I learned this week that master anthologist and perspicacious editor Stephen Jones has accepted a story of mine for an upcoming project of his, Zombie Apocalypse, which you can read more about here.

And I learned today that there’ll be two different cover treatments for the book. On the left is the cover to the UK edition, which will be brought out by Constable & Robinson. On the right is the cover to the U.S. edition, which will be published by Running Press.

Each has its charms. If zombies can be said to have charms. Which I think that they do.

In other zombie news, my upcoming collection What Will Come After received its first review today, in which three of the stories are called “must reads,” and the book as a whole is given “4 out of 5 stars.”

Nice way to start off!

Maybe I’m morbid, but my favorite minutes of Oscar night are probably when the In Memoriam montage screens. It brings back memories of those we’ve lost, those we will never forget, those we feel could not possibly ever be forgotten. With a few tiny snippets, whole lives, entire careers, come flooding back in my memory.

Here, for example, is what the Academy put together last year:

We’ll never forget them, right? Audiences 50 years from now will of course still remember Charlton Heston and Paul Newman! Well, don’t be so sure.

Take a look at this list of the dead published in The 1955 Film Daily Year Book of Motion Pictures. Off the top of your head, without doing an online search, how many of these notables can you place?

I could only confidently remember five, and a couple of those I wasn’t entirely sure why. I’m now going to hold myself open for public humiliation by letting you know exactly which ones. (more…)

Back before I abandoned the comic-book business, I wrote many short stories for the horror mags put out by DC Comics, including House of Mystery, House of Secrets, The Unexpected, and Secrets of Haunted House. (And even some for the science fiction and war titles, such as Time Warp and Weird War Tales.) This being Valentine’s Day, I thought I share a horrific romance with you.

The story below, “To Master a Mummy,” was published in House of Secrets #154, the October/November 1978 issue. I had a second spooky story in that issue, “The Knight in the Gilded Cage,” drawn by the magnificent Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, but alas … no romance.

This story was pencilled by Charles Nicholas and inked by Romeo Tanghal. But that doesn’t really tell the whole story. Because three different artists have used the pseudonym of Charles Nicholas over the years. I’m fairly certain, however, that the artist who drew my story was this one, not this one. And most definitely not this one.

But none of that minutiae has to do with Valentine’s Day, so—Happy Valentine’s Day.

And may your romances not end up as horrifically as this one!

(more…)

In 1978, Marvel had plans to create a short promotional movie to sing its own praises. Why? And to whom? Was it meant for advertisers? Possible Licensees? Hollywood studios to which the company was pitching its characters?

Who knows? All I can say for sure is that a seven-page script was created titled “The Marvel Age of Comics: 15 Minute History in Film,” one that explained how, starting in 1961, Stan Lee changed everything. The film was meant to be narrated by Stan himself, who can be seen in sketch form on the first page of the script below.

The artist for that six-panel intro? None other than Stan’s baby brother Larry Lieber, who also happened to script the introductory appearances of both Iron Man and Thor.

There’s plenty of interesting info here, especially when Stan explains the creation of two of Marvel’s most important properties. (more…)

In order to track down exactly when I’d interviewed Steve Gerber, I pulled out my back issues of the Marvel Comics fan magazine FOOM, and you know what happens once I pull out old magazines. I can’t resist reading them.

Among the many intriguing things I found was this blurb in the “Department of Infoomation” of FOOM #10, the June 1975 issue, which explained a bit more about the Scarecrow comic that never was, filling in some of the blanks about the Don Perlin splash page I’d forgotten I’d even owned.

It’s also the only place I’ve ever seen a third issue mentioned. Wonder what I’d meant by “supernatural turns super-hero”?

I’m guessing Ruben Yandoc was meant to have drawn the story meant to be introduced by that Perlin splash I’d found. Did Yandoc ever draw it? Did I ever even plot it?

I don’t think so, but I honestly can’t remember for sure. When I walked away from comics, and disposed of most of my collection, I think I suppressed many of my memories at the same time. For all I know, there could be a typed plot in a box in the basement. If I ever find one, I’ll certainly share it here for what few Scarecrow fans there are out there.

That blurb at the top will be of interest to Gerber and Omega fans. What kind of a vague tease is that? Was Marvel being deliberately coy, or did we truly not know what Steve had planned?

Yet another mystery in an unending string of Marvel mysteries …

I love timelines, particularly when they’re about something I already know. Reading them is an exercise in recognition, in remembering, in reliving. But every once in a while, there’s that odd factoid that seems to have slipped through from an alternate universe, that causes me to go—”Huh? I don’t remember that!”

So it was with the page below, plucked from Jimmy Olsen #100, and originally published in March 1967. As I read it, I thought—

Return of Krypto? Check! Remember that.

Jimmy teams with Superman to become Nightwing and Flamebird? Check! Remember that, too.

Jimmy turned into a werewolf, and only brought back to normal thanks to the intervention of—Mr. Mxyzptlk’s girlfriend, Miss Gzptlsnz?

Who? What? (more…)

Over at Diversions of the Groovy Kind, The Groovy Agent posted an eight-page photo feature from the 1975 Mighty Marvel Convention program book. Included on those pages were 71 photos of Bullpenners, including two who are particularly near and dear to my heart.

One is me. The other is Irene, my wife of nearly 34 years.

As I study those faces, my heart grows heavy. About one-third of these old friends are gone now, absent forever.

But … as I study those faces, my heart also sings. Because working there, surrounded by such people, was magical.

If my younger self, ensorceled by Stan Lee and standing with 12 cents in his palm trying to decide between Avengers #1 and X-Men #1 (as they both hit newsstands the same day), could have looked ahead to my slightly-less-young younger self, he would have thought, Scott, you’ve made it to Heaven.

And so I had.

Following up on my discovery of a tape of my 1972 interview with George Carlin, I decided to see whether I could locate tape for another interview I’d done that year, one I conducted with Isaac Asimov for a high-school underground newspaper. Check the two of us out below.

Imagine my thrill when I managed to find a cassette tape labeled:

And imagine with what excitement I inserted that cassette into a tape recorder.

Then imagine the disappointment as I heard …

…. 45 minutes of piano music.

OK, I thought, maybe the interview only took up the other side of the C-90 cassette tape. So I turned it over and heard—

—the voice of Steve Gerber! (more…)

There’s something irresistible about the first issue of a new comic. As they launch themselves into the world, they’re often filled with so much hope and promise as to be poignant. And the house ads for them, well, they’re like birth announcements. You have no idea yet what the little thing may grow into, but you still root for them. (Well, I do, anyway.)

So it is with the ad below for the first issue of Boy Commandos, which was originally printed on the back cover of World’s Finest Comics #8 (Winter 1942/1943). I ran across it as Irene and I were going through some old comics and instantly thought, “Man, I have to pick up an issue of that!

Of course, it’s 67 years too late. But Simon and Kirby sure knew how to work their magic, even then.

One interesting difference between comics then and now? Note the announcement of “the first release of a new ‘surprise feature’ that will have you cheering for more and more!” I don’t have a copy of that issue, but based on my reading of the table of contents, I assume it’s reference to the first appearance of the character Liberty Belle. No contemporary comic would ever hide its superheroine away when it could display her in a sexy pose on the cover to boost sales.

But that was a more innocent time. Or maybe just a time when publishers thought their readers were little boys who would go ‘yuck!’ if they saw a girl on the cover.

I first met Phil Klass, who wrote under the name William Tenn, at the 1999 Nebula Awards Weekend in Pittsburgh. I’d of course met him via his writing many years before, particularly his classic short story “Brooklyn Project.” But this was my first chance to meet him in the flesh.

Phil was named Author Emeritus by SFWA that year, and though I’m trying to think of a more entertaining speech at a Nebula ceremony than his, I can’t think of one. I could have listened all night to him talking of the early days of fandom. One of the more hilarious anecdotes was of the time during a fan feud that Elsie Wolheim (if I’m remembering correctly) beat him over the head with her purse so hard that she broke the clasp. (If that speech was taped, could someone please get it it digitized and online? It’s an important bit of SF history.)

After the ceremony, I tracked him down to ask a question about the Blacklist, which has always intrigued me, and we sat in the banquet room (along with Walter Jon Williams, too; again, if my memory is functioning) talking about that sad period in our history for hours as tables were being dismantled around us. The waitstaff finally had to shoo us out of the room.

My wife and I once drove several hundred miles back and forth to Pittsburgh in a single day for the primary reason of taking him and Fruma out to dinner at Top of the Triangle, and trying to siphon off every bit of wisdom we could. (more…)