Robert Hegyes, who played Juan Epstein on the ’70s TV series Welcome Back, Kotter, died yesterday of a heart attack. I never knew Hegyes … but boy, did I know Epstein!

In fact, because I grew up in Brooklyn, I felt as if I knew all the Sweathogs. (Which, for those of you who never watched the show, was the name for the gang of kids in Kotter’s class at James Buchanan High School.) And I’ve got a feeling that one reason I was given the assignment of writing a couple of issues of the Welcome Back, Kotter comic for DC back in the late ’70s was because Joe Orlando thought I was a Sweathog.

Oh, I know that the two issues I wrote list Larry Hama as the editor, but as I recall, all of my interactions on the title were with Orlando. I can remember him laughing as we worked out the plot for Welcome Back, Kotter #9 because I was embarrassingly just as ignorant as Vinnie Barbarino would have been about certain historical events. (And no, I’m not going to tell you what they were.) I think that tickled Joe. (more…)

I was saddened to learn this evening of the death of Lister Matheson, whom I’d met in 1999 due to his role as director of the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop when I was invited to be Guest Editor that summer. He died on January 19 of complications arising from a form of aplastic anemia. I remember him as warm, witty, and generating an aura of amusement at life and all its pleasures.

An online obituary described him thusly:

Lister was a natural host whose large heart, expansive soul, and mischievous sense of the silly and ridiculous endeared him to those who knew him and made strangers feel immediately welcome and appreciated. He was a gifted raconteur, actor, reader of poetry, singer of inspired and inane songs, and connoisseur of haggis and single malt Scotch. He lived a full life, travelled widely, and absorbed everything. He cherished his family and friends and was always the animating spirit around any crowded table, sharing good food, drink, and lively conversation. His family and a very large crowd of admiring friends shall miss him terribly.

Yes, I thought, reading that. Yes.

But time has a way of getting away from us, and I regret to say that the last time I saw Lister in the flesh was probably at the 2003 Worldcon in Toronto, where I snapped this photo of him with Amelia Beamer as we chatted in the hallway outside some riotous party.

Remember the line from Auntie Mame that “Life is a banquet and most poor bastards are starving to death”? Lister knew that. Oh, yes he did.

He will be missed.

Comic books made an appearance on Alcatraz Monday night, and luckily, they weren’t as difficult to identity as the one that showed up on that 1975 episode of the Mary Tyler Moore show. Jorge Garcia’s character, Dr. Diego “Doc” Soto, owns a comic book store, so I assumed we’d see comics as stage dressing in the background, but in the latest episode, a couple of issues had starring roles.

In the opening scene of the third episode, “Kit Nelson,” a child killer sneaks into a bedroom and spirits away one of two brothers … but not before we see what the kid must have fallen asleep reading.

I couldn’t quite make out the pictured hero or the logo, so at this point I had no idea whether this was a real-life comic or one supposedly created by Garcia’s character, who in addition to owning the shop, also happens to be a writer and artist. But later on, after the kid is [spoiler alert!] rescued, Garcia visits him and brings along some comics to cheer him up.

“I saw you were missing 12, 27, and 35,” says Garcia, to which the kid replies, “No way! This is awesome!”

And Garcia hands him this. (more…)

Remember my mysterious October mission? We’re almost at the end game.

As I told you back then, Irene decided to sell her copy of Amazing Fantasy #15. You know … the comic that introduced Spider-Man. She got some wild idea in her head that she should sock money away for our retirement so we’re not forced to eat cat food a few decades from now. Crazy, huh?

Anyway, if you’d like a shot at a beautiful copy of the book, Heritage will be auctioning hers off starting on February 3, 2012. Check out more details about the auction here.

If Amazing Fantasy #15 is too rich for your blood … (more…)

I usually tweet my dreams, but I was visited by two last night which could not be contained in 140 characters.

First …

I dreamt I was in prison, presumably on some sort of cultural or educational visit, because when alarms went off and the place went into lockdown, I was hustled into a small library-like room, and once I got there I found the same had been done with Neil Gaiman and a woman I didn’t recognize.

As the three of us waited for the emergency to be declared over, a gate popped open, and I knew that wasn’t a good thing, because it would allow the rioting prisoners to reach us. But before that could happen, we were rescued by The Question.

After saving us, I showed him that I had a souvenir pen with his name on it in my jacket pocket. I told him I was a big fan of his. He said he was a fan on mine, too, and liked my zombie stories. I woke as we discussed the aftermath of what had occurred.

Then … (more…)

And now it can be told …

I’ll be one of the Guests of Honor at next year’s ConFusion, which will be held January 17-20, 2013 in Troy, Michigan. The GoH line-up for the 39th such gathering will be as follows:

Pro GoH: Charles Stross

Editor GoH: Scott Edelman

Special GoH: Mary Robinette Kowal

Fan GoH: James Nicoll

Additionally, a Science GoH will be announced shortly.

I look forward to seeing some of you there next year!

Steve Thompson, aware of my strong feelings about the paintings of Sharon Moody, alerted me to the comics-inspired art of Vin Vicini. Funny thing is, in spite of what could be seen as superficial similarities, the new images I saw didn’t bother me at all. So let’s take a look at a couple of Vicini’s paintings, and then I’ll explain why.

First, a 12″ x 12″ oil painting titled “Chapter 7: ‘Catch the Hero.'”

This first example includes details from the covers of Amazing Spider-Man #19 (December 1964), Batman #219 (February 1970), and Avengers #35 (December 1966), all of which I’ve rotated so you can more easily compare them to how they were used above.

Here’s one more, “Batman and the Crate,” an 11″ x 14″ oil painting. (more…)

NBC aired a 90th birthday tribute to Betty White last night, and the telecast included a montage of her funniest appearances as Sue Ann Nivens on Mary Tyler Moore from 1973 through 1977. One moment stood out more than the others. (To me, at least.)

It involved a kid reading a comic book. And what makes it interesting is that it’s a comic book with a title I can’t make quite decipher and a logo I don’t recognize.

Take a look below and tell me if you can do better. (I wish the screen shot could have been sharper, but this is the best I could do.)

So … what comic book was that?

Fantastic Blob? Apparently not, since according to the Grand Comics Database, the only comic with the word Blob in the title was published in 1988 … in Sweden. Searching on the word Slob was no help. If there’s some other word that ends with “lob” that was used in a title, I have no idea what that could be. And a search on the word Fantastic alone doesn’t yield any possibilities either.

I considered that perhaps the word in the title wasn’t Fantastic, but Funtastic. However, there seems to have only been a single title that ever included the world Funtastic— The Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera—and none of that book’s three issues matches the cover seen on screen.

Could it be that this is one of those fake covers assembled solely for the purposes of being seen on TV without the show needing to worry about getting permissions?

Any comics gurus out there have any better ideas?

Boy … it was a heck of a lot easier tracking down the comic that appeared on an episode of Law & Order: SVU back in 2010!

As soon as it was announced yesterday that Connie Willis had been named the next SFWA Grand Master, the Internet exploded with a wide range of chatter, ranging from “It’s about time!” to “Wow, I suddenly feel very old” to “Already?”

That was to be expected. Science fiction fandom doesn’t speak in one voice on anything.

But what I didn’t expect was to find some science fiction fans who had no idea who she was.

Here’s just one example, from Reddit:

Wow… Never heard of her, but she’s never written a series; it’s all short stories and individual novels, by the look of her wikipage.

How very unusual… And unmarketable, which is presumably why I’ve never heard of her.

Will look her stuff up, though.

How interesting to think that to some readers, if you’re writing short stories, or if your novels are not part of a series, you’re invisible—even if you’ve won seven Nebula Awards and eleven Hugo Awards.

I’m not judging the commenter, I’m just … surprised.

Damon Knight used to say that science fiction was the thing we pointed at when we said “science fiction,” but these days, science fiction is so fragmented that Damon would throw his back out trying to point in a thousand directions simultaneously.

And I keep forgetting that.

I dreamt I was at a Cory Doctorow reading, and Cory came up to where I was seated and handed me a medicine bottle filled with pills. And because it was Cory, I downed them all. But then I looked down at the empty bottle suspiciously, wondering what I’d just done. There was no label on the bottle to tell me what I’d ingested, however.

“Trust me,” he said.

And because it was Cory, I did.

He them brought over a laptop device a few feet square, bristling with glowing vacuum tubes, but still light enough to rest on my knees. He slipped headphones around my ears, plugged them into the machine, then plugged in a microphone as well and handed it to me.

He told me I should begin to wail.

Before I could, however, he asked if he could borrow my phone. He was disappointed to see when I handed it to him that it was an iPhone. But not disappointed in the way you’d expect Cory to be upon seeing an Apple product. Instead, he asked me, “Why don’t you have the most powerful device?”

“I don’t need the most powerful device,” I said. “I just have what I need to do the job.”

I saw the sadness in Cory’s eyes, so added: “Look, I can cut up a board with a saw or a nuke. But I don’t need a nuke when I can get away with the saw.”

“Nukes are cool,” he said.

I agreed.

And then I woke, never finding out what chemical wonders awaited me from the drugs, or what technological marvels would occur were I ever to get the chance to wail into that microphone.