This episode has me reminiscing about why I think of comics artist John Tartaglione every day, my dreams of Paul Anka’s comic book collection and a visit from Gene Colan, my early attempts to get fired from Marvel Comics, a well-earned warning from Marv Wolfman, the puzzle of why covers to romance novels tend to feature aspirational art while comic book romance covers often lean into the problems, and more.

You can eavesdrop on all those memories via the embed below or download them at the site of your choice.

Here are a couple of images related to a couple of the topics I touched on during the episode —

Charlton Comics Lettering
a credit for A. Machine from Blue Beetle #2, Aug 1967

John Tartaglione art
from Love Tales #73, May 1957

Thanks to Andy Duncan, this episode marks an Eating the Fantastic first.

Andy’s a multiple award-winning science fiction and fantasy writer, having won three World Fantasy Awards, a Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, a Nebula Award, and others, plus he’s been been nominated for the Hugo, Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson Awards as well. His nonfiction has also received recognition, with his essay “It Is Always Time To Think About These Things,” having received a World Fantasy Award nomination last year. His collections include Beluthahatchie and Other Stories (which came out in 2000), The Pottawatomie Giant and Other Stories (published in 2011), and, most recently, An Agent of Utopia (in 2018) His most recent work of fiction, “The Hodges Meteorite,” was published November 2025 in the Sunday Morning Transport.

And as for the way Andy was a catalyst for a unique episode —

I first chatted with him on the show way back in 2016 on Episode 6, when we squeezed as much as we could of his secret origin and writing process into the length of a meal.

We narrowed our focus in 2018 on Episode 85 for a discussion of his then newly released short story collection An Agent of Utopia.

But this time around, we got even more granular, doing a deep dive into a single short story — “Criswell Predicts!” — parts of which I first heard Andy read at a con in 2014, and was finally published just a few months ago in Storyteller: A Tanith Lee Tribute Anthology. Discussing in detail how his initial idea was across more than a decade written and revised and workshopped until it finally saw print made for a fascinating conversation.

We discussed how his titles are often born decades before the stories to which they’re eventually attached, how his research into Criswell’s predictions “ethically stymied” him, why the way he creates stories isn’t a way he’d encourage anyone else to follow, the epiphany which caused him to realize a perceived bug in his story was actually a feature, what he hoped sending his story through the Sycamore Hill Writing Workshop would unlock, why he’s willing to publicly read aloud sections of stories he hasn’t completed, the essential exclamation point suggested by John Kessel, at what stage in the revision process specific details of setting get added, whether the story would have taken even longer to complete without the eventual pressure of a deadline, what about the story made it fitting for a Tanith Lee tribute anthology, the editorial acumen of Gardner Dozois, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us at Mythical Pizza in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia — (more…)

Back in the August 1940 issue of Superworld Comics, Hugo Gernsback predicted we’d someday be using a Thought-Writer, which would “be far more accurate than any other means of expressing your thoughts now in existence.”

Considering what a rambling steam of consciousness mess my thoughts are, I think I’ll stick to my notebook and pen.