Last week, while digging out a Marie Severin illustration with which to wish Chris Claremont a happy 58th birthday, I came across another drawing which brought back the old days, and a photo, too, all three from the pages of the June 1975 issue of Marvel Comics’ own fan magazine, FOOM.

I was the editor of FOOM back then, and issue #10 was an X-Men special, in honor of the relaunch which had occurred just a few months earlier in the pages of Giant-Sized X-Men #1. I filled that issue of FOOM with many articles and drawings about the mutant supergroup, including this Paty Cockrum illustration of Marvel Bullpenners as members of the original X-Men.

The piece, which appeared on one of the issue’s two editorial pages, shows Duffy Vohland as The Angel, me as the Beast (and yes, that’s an accurate depiction of my coiffure back then), Stan Lee as Professor X, Marv Wolfman as Iceman, Len Wein as Cyclops, and Paty as Marvel Girl.

You’re probably familiar with all of us in the artwork above save for Duffy Vohland, who isn’t much remembered by many outside of the industry these days, but without whom I’d never have gotten a job at Marvel in the first place. Though I’d been a convention-attending fan for years before I was hired by Marvel Comics, Duffy was the one who urged me to apply for an open position editing the company’s British line, when I’d previously avoided trying to make a living at something I loved, not wanting to mix business and pleasure. (I’ll leave further details of that ambivalence for some other time.) (more…)

Mark Peters, writing over at the Oxford University Press blog, offers up an essay on what he considers contemptibly obscure words.

He urges us all to express our contempt “in something other than a clichéd, groan-inducing fashion.” To help us in this task, he provides a list of archaic taunts “which have gone as far out of fashion as your seventh-grade haircut.”

Please join him as he attempts to rescue them, or consider yourself nothing more than a dunderdoof!

The first horrific dreams I ever had which were inspired by a book or magazine as opposed to arising from the depths of my own depraved brain came about when I was nine due to the image on the cover of this July 1964 issue of Famous Monsters of Filmland, edited by Forrest J Ackerman.

As a result, my parents forbade me from reading it or any other monster magazines for at least a week, hoping to protect my impressionable mind.

I couldn’t keep away, though (sorry, Mom and Dad!), and snuck back to them as often as I could. (more…)

John Sutherland, a former Disneyite, explains the economy in What Makes Us Tick, a 1952 animated industrial film produced for the New York Stock Exchange.

Now if only we had one of these to explain the bailout!

Just after we finished eating dinner, the phone rang. Irene answered.

“It’s someone from the Writers Guild,” she said.

I picked up the phone, and heard a woman tell me, “We’re holding some residuals for you. We tried to send them to you, but they were returned by the post office.”

She asked for my new address, which I gladly gave her.

“How much are you trying to send me?” I asked. She rattled off three figures, which totaled $116.74.

This was money earned for work I did on Tales From the Darkside from 1984 through 1986.

It’s not a huge amount of money, but nothing to sneeze at either, and so I repeat—I just got paid for work I did more than twenty years ago.

Do you need any further evidence than that?

In a recent Washington Post article about Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley Under Ground, the reviewer mentioned in passing about the author of Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley that “after graduating from Barnard, Highsmith supported herself writing for comic books.”

Am I the only one who did not know this?

I guess so, because according to Highsmith’s Wikipedia entry (and we all know that Wikipedia is never wrong):

Living in New York City and Mexico between 1942 and 1948, she wrote for comic book publishers, turning out two stories a day for $55-a-week paychecks. With Nedor/Standard/Pines (1942-43), she wrote Sgt. Bill King stories and contributed to Black Terror. For Real Fact, Real Heroes and True Comics, she wrote comic book profiles of Einstein, Galileo, Barney Ross, Edward Rickenbacker, Oliver Cromwell, Sir Isaac Newton, David Livingstone and others. In 1943-45 she wrote for Fawcett Publications, scripting for such Fawcett Comics characters as the Golden Arrow, Spy Smasher, Captain Midnight, Crisco and Jasper. She wrote for Western Comics in 1945-47.

So this seems to have been more than just a brief fling.

That information on the non-fiction narratives of famous people sounds very specific, so I’m assuming that I could track them down if I wanted to. But do we know exactly which issues of fictional superhero adventures she wrote? Those sound far more intriguing.

I can’t find this information online (well, maybe I could, but I’m not having much luck), so if anyone can point me in the right direction, please pipe up!

Happy birthday, Jack!

Thanks for a lifetime of amazing art, and also for illustrating the most grotesque, over-the-top ending to a horror comic ever!

Check out these unforgettable panels from “Foul Play,” which originally appeared in The Haunt of Fear #19 back in 1953, based on a story idea by William Gaines and a script by Al Feldstein.

And thanks, too, for your quick caricature back at the EC Comics Convention in 1972!

The Book Design Review has just announced its favorite book covers of 2008.

I was pleased to see that the cover to the reissue of Harry Harrison’s Make Room! Make Room! was there, because the moment I saw it many months ago, I also decided it was one of the best covers of the year.

I was fascinated to discover the cover to the UK edition of Austin Grossman’s Soon I Will Be Invincible, which I found much more intriguing than that of the U.S. edition.

The site invites you to vote on your favorite from among these finalists, so head on over.

And while you’re there, check out the site’s choices for the best covers of 2007, 2006, and 2005 as well.

Stan’s Soapbox: The Collection, which I’ve told you about many times before, is finally out. The book, which collects all of Stan Lee’s “Stan’s Soapbox” columns which originally appeared from 1967 through 1980, plus essays from people such as Joe Quesada, Roy Thomas, and others, including me, has been published by the Hero Initiative as part of its fundraising efforts for comic-book creators in need of financial support.

The large trade paperback is in full color, beautifully illustrated, and turns out to be far more elegantly designed than I’d anticipated. You should all rush out and buy it right now!

But I must admit that there was one page of the book which took me aback. (more…)

According to the GenderAnalyzer, there’s a 56% chance that my blog “is written by a woman.”

The site then adds, “however it’s quite gender neutral.”

I think that means I’m doing something right!