Severin.

Of all the people we’ve met in comics, she’s the one we love the most. (Well, other than each other.)

Marie turned 84 today, and the photo above shows how mirthful she was (for those who don’t know, “Mirthful” was her Marvel Comics nickname) exactly one month ago at 83 years, 11 months.

And yes. That is the Incredible Hulk on her chest.

Can’t wait until we see each other again in October, Marie!

I’ve been busy lately, so it’s unusually late in August for me to be gathering up July’s dream tweets to see what poetry they might make all in one place.

Due to Readercon, Comic-Con, and the hacking cough given to me by the latter, I had fewer dreams to harvest during July than any other month I can remember. But still, I has visitations from Bette Midler, John Kessel, Bob Dylan, Dan Rather, Robert Guillaume, Tom Cruise and many others.

Welcome to my subconscious!

July 2013

I dreamt I underwent a physical exam in preparation for my visit to an alien world. Lots of poking and prodding. Never got there though! 31 Jul

I dreamt my son and I somehow got our hands on a huge Green Lantern power ring battery and only used it to project comic panels on the wall. 31 Jul

I dreamt @LenWein and I rode the subway from Brooklyn into Manhattan for a comic convention, only — we couldn’t remember the hotel’s name! 31 Jul

I dreamt I visited @NextRestaurant on my birthday, and was served a special dessert as a result. Don’t think the former likely, so dream on! 31 Jul

I dreamt present-day me waited for younger past me to wander by with his/our/my dad, and then we all posed for a photo. Paradoxes be damned! 31 Jul

I dreamt I was coughing endlessly, which I guess is progress of sorts, because I was only dreaming about it rather than actually doing it. 28 Jul

I dreamt that our table at a wedding was served a giant flan the size of the table! I took it upon myself to spoon chunks for each guest. 28 Jul

I dreamt I was trying to teach a course on the history of public libraries in America, but couldn’t control my class, so had to abandon it. 28 Jul

I dreamt I was Dan Rather, and in a deep philosophical discussion with Lena Dunham at a college party. What did we say? I don’t remember! 28 Jul

I dreamt I was a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, and when I attacked by five enemy agents, I successfully fended them off. But then there was a sixth! 28 Jul

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Can you believe LoneStarCon3, the 71st World Science Fiction Convention, is only 12 days away? Now that it’s just around the corner, the participants have been given their final schedules, so—here’s where you’ll be able to find me in San Antonio.

Stroll with the Stars
Friday, August 30, 09:00-10:00

Kaffeeklatsch
Friday, August 30, 13:00-14:00

Stories From the Bullpen
Friday, August 30, 15:00-16:00
The Marvel bullpen and the DC offices were magical places in the 1970s and 1980s, full of wisecracking pros, hardworking artists, and tale-spinning editors, if you believe the letters pages. But what was it really like? Get a peek behind the curtain with our panelists!
with Anthony Tollin and Phil Foglio

Autographing
Saturday, August 31, 14:00-15:00
with Sanford Allen, Grant Carrington, and Rick Wilber

Playing in Other People’s Sandboxes: Writing Comics that aren’t Your Own
Sunday, September 1, 15:00-16:00
Whether you’re writing Spider-Man, Jonah Hex, the Incredibles, or Fruit Ninja, you never get to really own these characters. But they sure are fun to play with! Hear some stories about what it’s like dealing with today’s corporate overlords.
with Alan J. Porter, Paul Benjamin, and Howard Tayler

Arouse Is Not the Past Tense of Arise
Monday, September 2, 12:00-13:00
Why do so many new writers have problems with grammar? How important is grammar? Has it lost relevancy in communicating with some portion of the reading public?
with Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Ginjer Buchanan, and Alberto Chimal

Reading
Monday, September 2, 14:30 – 15:00

Remember, though, you might also catch me in Austin—if you’re a BBQ nut, that is. (more…)

Sorry for the silence here, folks. Blame the ukulele.

For pretty much every waking moment of Saturday through Tuesday, and for most of Wednesday, I took part in UkeFest 2013 over at the Strathmore Music Center in Maryland.

There were multiple tracks of programming, so it was of course impossible for me to attend everything, but in the classes I got to, Marcy Marxer taught us how to play “Rockin’ the Uke” a la Roy Smeck, Gerald Ross showed us chorded melodies and how to “take it” during a jam, Lil’ Rev (with whom I’m posing below) shared roll strokes, triples, fans, and zig-zag strums, Stu Fuchs went through rockabilly fingering, Cathy Fink took us through the best way to practice so that we’d actually get better … and much, much more.

Now when I say that these instructors taught me all these things, that’s not to say I actually learned any of them on the spot. (So don’t go expecting miracles the next time you see me with a uke.) Because while I understood on an intellectual level everything I was shown, I didn’t necessarily have the dexterity to perform many of the complicated moves.

But that’s OK. I didn’t expect I’d always be able to keep up. But I’m not disappointed, because I know that will come, as muscle memory slowly starts to take over from my natural fumbling.

If you’d like to see more of what this year was like, head on over to Flickr to check out more UkeFest photos.

Can’t wait until UkeFest 2014!

Remember that 5-page Thanos story I wrote way back when dinosaurs still walked the Earth? The one that, surprisingly, ended up being part of Marvel’s Free Comic Book Day promotion last April?

Well, a digital copy is available as a free download right now through both the Marvel app (if you’ve got it) or simply via the company’s site.

I have no idea how long the offer will last, so if you want to check out the sort of thing I was writing in 1977, without having to haunt comics shops in search of a copy of Logan’s Run #6, then now’s your chance.

Back home from my second time experiencing Next restaurant’s Vegan menu, and what do I find? A sneak peek at what the restaurant has planned for us once it switches over to Bocuse d’or, which will run from August 31 to December 31.

Jenner Tomaska, Sous Chef at Next, tweeted (and Chef Dave Beran retweeted) a pic simply captioned, “Bocuse menu testing.” In case you missed it, here it is.

I’ve only been home a couple of hours, and now I can’t wait to get back to Chicago again!

During Readercon a few weeks back, I was interviewed by Gil Roth for his Virtual Memories Show podcast. Gil brought the episode live last week, but it wasn’t until today that I found the time to give it a listen, make sure the resulting interview didn’t cause me to wince, and share it with you.

And so here I am below, starting at 51:20, after the far more erudite John Crowley.

The one thing I learned from listening to my blather is that I sure do say the phrase “and so forth” a lot.

If you decide to listen, I hope your takeaway will be something more than that.

I’ve attended every Readercon since it began in 1987 (well, except for the one I was regrettably forced to miss, about which the less said the better), and have tended not to wander out on my usual foodie jaunts during that con. That’s because Readercon’s programming has always been so dense and intense that I’ve never been able to make time for much more than con suite food (or durian and jackfruit) between rushing from panel to reading to kaffeeklatsch to panel.

But David Shaw was tired of that excuse, seeing it as an insult to the culinary arts of his beloved city, and insisted we finally pay a visit to his favorite local restaurant, Journeyman. So we snuck away the Saturday night of the convention (along with Diane Martin, Cecilia Tan, and Corwin) to Union Square in Somerville, where I had what ended up being one of the best meals of my life.

Before starting our seven-course meal, I began with a delicious melon thyme mocktail …

… which was a wonderful preview for the six non-alcoholic beverage pairings which would accompany my meal. As impressed as I was by the food, I was even more impressed by the pairings. It’s no exaggeration to say that when considered in their totality, Journeyman’s non-alcoholic beverage pairings exceeded in imagination and execution those I’ve experienced at any other restaurant.

As we sipped those initial beverages, we were given a choice—did we want to look at the descriptions of the tasting menus, or did we want what arrived to be a surprise? (more…)

Earlier this month, I shared with you a bunch of typewriters you could have bought in 1893. So let’s say you had bought one of them … what then?

Well, if you were a writer, surely you didn’t expect to publish your stories without a little editorial supervision. That’s where Dr. Titus M. Coan’s New York Bureau of Revision came in. His advertisement in the January 1893 issue of The Cosmopolitan promised that he’d provide “unbiased criticism of prose and verse.”

Would love to know exactly which “leading authors” endorsed his services, though.

And at the other end of the publishing food chain, readers need help, too. That’s what the Holloway Reading Stand and Dictionary Holder were all about.

Because reading a book while letting it rest in one’s lap is so old-fashioned!

Drew Friedman has posted many scans relating to “It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s SUPERMAN,” a 1966 Broadway musical I could have seen (hey, I was eleven and lived in New York) but never did. I’d never run across the souvenier program book before, but the instant I saw the cover posted there, I noticed something very odd.

If you’re as big a Silver Age comics fan as I am, you’ll notice it, too.

Take a look.

Did something inappropriate leap out at you? If you read comics back in 1966, you’d have immediately recognized that something was very, very wrong. And that is … (more…)