Life’s been strange lately, so it’s a bit late in the month for me to be gathering together the previous month’s dreams. But I’m doing it now anyway so I can see whether any theme’s been running through my subconscious.

As with most months, no, there isn’t one, but I still enjoy the exercise. And judging by the response, some of you do, too.

Last month, I dreamt of Jackie Onassis, Orson Welles, John Goodman, Raylan Givens … and Hitler!

Dream on!

December 2015

I dreamt Orson Welles caught up with me in a museum and said he wanted to follow me to study the way I talked. Which felt kind of insulting. 28 Dec


I dreamt I stopped at an old timey diner where the special of the day was fried sausage and banana. But sadly, I woke before I got a taste! 28 Dec

I dreamt that after a stray dog wandered my way, I decided to keep him. Which is so unlike me. Owning a living thing makes me uncomfortable. 28 Dec


I dreamt I bought a new house, but didn’t notice until we moved in that it was next to an abandoned apartment building overrun with ivy. 28 Dec


I dreamt I flew to NYC, but instead of landing at an airport, my plane touched down on an aircraft carrier floating in the Hudson River. 27 Dec


I dreamt a neighbor of mine was arrested, and from the back of the squad car, told us not to worry. And we promised to care for her things. 27 Dec


I dreamt that while driving I passed a car with a baby in the back. After smiling at it, I saw the driver was Hitler—in full Nazi garb! 27 Dec


I dreamt I snuck out of work for sushi, and while having my omakase, discovered my mother had gotten a job there, but was keeping it secret. 24 Dec

I dreamt I wandered a bustling (but unidentified) city in China looking for a particular dumpling house, but, alas, couldn’t find it. Sigh. 23 Dec


I dreamt I edited a science fiction magazine for new publisher J. J. Abrams. We were distressed to find pages out of order in the new issue! 22 Dec (more…)

I love old timey menus—such as the one I shared with you several years back which showed the fare available at the Revere House on May 18, 1851. But no menu from yesteryear is so personally important as the one describing a meal served in the Temple Auditorium Catering Hall at 251 Rochester Avenue, Brooklyn, New York on January 24, 1954.

The reason this meal matters so much to me is because without it, I wouldn’t exist!

The menu below records what was served at a reception and dinner following the wedding of my parents, Barney and Toni Edelman, 62 years ago this month. I discovered this document mixed in with my mother’s letters and photos after she died on December 30. Until then, I had no idea it even existed.

My favorite part of the meal? That the roast turkey wasn’t served with just the usual sides of cranberry sauce plus carrots and peas, but with stuffed derma as well.

Any meal featuring stuffed derma is my kind of meal … whether or not it leads to my eventual birth.

I wish I could have been there. But, of course, I wasn’t to show up for another 14 months.

I brought home thousands of photographs after my mother died last week , and for the most part I recognize the people in them and know the circumstances under which they were taken. But a few are a mystery. Some because they’re of friends and relatives I don’t remember, others because they’re of events in which I didn’t take part.

For example, who is this guy to the left of my father? What is that scrap of paper he’s handing over? Why was this moment worth memorializing?

And then there are these two, happy to be holding that same scrap of paper. (more…)

I’m always intrigued by what intrigues you when you stop by here to read my musings, so now that 2015’s over, I decided to take a look back and see which posts you clicked on most last year.

Comics made up four of the top 10 posts in terms of subject matter, with food and science fiction/fantasy/horror following at three each.

Here are the results, all clickable and everything, just in case you want to relive the past 12 months.

Turns out H. P. Lovecraft isn’t the only problematic fantasist

If you hated Marvel’s ’70s reprint comics—blame me!

Celebrating my birthday with dinner at Noma, the world’s #1 restaurant

Why Fantastic Four was my first—and last—comic book subscription

In which the Sad Puppies prove to be more powerful than L. Ron Hubbard

Michelle Wrightson 1941-2015

Somebody up there likes me (and by “up there,” I mean in Copenhagen)

Going Home with Bryan Voltaggio

Can you ID the comic book in Annie Hall?

Rescuing my long-ago lunch with Samuel R. Delany

The most-read post of 2015 wasn’t written in 2015, but was actually an entry from 2010 about a 1932 promotional coin which featured both the Star of David and the swastika. I’d never have expected that post to still keep pulling in the eyeballs, and I’m still not quite sure how it happened.

Thanks for all the visits, folks! I look forward to seeing what 2016 will bring.

My brother contacted me last Monday to let me know that the hospice workers who were managing my mother’s care had told him he should make sure to visit her the following day. And as anyone who’s ever dealt with hospice knows, when they tell you you’d better visit, you’d better visit.

Which was an easier thing for my brother than for me, as he lives just 20 miles away, while I’m more than 1,000. And with Christmas Day behind me and New Year’s Eve ahead of me, it looked at first as if that distance was going to prevent me from having the chance to say goodbye to my Mom. Every flight which could have gotten me there over the next 48 hours seemed sold out.

Luckily, the severity of my situation, as well as the persuasiveness of my tears, worked wonders on Southwest Airlines (thank you, Leah!), and my wife and I were able to make it to Florida late Tuesday night … although, because even miracles can only be so big, we ended up on different flights. We headed to Mom straight from Fort Lauderdale airport, arriving by her side slightly before 1:00 a.m. Wednesday.

She passed at 4:53 a.m. that morning.

But before she did, I was able to tell her I was there, and thank her for the gifts she had given me. She was not conscious to hear what I had to say, though the hospice worker who was present would claim, whenever Mom raised an eyebrow, that she’d heard me. I’d like to believe that, but find it hard to bring myself to do so.

What I can accept, though, is that any change in expression meant she was dreaming of being back with my father, to whom she was married for 55 years and three days, and to whom she ached to return during every moment since he left us. (more…)

I’ve got yet another romance comic to share with you that deals with a woman whose size is judged by society to be less than acceptable, and this time around we finally enter the ’60s … while at the same time offering what turns out to be my favorite single panel from any story of this type.

If you’d like to play catch-up before diving in, check out “Was I Too Fat to Be Loved?” (June 1949), “Too Fat for Love” (Winter 1950), “I Was a Fat Girl” (February 1951), and a second “Too Fat for Love” (March 1952), which I present in chronological order of publication so you can follow the changing times, rather than the order in which I found and shared them with you.

Completists might also want to check out a few other comics which, though not romances, offer a lesson on the subliminal and not-so-subliminal messages being sent to readers, such as My Little Margie‘s “Chubby, But Oh My!” (Dec 1957), and two stories from the pages of Brenda Starr, in which the reporter’s cousin Abretha Breez, who in January 1949 is mocked for not being able to fit into a kitchen to get cake, in July 1949 gets a boyfriend who appears to appreciate her the just way she is.

But on to the new!

“Too Fat to Frug,” from the January 1967 issue of Love Diary #47, was written by Gary Friedrich—who would shortly thereafter write Marvel’s Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos and go on to co-create Ghost Rider—and reportedly drawn by Tony Tallarico. I’m as uncertain as are the reference sites as to whether this is truly by Tallarico, as to my eye it looks little like the work of his with which I’m most familiar from the pages of Creepy and Eerie.

In this 8-page story which leads off the issue, go-go girl Sharon Carr is the top dancer at The Bird Cage. And she immediately falls hard for the club’s new singer Bus Wayne. One thing’s for sure—it probably wasn’t because of his lyrics! (more…)

Six years before I attended my first comic book convention, 44 other fans attended the first comic book convention. And as part of an article recapping the 2014 New York Comic Con panel “Survivors of the First Comiccon,” Alter Ego #137 reprinted a list of those who attended that July 27, 1964 gathering at Manhattan’s Workmen’s Circle Building.

Check out the first name on the roster published immediately after the event by Bernie Bubnis. It should be one you recognize.

And if you were reading Blastr back when I was editing that site, you’d already know he was also the first person to purchase a ticket to the con.

(Note that according to the caption accompanying this image, Jerry Bails didn’t actually attend that first con, while Pat Yanchus did, but was left off the list.)

To find out more, and read reminiscences from Len Wein, Howard Rogofsky, and others, why not order a copy of Alter Ego #137?

I’ll be heading over to the Writers Group from Hell holiday party later this afternoon, to which even former members like me are invited, and since it’s a potluck, that meant I spent the last two days baking.

After flipping through my cookbooks in search of something new—wouldn’t want to bore my friends, after all—I settled on one recipe each from Paul Fehribach’s The Big Jones Cookbook and Bryan Voltaggio’s Home.

I’d already made two previous Fehribach dishes—Chicken with Dumplings and a Jelly Roll Cake—and one from Voltaggio—Blueberry Cake with Peanut Streusel. This time I decided to attempt Cheese Straws by the former and Lemon Cookies by the latter.

On Friday, I started with the Cheese Straws, because Fehribach indicated they’d improve with age, so serving them 48 hours later would be no problem.

I began with 10 ounces of sharp cheddar cheese and two ounces of blue cheese along with 1-3/4 cups of flour, so these cheese straws were sure to be … cheesy!

One thing they didn’t turn out be, however … was straws. (more…)

I’ve shared a number of firsts about the Scarecrow since I started blogging, such as who the first artist was supposed to be, the first (and perhaps the last) Marvel subscription ad featuring the character’s never-published stand-alone book, and Don Perlin’s first page to what was supposed to be Scarecrow #2.

And as I skimmed further through that 1974 issue of The Comic Reader which I told you about last week, I came upon another first—the first time fans would have found out such a character even existed.

In the Marvel News section, which included a blurb that “a Spider-Man live action film and a new TV series are being planned” (for which we’d all have to wait, as that TV show wouldn’t air until 1978, while a film wouldn’t hit theaters for another 28 years), readers wound find this item.

I’ve no idea when the August issue of The Comic Reader would have gone to press, but as I started on staff at Marvel on June 24 of that year, I obviously wasn’t there that long before then-editor Len Wein leapt on my idea … even though my name is never mentioned in that announcement.

And as those familiar with the history of the Scarecrow already know, it never did appear in the pages of Monsters Unleashed, nor in its next announced location, as a backup in Giant-Size Werewolf by Night, but instead ended up debuting in Dead of Night #11.

That wasn’t the only fascinating thing I found in this issue of The Comic Reader. Check out this curious factoid about Marvel’s Planet of the Apes series.

And now we know why Don McGregor never got that assignment.

ba-dum ching!

(I kid, Don, I kid! You know I love you.)

Two important comics events occurred on June 24, 1974.

It was my first day on staff at Marvel.

And it was the day Seaboard Periodicals, run by Martin Goodman—Marvel Comics founder and former Magazine Management publisher—opened its office.

Seaboard launched Atlas Comics, which I told you about five years ago when I shared a snarky memo I wrote in 1975 to Marvel’s publisher because he was worried our company was being plagiarized.

(For those in a TL;DR mood—no, it wasn’t.)

Most fans first learned of Atlas/Seaboard from a blurb in The Comic Reader #109 (August 1974), which quoted an unnamed source as saying that the new company would “change the look of the industry.”

(For those still in a TL;DR mood—no, it didn’t.)

(more…)