A new month begins, and so I’ve rounded up last month’s dream tweets, which are fewer than usual, what with the exhaustion from two conventions plus our trip to Machu Picchu affecting my sleep patterns. But still, George R.R. Martin, Dick Giordano, Moms Mabley and others—maybe even you—visited me as I slept. And somehow I find it poetic to see what happens when those mind movies are placed side by side like this …

MAY 2012

I dreamt my BSG script was rejected because Edward James Olmos hadn’t liked it. I was sad, but oddly happy, because that meant he’d read it. 31 May

I dreamt Bill Murray and I chased a burglar down several flights of stairs. At the bottom, he pulled out a gun, and chased us back up again. 30 May

I dreamt Nebula Awards attendees started to gather in a hotel ballroom. Andy Duncan was in a tux, Carl Gnam asked for my Karloff impression. 29 May

I dreamt I met a foodie at the airport and we swapped stories of the weirdest stuff we’d ever eaten as Irene looked on in total disgust. 29 May

I dreamt I was hired to run DC Comics, taking over from Dick Giordano. I discovered he left me a note, telling me to bring back Will Elder. 28 May

Only fragments of last night’s dreams remain: Geoff Ryman, a jar of pickles, cops tasering, a birthday cake. Wonder what the dreams were about? 27 May

I dreamt I was in Brooklyn, which turned into a photo, and reading the caption revealed it was 1952. Impossible! I saw WTC in the distance. 26 May

I dreamt I was a teen planning an escape with friends from a Terra Nova-style compound to live in the wild, waiting for our moment to act. 26 May

I dreamt I biked in the snow through a small town, spotted a costume shop and a comic book store, couldn’t decide which to visit first. 25 May

I dreamt I went to a midnight movie with Adam-Troy Castro that had Muppets in it for no reason. It was about the recession—with puppets! 25 May (more…)

Earlier this month, I told you about the best meal of my life. Now, because Astrid y Gaston was kind enough to forward me a copy of its menu, you can play the home game, and try to make up your mind as to what you’d order from this most amazing bill of fare (an English version of which seems not to exist anywhere else online).

First, the appetizers …

Then, the entrees … (more…)

I made an interesting discovery about a somewhat forgotten piece of Marvel Comics history while reviewing those ’70s letters columns for my post on whether we Assistant Editors were stacking the deck against Jack Kirby. (Well, perhaps not forgotten by you, but when I came across one of the answers I gave, I thought for a moment I’d only been joking.)

A fan had complained that the constant use of exclamation points in comics “can get very boring,” and he wondered why we did it. My answer referenced that there’d been “an experimental run of Marvel Comics published in 1971, during which time all letterers used periods instead of exclamation points,” but that experiment hadn’t gone well.

Check out my full answer below.

My initial thought upon rereading this after so many years was … really? (more…)

Since I’m always bitching to you when I see fine art interpretations of comics go for big bucks while images by the artists who toiled in the field go for peanuts—as when I complained that a pop artist’s version of Green Lantern sold for 7,723 times more than one by the man who created the character—I owe it to you to share that for once, the comics field won.

You may have heard that a page of Jack Kirby and Joe Sinnott artwork from Fantastic Four #55, one starring the Silver Surfer, was sold earlier this month by Heritage Auctions for $155,350.

But what you might not know (and what I only just remembered) is that Sharon Moody, a fine artist about whom I’ve written at length before, is either offering for sale or has already sold her own interpretation of that same page. (more…)

Well, that was fast! Less than an hour after putting out the call, I had scans for all the Captain America and Black Panther letters pages I wrote while at Marvel back in the ’70s.

So what will they reveal? Was there truly an orchestrated effort by us staffers, as some have claimed, to use the letters columns to sow seeds of dissatisfaction with Kirby among fandom?

Since I assembled many of those columns, I thought it important to respond with the facts, because as far as I know, none of those making such claims have done more than repeatedly make the claim, without evidence. What does a look at the actual texts of six such pages I put together for Kirby-created comics actually reveal?

(And a big thanks to Sean Howe, author of the upcoming history of Marvel in the ’70s, for responding so quickly!)

So let’s dig into Captain America 202, shall we?

Lots of positivity there, beginning with a letter that includes the line, “THIS is the Kirby I remember.” While the column does include is a letter hoping Kirby doesn’t do away with the characterization of the previous creative team, when isn’t there a letter like that whenever someone new is at the helm?

Since the column for issue 203 was about all-important issue 200, I managed to squeeze in 13 letters. And the ratio? (more…)

Do you have easily accessible copies of Captain America 202, 203, 205-207, or Black Panther 2? Are they reading rather than slabbed copies? Would you be willing to scan the letters columns and send me .jpgs?

If so, you might be able to help me dispel a Marvel Comics myth.

Yesterday, I posted a response to Robert Steibel’s commentary on my post of last year in which I recoiled from Jack Kirby’s mid-’70s run on Captain America.

Though he didn’t bring up the following point in his essay, Steibel and I exchanged a few emails, and in one of them he claimed that Marvel staffers were weighting the letters columns against Kirby in an attempt to orchestrate a campaign within fandom to get The King kicked off the books he was writing at the time.

I’d never heard such an accusation before, but when I searched online, I found that he didn’t originate the concept, that it had been comics hearsay for quite awhile, and that some even claimed staffers were creating fraudulent letters to make the Kirby backlash seem even worse. For example, Jordan Raphael and Tom Spurgeon reported on this in their 2003 biography, Stan Lee and the Rise and Fall of the American Comic Book.

The thing is, though the charge of faking negative letters has been bandied about, it all seems to be vague rumor and speculation. I’ve yet to see anyone point at a specific column and say that such-and-such a letter was cobbled together by an Assistant Editor.

Since I only just heard the charge for the first time this weekend, it took a day for the idea to sink in, and for me to realize—

Wait a minute! I was the one who wrote many of the letters columns that appeared in Kirby’s books. I’m the one being accused of fakery! (more…)

Over at the Kirby Museum, Robert Steibel has something to say about a post I wrote a year back which explained how, when I was working for Marvel in the ’70s, I disliked the work Jack Kirby was doing upon his return there, and how I dislike that work still. By work, I don’t mean the energetic as always images Kirby was drawing, but the text he supplied once he was responsible for both words and pictures, without Stan Lee to complement him. As I wrote in that post, “The art could still be the stuff of dreams at times, but the words that came out of his characters’ mouths seemed more like a nightmare.”

When it comes to the Stan vs. Jack wars, I am a partisan of neither. Once the duo disbanded, I don’t think either of them ever worked separately at the level they did when together. They needed each other. So I wasn’t slamming Kirby to elevate Lee, merely making an observation that when the King tried to do it all, it was far from satisfactory.

But let’s leave for another time the debate as to who’s right about the quality of Kirby’s prose. (Though it looks like that time won’t be too far off, as Steibel’s post, after all, was the first of two, and his second will deal with exactly that issue.) What I’d like to address here, and what it seems as if Steibel is most interested in having me address, is my behavior when I was on staff at Marvel in the ’70s, whether there was a conspiracy of some kind to cause Kirby to be fired, and if we were trying to get the scripting duties of his books for ourselves.

Steibel wrote:

Clearly they were all ambitious kids who wanted to take Jack’s place. They wanted to write comics and pointing out what they considered flaws in Jack’s work was a step in that direction. Push Jack aside and move in.

No, no, a million times no.

But to be more specific … (more…)

I spent yesterday at Balticon, doing a shared reading with Danielle Ackley-McPhail and John Mierau (you can see me and John in Adam Corbin Fusco‘s photo below) and taking part in a panel on The Walking Dead, in which we compared the two seasons so far and speculated on what’s to come in season three. We also gave our opinions as to how long the series would last and theories as to how it would end.

While at the con, I broke bread with Karen and Charlie Newton, Sandy and Risa Stewart, and Patrick Darby, and chatted with the rest of the usual Balticon suspects.

I find myself surprisingly worn out from having spent one day at what I generally consider a relaxicon, especially since last weekend’s Nebula Awards, at which far more partying and schmoozing went on (as captured below by James Patrick Kelly), didn’t leave me a fraction as tired. John Ordover speculated over on Facebook that I’m older now, but … by one week?

Am I deteriorating that quickly?

And that word “deteriorating” makes me think of zombies again, so I’ll toss out what I’d presented yesterday as my thoughts on how The Walking Dead would come to a conclusion, which should only be read by those who don’t care whether I might accidentally spoil something for you. (more…)

Last weekend, when I wasn’t schmoozing with friends at SFWA’s Nebula Awards weekend, I was off at the nearby Artomatic, an arts installation I’d heard about in years past but had never managed to attend. Since the last Artomatic was in 2009, and who knew when I’d ever be spending a couple of nights just a few blocks away from one, I knew I had to sneak over.

What is Artomatic? It’s 1,300 artists taking over an 11-story building that’s soon to be demolished, and surprisingly, amid the tens of thousands of works of art, plenty of science fiction, fantasy, and horror turned up. In an effort to get those who come here to read about those sorts of things to drop by—Artomatic runs through June 23—I thought I’d share a fraction of the art of the fantastic that I spotted.

(To my great horror and regret, after I got home, I discovered that I’d misplaced some of the artists’ names, so in the event you do head on over to Artomatic and see some of the paintings I’ve included below without attribution, could you please let me know the names of the creators. Artists need all the publicity they can get! All artists have now been identified. Whew!)

Dana Ellyn

“Darth Vay-Deer,” by Isaac Otto Lange

(more…)

Balticon 46 will take place May 25-28 at Marriott’s Hunt Valley Inn, and as usual, I’ll be there. Here’s where you’ll be able to find me officially; that is, when I’m not simply wandering the dealers room or con suite and schmoozing.

Reading
Saturday, 1:00 PM (Pimlico)
with Danielle Ackley-McPhail and John Mierau

The Walking Dead
Saturday, 6:00 PM (Parlor 1041)
with moderator David Silverman, Chris Evans, Michael D. Pederson, Ethan H. Wilson and Robert E. Waters
Panelists discuss the show whose success took AMC completely by surprise. Was Season 2 as good as the first season? What direction would we like to see the third season take?

Once that Walking Dead panel is over, I plan to head for dinner to the Man v. Food-recommended Chaps Pit Beef, which is about half an hour away (but worth it!), so if you want to tag along, let me know.