Last year, we celebrated the end of 2012 by flying to Vienna, watching Die Fledermaus on New Year’s Eve at the Wiener Staatsoper, and eating lots of goulash, Wiener Schnitzel, and apple strudel mit schlag. Our plans to say farewell to 2013 were much less ambitious, and this time didn’t require passports.

Our favorite local restaurant, Bryan Voltaggio’s Range, was turning itself that night into a supper club at which you could buy a table from 9:00 p.m. until 1:00 a.m., plus they were importing the Blue Vipers of Brooklyn for entertainment.

This was their announced menu.

As we were to learn on New Year’s Eve itself, there were other dishes not revealed in advance.

We wrangled three other couples to join us, rented a hotel room at the Embassy Suites which shares the Chevy Chase Pavilion location with Range, and looked forward to a fun night … which as it turned out, marked more than just the change of one year to the next, but also ended up demarcating a major change in my life after more than thirteen years.

And our expectations were fulfilled. It was a fun night. See? (more…)

2013’s over, and as I told you yesterday, 2014 will be very different. But before fully letting go of last year, let’s take a look at which 10 posts here were read most.

It turns out that five of the top posts were about food. Who knew that so many people would want to read recountings and see pics of my favorite meals? But surprisingly, it turns out you do.

The top 10 posts, in descending order, are …

I hate it when that happens!

WTF? Why is Isaac Asimov’s face being used to shill in a Huffington Post ad?

WARNING: Once seen, this photo of me cannot be unseen

Sneak peek at Next restaurant’s upcoming Bocuse d’or menu

Sneak peek at Next restaurant’s upcoming Vegan menu

My Vegan meal at Next was so good I’m going to have to eat it twice

Reliving our magnificent meal at Vienna’s Steirereck im Stadtpark

A Sunday visit with “Mirthful” Marie Severin

Another reason I love Dave Gibbons (and continue to hate Roy Lichtenstein)

1st peek at Next restaurant’s upcoming Vegan video

Also — Happy birthday, Dad. I still miss you., which was posted way back in 2011, continued to be read by so many thousands of you in 2013 that it would have made the top 10 were I allowing in earlier years. As I told you back in March, the Internet sure does miss its father.

Stick around and see what I pontificate about this year!

Way back on August 15, 1995, my life changed, only I didn’t know it at the time. That’s because on that date, Craig Engler launched Science Fiction Weekly, which a few years later he would sell to the SCI FI Channel. And a few years after that, over the Labor Day weekend in 2000 at the Chicago World Science Fiction Convention, he gave me the chance to take over from then-editor Brooks Peck.

Here’s how I looked that fateful weekend as I considered the offer, having tried to contact my wife so any decision to leave my then-current job at Satellite Orbit and sign on for the gig would be a joint one. I was wondering … will this Internet thing last? (Hey, it was a very different online world back then.)

Well, it has lasted, and I’ve worked for what’s now called Syfy for more than 13 years, editing Science Fiction Weekly, then SCI FI Wire, and for the past few years, Blastr. (And a print magazine for a while there, too.) But though the Internet and Syfy and Blastr go on, I do not, for today those 13+ years come to an end.

Today marks my final day working for Syfy. It was an amicable parting, but it means I’ll begin 2014 looking for new worlds to explore, both as an editor and a writer.

In my first Science Fiction Weekly editorial back in October of 2000, I explained who I was and why I thought I deserved to be there. (more…)

Sean Howe, author of the wonderful Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, uploaded a recording to YouTube today of Stan Lee speaking at Princeton in March 1966.

There’s a ton of fun stuff you’ll want to hear, such as the boos that erupted when Stan mentioned Steve Ditko’s departure from Marvel and the cheers that arose when he brought up the Silver Surfer.

Plus there’s plenty of ammo for Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby partisans, such as when Stan called Ditko a “peculiar guy” who’s “a little eccentric,” and said that he hadn’t “spoken to this guy for over a year,” or when he talked about how surprised he was when the Silver Surfer turned up in the Fantastic Four, an event which had caused Stan to ask, “Who’s this naked nut running around?”

But what most piqued my interest, and caused me to consider a question I should have asked long ago but for some reason never thought to, was Stan’s explanation of the Marvel method, which begins at the 17:35 mark.

(And don’t worry—the audio quality picks up after the first few minutes.) (more…)

Soon, nearly every story I wrote for Marvel Comics (save for a Master of Kung Fu, all issues of which I believe are in limbo due to rights questions with the Sax Rohmer estate) will be back in print. That’s because on June 24, 2014, Marvel Masterworks: Captain Marvel Volume 5 will be published, collecting my seven-issue run of the space-born superhero Mar-Vell, bookended by a few issues created by others.

Here’s the cover, which uses art from Captain Marvel #50, in which I separated Mar-Vell and Rick Jones.

And here’s an alternate cover, which I believe is for those who’d prefer their volume to carry the numbering system of the complete Marvel Masterworks run, rather than that of the individual title. (more…)

The Santa Claus wars aren’t anything new.

An editorial in the January 1898 issue of The Nickell is “grieved to find itself in opposition to certain learned and eminent divines of the Presbyterian church in the matter of the existence of Santa Claus.”

Apparently, those divines felt the concept of Santa was bad for children, because “it distracts their attention from the sacred character of Christmas Day.”

Check out the complete editorial, in which the editorial board advises, “do not try to belittle a saint whose ministrations give joy.” (more…)

I often share about food here, and I often share about my early years in comics, but I don’t think I’ve ever before shared anything at the intersection of those two topics. It isn’t a Venn diagram with much, if any, overlap, so this may be a first.

Danny Crespi, who was Marvel’s assistant production manager when I worked there in the mid-’70s, gave me his recipe for spare ribs, which he said were “as good as the ribs as the Lotus Eaters.” Here’s Danny as he appeared in the 1975 Marvel Comics Convention program book.

Danny was one of the nicest guys in the world, even though when Mike Esposito, who was doing art corrections in the Bullpen back then, grandiosely said, “In six months, I’ll be running this company,” Danny quickly quipped, “Yeah. Into the ground.” (more…)

While the death of Peter O’Toole, whose work I admired in such films as Lawrence of Arabia, The Ruling Class, and My Favorite Year, saddened me, I was far more moved by learning today of the death earlier in the week of Tom Laughlin, who starred in, directed, and co-wrote the 1971 movie Billy Jack. O’Toole was, of course, the far better actor, but in terms of which man affected me the most, there’s no contest. Laughlin kicked me where it counted.

And there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.

I saw Billy Jack multiple times when I was a teenager, had its dialogue memorized, imagined myself standing up for the downtrodden in that famous ice cream shoppe scene (so iconic it was later spoofed by Paul Simon in a Saturday Night Live sketch), and for a time even wore a BILLY JACK FOR PRESIDENT button.

So when Marvel Comics decided to devote an issue of its Deadly Hands of Kung Fu magazine to the phenomenon as a tie-in to the 1974 The Trial of Billy Jack movie, who better to write a think piece about the meaning of it all than the guy who was nuts about the first film? (Beneath that wonderful Neal Adams cover you could also find a second article on the sequel by Black Panther/Killraven writer Don McGregor.) In order to make my point in the essay, I managed to drag in Paul Kersey from Death Wish and Jesus Christ from, you know, The Bible.

As I reread the piece now, I can see that it’s overly influenced by the stylistic pyrotechnics of Harlan Ellison and Tom Wolfe, it suffers from the fact that I was still a beginner at this writing thing, and it contains all the self-righteous earnestness of a college dorm room bull session.

And yet, through it all, my love for the Billy Jack films and the work of Tom Laughlin is evident, so I think it’s still worth sharing on a day like today. (more…)

I know about Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox the way many people do. Meaning—it’s not from reading the original stories, but rather from the Disney cartoon, the Classics Illustrated comic, tales improvised by camp counselors around a fire, or just absorbing the inescapable pop culture references.

Of course, those original stories weren’t so original, as they were folktales long before they were written down, but since I’m not going to get a chance to sit at the knee of a French Canadian in the 19th century and hear them as they were first told, the works of James MacGillivray and James Stevens are the best I can do.

In any event, what this means is that it wasn’t until today that I got to meet Cream Puff Fatty and Hot Biscuit Slim, two of the greatest (fictional) chefs that ever were.

I’m sure you can figure out which is which in the illustration above. (I haven’t been able to track down the name of the artist responsible for that image. If you know, please speak up!)

I discovered them because for some reason, Irene and I got to talking this afternoon about parsnips, which led to us debating whether Paul Bunyan had died from eating poisoned parsnips, which led to me reading about Paul Bunyan’s Black Duck dinner … which introduced me to Cream Puff Fatty and Hot Biscuit Slim, two cooks so amazing that after they fed a team of loggers, not only were none of Bunyan’s team able to rouse themselves to appear for the following meal, but “for five weeks the loggers lay in a delicious torpor.”

What kind of meal could do that? An epic one! Read an excerpt below from the June 1924 issue of the American Mercury for one of the greatest fictional meals I’ve ever encountered. (more…)

Advertising used to be a lot more refined—even as it was selling snake oil—as can be seen from this final dip into the January 1898 issue of The Nickell.

Captured in an elegant drawing reminiscent of Charles Dana Gibson, two upper-class diners ever-so-delicately discuss the lady’s indigestion, which it seems can only be solved by swallowing a Ripans Tabule and waiting 10 minutes.

But what’s Ripans? And what the heck is a Tabule? (more…)