Here’s the fifth Ethics column I published in The Comics Journal back in the mid-’80s. This one appeared in issue #106, the March 1986 issue, and dealt with my realization that I’d spent my entire career in comics trying to be Stan Lee, rather than myself.

But by the time I realized that, it was too late.

That issue of Captain Marvel I mentioned? You can read more about it here. I see now that when I’d written that entry in August, I’d forgotten the Space Phantom was meant to be a part of the story. Was it him impersonating Wonder Man on that final page, which would have lead to a confrontation between Captain Marvel and the real Wonder Man the following issue?

We may never know. But I guess I should never say never, for who knows what else I might discover in the vault?

As for the main point of the essay, I do sometimes regret that I didn’t start to find my voice in the comics field until just as I was leaving it. Will I ever give comics a try again? It seems impossible now with all the many things I’m trying to get done each day, but as I’ve already written above … never say never.

Like many of you, I’m planning to attend next year’s World Horror Convention in Brighton. I’m sure I’ll have fun, especially since my zombie collection from PS Publishing will launch there. But for extra insurance to make sure the trip goes well, I pulled out my favorite guidebook so I could brush up on the ways of those mysterious Brits.

Let’s flip through its pages together and see what sort of useful advice we can find!

Uh-oh! I see a problem right away. It seems that the convention, scheduled to run from March 25-28, won’t be held during the most fashionable time of year for a visit:

The ‘London Season’ is chiefly comprised within the months of May, June, and July, when Parliament is sitting, the aristocracy are at their town residences, the greatest artistes in the world are performing at the Opera, and the Picture Exhibitions open.

Ah, well. I’m sure I’ll manage to have a good time anyway. So what else do I need to know?

Passport: These documents are not necessary in England, though occasionally useful in procuring delivery of registered and poste restante letters. A visa is quite needless.

I’m glad to hear that England is such an open country! Anything more? (more…)

Yesterday, I shared a letter from Roy Thomas printed in an ancient issue of Comic Fandom Monthly. Flipping through the pages of that 1972 fanzine, I came across a couple of charts—assembled by a young Paul Levitz, then the editor of his own fanzine, The Comic Reader—that deserve to have the dust blown off them and reexamined.

The charts Paul drew illustrated falling comics sales, reflecting numbers which indicate how bad things have gotten over the past few decades, in that the companies involved would likely be thrilled (correct me if I’m wrong) to sell today at levels which were once thought depressing.

Here are Marvel’s sales figures:

And here are DC’s:

What message did Paul draw from this?

He wrote that ” … comic books, per se, are dying, a fact which many fans can’t face. Sales have slumped steadily for the last couple of decades with the only upswing being during the camp era. That was of very short duration, anyway. The graphic story IS achieving acceptance, but the comic book is on its way out.”

There was an upside, though, wrote Paul:

“There is one cheery note in all this gloom. Comics are back to a battle of quality. Comics will no longer be sold on the basis of price but on the basis of their content.”

Of course, price meant something different then than it does now, since in the same essay he refers to the fact that “DC has switched to the 32-page, 20¢ format. Marvel, of course, has been at that size since September.”

So those good old days? They weren’t quite as good as you think they were.

Roy Thomas, the first editor-in-chief under whom I served at Marvel Comics, turned 69 today. If he hadn’t brought me on board for my first position working on Marvel’s British reprint books, I likely wouldn’t have ended up where I am today.

And I’m not just talking about professionally, but personally as well, since otherwise I’d never have met my wife, Irene Vartanoff, who was hired just a couple of months before I was.

So thanks for everything, Roy!

Just to show my appreciation, here’s a blast from the past—a letter Roy wrote to Joe Brancatelli’s fanzine Comic Fandom Monthly that was printed in its April 1972 issue, in which he debated the merits of the famed Stan Lee at Carnegie Hall event.

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Thanks to a tip from Stephen Segal, Irene and I went to Gifts Inn of Boonsboro this evening for the opening night reception of Brigid Ashwood‘s exhibit “Winged Things & Improbable Machines.” He’d described her work as being in the steampunk/fantasy vein, and put out a call to his local facebook friends that they shouldn’t miss her gallery show. So Irene and I headed over to Boonsboro, about an hour away, getting to the shop around 5:15.

We approached Brigid fairly quickly, and she gave us a tour of her art, explaining her technique. I was particularly interested in her silverpoint drawings, a method I knew nothing about. We talked quite a bit about the origins of steampunk , and why it’s so popular. I said it’s nostalgia for a future that never was, though I couldn’t recall who originated that theory and phrase.

I could see Brigid’s work fitting in at a science fiction or fantasy convention, and found it fascinating that she and her peers moved in an entirely different circuit of cons, ones dedicated specifically to faerie. There was a cognitive dissonance present, because though our paths had never crossed, it felt as if they should have crossed long before now. I talked up the local SF con scene, so maybe we’ll see her at a Balticon or Capclave someday.

Here she is at the gallery surrounded by some of her work:

She obviously has her fans, as the lower color image by her elbow was marked SOLD by the time we left a few minutes after 7:00. (more…)

An original Frank Frazetta painting originally used as the cover to the Lancer paperback edition of Conan the Conqueror sold last week for $1,000,000.

I may not own a Frazetta painting, but I do have his autograph, as you can see below, obtained back in the early ’70s when I was an annoying kid with a sketchpad. The sheet below was signed either at the 1971 or 1972 July 4th weekend Phil Seuling Comic-Con. It couldn’t have been any earlier because I didn’t start doing this until after my first con, and it couldn’t have been later because Syd Shores passed away before the ’73 convention.

In addition to Shores and Frazetta, you can also see Bruce Jones, Harvey Kurtzman, Jeff Jones, John Putnam, and Jerry DeFuccio below

I know that without a painting attached, the Frazetta signature alone isn’t worth $1,000,000, so I’ll tell you what—feel free to knock off a zero. Heck, I’ll even knock off two.

So who wants to start the bidding?

I dreamt that I was talking on the phone with Stephen Segal, who in the dream had nothing to do with Weird Tales, but was now in charge of editing and publishing Locus. I was explaining the details of the current Harlequin Horizons vanity publishing fiasco, and he told me that he wanted me to write an article about it for him—and he wanted me to write it the same way the late Charles Brown would have. But that wasn’t the oddest thing about the dream. No, what was oddest was that I was wearing a bracelet made of Spanish olives. Not wax ones. Real ones. A ring of small pimento-stuffed olives was looped around my right wrist. I can understand why I might have been dreaming about Stephen—he’d sent me an e-mail a couple of days ago inviting me to a steampunk event in Frederick, MD. But where did the olives come from?

Then I had a dream in which Irene and I were moving from our current house and I was doing the final packing of last-minute forgotten items before I’d pile the boxes in the car and drive off. I was wrapping up things like extension cords and putting them in boxes by the back door. Only I had no idea where we were moving to. And, hard as it is to believe, I had no emotions one way or another about the move. I woke up, turned over, and went back to sleep, and then there we were outside of our new home, some urban apartment building. I had no idea in what city it was located, I just picked up a broom and started sweeping up all the broken glass from the street out front so we could begin moving in. I woke, still sweeping.

And then I also had a dream in which I was in a meeting with the cast of Mad Men, plotting an ad campaign. As we discussed a commercial, I wasn’t any of the characters, I was actually me, as if I’d happened to get a job there. Everyone seemed to be getting along, which was strange, if you’ve seen the show. Don Draper was actually smiling! The other strange thing? Peggy Olson was wearing a see-through blouse. Don was bemused about it, but no one told her to change. There wasn’t anything sexual about it. It was more of an “I am woman, hear me roar” ’60s moment, with Peggy expressing her independence. Thinking about her character now that I’m awake, I doubt she’d ever do such a thing. But I do see her going boldly into the ’60s in other ways as the series moves forward.

So—three remembered dreams from the night, but only one with an apparent catalyst. Who ever knows where these things come from?

Here’s the fourth Ethics column of mine which appeared a few decades ago in The Comics Journal. This one, focused on what we say about our friends when they die (well, after they die, since when they’re dying I hope we’re all calling 911 or giving CPR or something), appeared in issue #104, the January 1986 issue.

And if you’re still here after I’m gone—feel free to tell the truth about me. I won’t mind!

I’m about to sit down and try to watch AMC’s Prisoner miniseries straight through. Which might not be the best idea.

I’m a huge fan of the original series. How huge? This huge:

Back in 1972, even though I was just a teenager, I tried to organize a Prisoner convention. I left out fliers on the freebie table at Phil Seuling’s July 4th weekend Comic-Con that year, hoping to pull off a Prisoner con the following year.

Here’s a scan of probably the only surviving copy of that flier, which I only own because one of them was mailed back to me attached to a long letter from a fellow Prisoner fan offering to help.

Why did I think a teenager could pull off running a con, dealing with a hotel, organizing guests, and fulfilling such outrageous promises as listed on the flier? Probably because Adam Malin and Gary Berman, who were even younger than I was, mere tadpoles, had already started running the first of their Creation cons.

I never went ahead with the con, I’m guessing because I realized how overwhelming the project would be. And also because though I desperately wanted to attend such a con, I didn’t really have the personality capable of running it.

In any case, that’s how much I loved the original Prisoner.

Excuse me now while I pop in that DVD. I hope it’s not as bad as everyone else says it is, but if you hear screaming coming from the East Coast … that could be me.

In addition to the Jazzy Johnny Romita and Valiant Val Mayerik originals I picked up in 1974 that I’m currently in the middle of auctioning off to fund next year’s trip to the Melbourne Worldcon, I put four other items on the block today.

Check them out below!

First is the signed and numbered Abyss promotional portfolio with artwork by Berni Wrightson, Jeffrey Jones, Bruce Jones, and Mike Kaluta. Those are the Kaluta and Wrightson plates below. I picked up this rare set at a Phil Seuling July 4th con sometime in the early ’70s.

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