Remember my mysterious October mission? We’re almost at the end game.

As I told you back then, Irene decided to sell her copy of Amazing Fantasy #15. You know … the comic that introduced Spider-Man. She got some wild idea in her head that she should sock money away for our retirement so we’re not forced to eat cat food a few decades from now. Crazy, huh?

Anyway, if you’d like a shot at a beautiful copy of the book, Heritage will be auctioning hers off starting on February 3, 2012. Check out more details about the auction here.

If Amazing Fantasy #15 is too rich for your blood … (more…)

I usually tweet my dreams, but I was visited by two last night which could not be contained in 140 characters.

First …

I dreamt I was in prison, presumably on some sort of cultural or educational visit, because when alarms went off and the place went into lockdown, I was hustled into a small library-like room, and once I got there I found the same had been done with Neil Gaiman and a woman I didn’t recognize.

As the three of us waited for the emergency to be declared over, a gate popped open, and I knew that wasn’t a good thing, because it would allow the rioting prisoners to reach us. But before that could happen, we were rescued by The Question.

After saving us, I showed him that I had a souvenir pen with his name on it in my jacket pocket. I told him I was a big fan of his. He said he was a fan on mine, too, and liked my zombie stories. I woke as we discussed the aftermath of what had occurred.

Then … (more…)

And now it can be told …

I’ll be one of the Guests of Honor at next year’s ConFusion, which will be held January 17-20, 2013 in Troy, Michigan. The GoH line-up for the 39th such gathering will be as follows:

Pro GoH: Charles Stross

Editor GoH: Scott Edelman

Special GoH: Mary Robinette Kowal

Fan GoH: James Nicoll

Additionally, a Science GoH will be announced shortly.

I look forward to seeing some of you there next year!

Steve Thompson, aware of my strong feelings about the paintings of Sharon Moody, alerted me to the comics-inspired art of Vin Vicini. Funny thing is, in spite of what could be seen as superficial similarities, the new images I saw didn’t bother me at all. So let’s take a look at a couple of Vicini’s paintings, and then I’ll explain why.

First, a 12″ x 12″ oil painting titled “Chapter 7: ‘Catch the Hero.'”

This first example includes details from the covers of Amazing Spider-Man #19 (December 1964), Batman #219 (February 1970), and Avengers #35 (December 1966), all of which I’ve rotated so you can more easily compare them to how they were used above.

Here’s one more, “Batman and the Crate,” an 11″ x 14″ oil painting. (more…)

NBC aired a 90th birthday tribute to Betty White last night, and the telecast included a montage of her funniest appearances as Sue Ann Nivens on Mary Tyler Moore from 1973 through 1977. One moment stood out more than the others. (To me, at least.)

It involved a kid reading a comic book. And what makes it interesting is that it’s a comic book with a title I can’t make quite decipher and a logo I don’t recognize.

Take a look below and tell me if you can do better. (I wish the screen shot could have been sharper, but this is the best I could do.)

So … what comic book was that?

Fantastic Blob? Apparently not, since according to the Grand Comics Database, the only comic with the word Blob in the title was published in 1988 … in Sweden. Searching on the word Slob was no help. If there’s some other word that ends with “lob” that was used in a title, I have no idea what that could be. And a search on the word Fantastic alone doesn’t yield any possibilities either.

I considered that perhaps the word in the title wasn’t Fantastic, but Funtastic. However, there seems to have only been a single title that ever included the world Funtastic— The Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera—and none of that book’s three issues matches the cover seen on screen.

Could it be that this is one of those fake covers assembled solely for the purposes of being seen on TV without the show needing to worry about getting permissions?

Any comics gurus out there have any better ideas?

Boy … it was a heck of a lot easier tracking down the comic that appeared on an episode of Law & Order: SVU back in 2010!

As soon as it was announced yesterday that Connie Willis had been named the next SFWA Grand Master, the Internet exploded with a wide range of chatter, ranging from “It’s about time!” to “Wow, I suddenly feel very old” to “Already?”

That was to be expected. Science fiction fandom doesn’t speak in one voice on anything.

But what I didn’t expect was to find some science fiction fans who had no idea who she was.

Here’s just one example, from Reddit:

Wow… Never heard of her, but she’s never written a series; it’s all short stories and individual novels, by the look of her wikipage.

How very unusual… And unmarketable, which is presumably why I’ve never heard of her.

Will look her stuff up, though.

How interesting to think that to some readers, if you’re writing short stories, or if your novels are not part of a series, you’re invisible—even if you’ve won seven Nebula Awards and eleven Hugo Awards.

I’m not judging the commenter, I’m just … surprised.

Damon Knight used to say that science fiction was the thing we pointed at when we said “science fiction,” but these days, science fiction is so fragmented that Damon would throw his back out trying to point in a thousand directions simultaneously.

And I keep forgetting that.

I dreamt I was at a Cory Doctorow reading, and Cory came up to where I was seated and handed me a medicine bottle filled with pills. And because it was Cory, I downed them all. But then I looked down at the empty bottle suspiciously, wondering what I’d just done. There was no label on the bottle to tell me what I’d ingested, however.

“Trust me,” he said.

And because it was Cory, I did.

He them brought over a laptop device a few feet square, bristling with glowing vacuum tubes, but still light enough to rest on my knees. He slipped headphones around my ears, plugged them into the machine, then plugged in a microphone as well and handed it to me.

He told me I should begin to wail.

Before I could, however, he asked if he could borrow my phone. He was disappointed to see when I handed it to him that it was an iPhone. But not disappointed in the way you’d expect Cory to be upon seeing an Apple product. Instead, he asked me, “Why don’t you have the most powerful device?”

“I don’t need the most powerful device,” I said. “I just have what I need to do the job.”

I saw the sadness in Cory’s eyes, so added: “Look, I can cut up a board with a saw or a nuke. But I don’t need a nuke when I can get away with the saw.”

“Nukes are cool,” he said.

I agreed.

And then I woke, never finding out what chemical wonders awaited me from the drugs, or what technological marvels would occur were I ever to get the chance to wail into that microphone.

Looks like there’ll be a few further examples of my ancient comics career excavated and put on display during the coming months. So if you’re interested in checking out some of my Bronze Age Marvel back-up features, but don’t want to go through the hassle of tracking down the original comics, here’s where you’ll be able to find them.

First out, on February 22, is Marvel Masterworks: The Uncanny X-Men Volume 8, which will apparently reprint my solo Angel story that originally appeared back in 1980 in Marvel Treasury Edition #27.

(more…)

I recently ran across an interview I did way back in 1976 for a newspaper called Compass, and while I’m surprised by what I’ve forgotten since then, I’m also a little surprised by what I remember now that I didn’t seem to remember then.

Let’s see what those forgotten facts are/were, shall we?

I said: “I remember picking up Fantastic Four #1. I guess I was bored by comics before then—I can’t remember anything before that. There may have been others, but if there were, I’ve forgotten them.”

And yet … how could that be? Because today I remember, among other things, reading copies of pre-Fantastic Four issues of Tales to Astonish, Tales of Suspense, and The Brave and The Bold, particularly the issue of that latter title that included the first appearance of the Justice League of America. Did I only read them as used copies traded for or bought later? But surely I read comics before FF #1. Am I misremembering now or was I misremembering then? There’s no way to know now!

And what’s this? I sold a story to Marvel the year before I went on staff there as an editor? And Craig Russell was going to draw it? Really?

I have zero memory of this, but apparently, five years before my short horror story “Picasso Fever” appeared in the DC Comics’ title Secrets of Haunted House, Tony Isabella had accepted it to appear in an issue of Monsters Unleashed—to be drawn by Craig Russell! When I now tell the story of how I got into comics, it all begins with my job in Marvel’s British reprint department. If I hadn’t read this anecdote with the words quoted as coming out of my own mouth, I’d never have believed it! But man, I sure would have loved to have seen what Craig would have done with that story!

There was a lawsuit threatened over the Scarecrow? Really? (more…)

Irene and I have owned four Cadillacs over the last couple of decades—all bought used, of course, since we are definitely not, and probably never will be, the kind of people who could afford to buy one new. But are we the kind of people meant to own a Cadillac at all?

According to an anecdote in the February 2012 issue of Fast Company, maybe not.

Veda Partalo, who works for the ad agency in charge of Cadillac’s makeover, had this to say about what distinguishes Cadillac owners from the owners of other luxury cars:

I needed to know what makes a man choose Cadillac over BMW or Lexus. So I travelled to nice restaurants around Chicago, Detroit, L.A., and New York. I interviewed the valets, those pimply 18-year-olds. What makes car owners different? They dress and tip the same. It’s in how they react when the valet scratches their car. I heard consistent stories: Lexus owners don’t say anything and immediately call the police and insurance company. BMW owners scream at him—”I’ll have your job!” That sort of thing. But Cadillac owners pat him on the back, say, “It’s gonna be all right, kid; we’ll figure it out,” and then tip him anyway and drive off.

I don’t think I’m that guy.

Does this mean we need to sell our 2003 DeVille?