I wish I could share many wonderful memories with you about my encounters with Jeffrey Catherine Jones, but I can’t, even though I’m pretty sure our paths must have crossed dozens of times from the early ’70s through the early ’80s. I have a couple of scraps of proof of that, too, in the form of autographs I collected when I was one of those annoying kids with a sketchpad you see at comic conventions.

I started attending cons in 1970, started on staff at Marvel in 1974, and burned out on it all by around 1982, but between the beginning and the end, I can picture chatting with Jones many times, even remembering the rooms in which we spoke. I can see her now scribbling her name on the sheets of paper below, and in front of one of her massive paintings at a Phil Seuling con as I said how much I loved it, and at a 1973 Cosmic Con in Toronto, where I bought one of her drawings which had been a spot illo in an issue of Amazing. (Art I’ve been fruitlessly trying to locate for years, BTW, and another quick search today continues to leave me puzzled.)

But as to the content of what we said … nothing. It must have all been inconsequential small talk.

Which bothered me at first, until I started thinking …

In the long run, does it really matter? Because with her art, she moved me. Her paperback covers made me buy books that I would never have otherwise bought. Her comics, particularly a Wonder Woman cover that sticks in my mind, showed me that comics could be done differently. Her career choices proved that a comics creator could expand beyond the limits of the comics themselves, and evolve to encompass greater ambitions. And her bravery regarding gender issues opened minds, spread understanding, and taught tolerance.

And wouldn’t she, wouldn’t any artist, rather I remember all of that than any trivial anecdote of a brief encounter at a con or at a party? I’d like to think that she would.

Jeff Strand beat me to the punch yesterday by telling me he’d already watched the Long Island episode of Man v. Food in preparation for next month’s Stoker Awards weekend. The guy (who made quite a dent in the BBQ at the Salt Lick last month) put me to shame!

But I have a good excuse. It’s hard to be thinking about the Stokers when I still have to survive the Nebula Awards in D.C. this weekend and Balticon over in Baltimore next weekend.

But assuming I do survive, these clips will give you an idea of where I’ll end up. Adam Richman didn’t steer me wrong in Columbus (during World Fantasy Con) or Austin (for World Horror), so why should Long Island be any different?

I’ll be looking for victims … er … volunteers … from June 16-19th. Which meal do you want to have over at Ciao Baby, Jeff?

Those Bronze Age Babies are at it again. Yesterday, they were talking up the character synopsis blurbs that used to appear on top of Marvel splash pages, and today they wrote about house ads and other comics ephemera. Which, though anonymous, also had authors.

And sometimes that author was me.

I’ve mentioned before how I wrote the Bullpen Bulletins page for a couple of years (save Stan’s Soapbox, of course), as well as a set of Marvel Slurpee cups, but I also wrote a whole bunch of house ads. Here are just three of them, plucked from a portfolio I assembled when I started looked for a publishing job outside of comics.

And as for who drew that illo in the last ad, well … I don’t have to tell you, right?

The graphic gurus over at Bronze Age Babies (which you should be reading daily, of course) were pondering a bit of Marvel Comics arcana today—who wrote those intro blurbs that started appearing atop splash pages during the mid-’70s?

Who do you think?

Yes, that’s right. Me, when I was an assistant editor back in the Bullpen.

I didn’t originate the idea—that would have been Stan Lee, who felt that new readers needed an easy entry way into the convoluted Marvel Universe—or start writing them—I’m pretty sure that would have been Roy Thomas—but I wrote enough of them that I included seven examples in a portfolio I put together after I quit my staff job and started looking for a new publishing position elsewhere. Which means that, luckily, I don’t have to rely solely on memory.

The seven I thought worthy enough to show off were those for the Black Panther, Captain Marvel, The Champions, The Inhumans, Killraven, Skull the Slayer, and the X-Men.

I guess I figured that these were enough to demonstrate my ability to digest and regurgitate Stan. I believe I did others, though after this length of time I can’t say for sure which ones they would have been.

Does that answer your question, you Bronze Age Babies, you?

One of my favorite parts of the World Horror Convention—and the final thing I want to tell you about that weekend—doesn’t really have anything to do with World Horror Con at all. Liz Gorinsky invited a bunch of us along with her on what she termed an “illicit cultural outing,” which really meant we were sneaking away from the con Friday night for a performance of the play “I’ve Never Been So Happy” by the theater company Rude Mechanicals.

I knew nothing about the troupe other than the fact that Liz called them “reasonably experimental,” and nothing about the play other than what I could glean from this poster.

Which wasn’t much.

It was definitely not a poster designed to have independently induced me to want to see the play, and as I was to learn, it wasn’t at all an accurate indicator of what we were to see once we got there. Later, after being blown away by the amazing evening, I realized I could have come up with a dozen posters better designed to draw people to the theater, but … that was still in the future.

After dinner with Liz, Nick Mamatas, Eugene Fischer, Meghan McCarron and Jen Volant at Casa Columbia, we walked to the theater, where we immediately learned there was a lot more than just a play planned for that night. We were met by cast members in western gear who convinced us to dress up to get the total experience.

So we were led through a “transmedia shindig” (a carnival-like set-up out front about which more later) to a room filled with clothes which we all tried on until we found something suitable. Since I’m tall, I despaired of running across anything that would fit, but luckily I discovered a long circus ringmaster’s jacket with tails. And since my head’s large, and none of the cowboy hats would fit, I took a scarf and rather than wearing it around my neck, well, take a look at me and Eugene below to check out my ensemble.

Now suitably garbed, we entered the theater, found some seats (since it was general admission, we didn’t all end up together), and I opened the program to discover what the play was about. Or perhaps I should say, discovered that there was no way I would understand what the play was really about without actually seeing it. Because here’s the description of Act 1, Scene 1:

“Annabellee’s Dream” — Annabellee dreams of a mountain lion and plans her escape from her father, Brutus, with help from her dachshund, Sigmunda.

At that point I realized that reading the program was pointless. I’d just have to let the performance wash over me. Which it did, going something like this …

Annabellee and her father, Brutus, run something called Brutus and Annabellee’s Country Western Family Comedy Variety Hour. Then there’s a brother and sister pair of dachshunds, Sigfried (owned by Brutus) and Sigmunda (owned by Annabellee). Annabellee dreams of getting the heck out of there, sings a duet with her dachshund about it, and then she and her father race those dachshunds to determine whether she can strike off on her own. And then there’s Julie, who lives on a wymyn’s commune, and when her son, Jeremy, turns 18 and can no longer live there because he’s now a man, she ties him to the last mountain lion in Texas so he can learn all the things she wasn’t able to teach him. And then …

And then …

Well, this is pretty pointless. Because telling you the bare outlines of the plot tells you very little. So how about giving a look and listen to that first scene I described above? (more…)

When the legendary Daily News sports cartoonist Bill Gallo died last week at age 88, I thought that was an opportunity to show you the drawing he gave me when I visited the paper in the early ’70s. Instead, it’s an opportunity show you that my memory’s not quite what I thought it was.

I didn’t have time to dig out my Bill Gallo drawing and scan it the day he died—it’s been a busy week—and when I pulled out my sports cartoon of Art Rooney, owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers, I noticed that—wait a second! It isn’t signed by Bill Gallo! It’s signed by Gene Ward. So I guess I’d remembered that childhood incident wrong.

But who’s Gene Ward?

I figured he must be a second string cartoonist who lived in Bill Gallo’s shadow at the Daily News, but when I started to do research, everything I could find tells me that Ward was a respected sports writer at the paper who, according to his obituary, covered 29 consecutive Kentucky Derbies. But nothing I could uncover showed that he was an artist as well. And yet … there’s his signature.

Which means … what?

That he was a columnist who drew cartoons for his own column? I find that difficult to believe, since someone somewhere online would have surely mentioned that.

That the piece was done by a staff artist at the Daily News who never got credit for his assignment because the writer hogged it all? I find that hard to believe, too, particularly since I’ve seen other art credited to Gene Ward for sale.

That this is really by Bill Gallo after all, as I first thought? The more I look at it, and compare it to other examples of Gallo’s art, the more I think that can’t be true either.

All I’m sure of is … I was handed this artwork at the Daily News by the artist himself … whoever that was.

So … who actually drew this piece? Who did I actually meet as a kid in the early ’70s? Looks like even though I thought I knew … I don’t.

Any ideas?

World Horror Con 2011 is over—but it’s never too soon to think about World Horror Con 2012. And what I really mean by that is—it’s not to soon to see what Adam Richman of Man v. Food has in store for us all in Salt Lake City.

Some of you who were at World Horror last weekend and at World Fantasy in October were dragged along with me on my Man v. Food triathlons. So be warned—if you plan to be in Salt Lake City March 29-April 1, 2012 for next year’s WHC, here’s where you might be roped into going.

Get ready for the Hell Fire Challenge! (Which for a horror convention will seem quite appropriate.)

Sunday at the World Horror Convention began in the middle of the night, which is appropriate, I guess, for a horror con. But the things that went bump in the night weren’t vampires or werewolves, but instead those damned frat boys, who for whatever reason decided to begin moving furniture from one hotel room to another at around 3:45 a.m., drunkenly bumping into walls as they carried box springs while shouting directions at each other. When I phoned the front desk, the immediate answer I got was, “I’m sick of these complaints. I’m calling the PD.” Whether the police ever arrived, and what they might have done when they got there, I have no idea, because I turned up the fan to block the noise and struggled to get back to sleep. Which, after 45 minutes or so, I was finally able to do.

After I woke, packed, and checked out, I headed to the 10:00 a.m. “Zombies Mega-Panel,” a 90-minute celebration of the living dead moderated by Joe McKinney and featuring me, RJ Sevin, Julia Sevin, Joe R. Lansdale, and John Skipp. (And Brian Keene, too, whom we pulled onstage about halfway through.) But before we began, I tossed out a couple of dozen glow-in-the-dark zombie finger puppets to get people in the mood.

It turns out that Lee Thomas also had something planned to get people in the mood—a video which was played before any of us began talking about why we loved zombies so much. Thanks for warming up the crowd, Lee! Check out what we all saw in Austin.

As soon as the panel ended, I ran off with my only willing victim … er, volunteer … Liz Gorinsky, to the Cathedral of Junk, which I already told you about, after which I dropped Liz back at the hotel and headed to the airport … where I discovered the con was not yet over.

I had lunch at the airport branch of the Salt Lick, which as you might expect wasn’t quite as good as its Driftwood branch (no ribs!), but was still some of the best airport food I’ve had in awhile. And then when I wandered toward my gate, I bumped into this motley crew …

That’s Derek Clendenning, Gord Rollo, and Eunice Magill, and since the pic was taken by Michael Kelly, you can see that World Horror was the con which wouldn’t die. I hung out with these guys as long as I could, but eventually I had to board my flight to Dulles. But WHC wasn’t over then either, as I happened to overhear the person in front of me mention the word “horror,” and when I asked, learned he was Henrik Sundqvist, one of the artists who had displayed work in Austin. We chatted a bit, until my exhaustion overtook me (damned frat boys!) and I slept for most of the flight.

And that was my World Horror Con!

Well … there is one more thing I have to tell you about—my Friday night outing to the Rude Mechanicals production of the play “I’ve Never Been So Happy.” But I’ll leave that for another day …

After a long Friday at the World Horror Convention last week, I went to bed early Saturday morning at the Doubletree Hotel looking forward to some good sleep. But I wasn’t to get it, thanks to the sound of a crying woman and a man’s muffled voice that woke me around 4:00 a.m.

I was suddenly fully awake and at the door of my room, heart pounding, not sure whether or not I was going to have to leap out and interfere in a possible sexual assault. I listened for a brief moment to the voices outside my door. I peered through the peephole, but couldn’t see what was going on. The wailing woman was drunk and incoherent, and the man’s voice, based on what he was saying into a walkie-talkie, seemed to belong to a hotel employee, but that didn’t necessarily mean that he was helping (turned out he was, but you can’t be sure about these things), so I leapt out and asked the woman if she needed help, if she felt safe. She was blonde, in her late teens or early twenties, and from what I could gather (and from what I learned the next day from others who were also on the fifth floor) had been going down the hall banging on random doors because she was unable to remember her room number and find her boyfriend.

She cried into her cell phone, telling her boyfriend that she had no idea where she was or where she was supposed to be, and would he please come get her? Eventually, he did, and I went to back to sleep. Or tried to go back to sleep. I don’t know about you, but thinking I might have to get into a physical confrontation kicks in my adrenaline, and it took about an hour before I could wind down enough again to fall back to sleep. And it wasn’t an unbroken sleep, either, because for the rest of the morning, I could hear drunken kids returning from their late nights of partying.

When I went to the front desk the next morning, I was told that a couple of busloads of frat boys had arrived the day before, though the hotel claimed that if they’d known in advance that they were from a fraternity, the reservation wouldn’t have been accepted. I was also told that the group was now on a zero tolerance policy, and any infringement would result in immediate expulsion. (You’ll see below how much good that did.) (more…)

I woke up far too early last Friday morning while in Austin for the World Horror Convention. I have no idea why I was unable to get back to sleep at 5:15 a.m., but for whatever reason, I was suddenly wide awake. Since I knew my first stop was going to be Round Rock Donuts (part of my Man v. Food triathlon), which opens at 4 a.m. each day, I figured, why not just get going? So I showered, shaved, cruised the lobby for any other bleary attendees who might want to board the crazy bus, and then hopped in the car and pointed it toward the city of Round Rock, TX.

By the time I got there, not that much past six, the sun was barely up, but the parking lot was packed, as were the nearby streets, the line for the drive-through went around the block, and people had to step aside so I could get in the lobby. I bought six dozen donuts, plus that one monster donut I showed you here, and headed back to the con hotel where, since the con suite was not yet open, I set up in the lobby and made sure people started the day out right by handing out free donuts as they woke.

Luckily, that con suite eventually did open, so I was able to dump the remaining donuts there and head off in time to see the Yvonne Navarro/Weston Ochse reading which started at 10:00 a.m.

Yvonne went first, reading Chapter 13 of her novel Concrete Savior, and if you click below, it’ll be just as if you were there.

Wes went next, reading the short story “Fugue on the Sea of Cortez” from his collection Multiplex Fandango.

(more…)