If there’s one thing that my old boss Stan Lee wasn’t known for, it was humility. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Shepherding the Marvel Universe into being was hard enough, but selling it to the world was even harder. You’ve got to be a salesman. And that requires bombast, which Stan had (still has) oozing out of his pores. But humility? Not so much.

Why is why, when Bill Mantlo, who was the writer of Marvel Two-in-One, which teamed up The Thing with a different character each issue, suggested Stan as one month’s co-star, it was surprising that The Man would say … well, see below.

Nothing ever came of it, and I have no idea why. Was it Marv? Was it Roy, Len, or Archie? Or was it that mysterious “etc.”? Who knows? But the team-up never happened.

What’s that? You say you remember a team-up between Stan and Benjamin J. Grimm? Ah, but that wasn’t 35 years ago, just five, in Stan Lee Meets the Thing, published in 2006.

Bill Mantlo had nothing to do with this eventual meet-up. Instead, the issue was written by The Man himself, and drawn by Lee Weeks and Nelson DeCastro.

I won’t say it was a story 30 years in the making … but Bill Mantlo was there first.

As those of you who follow me on Twitter and/or Facebook know, I have a very active dream life. February turned out to be no exception, with a total of 77 recorded dreams. There were mornings I woke to find that I’d scrawled out notes relating to as many as five different dreams through the course of a night night.

Making guest appearances last month were Raylan Givens, Stan Lee, Randy Newman, John Mellencamp, Frank Sinatra, Howard Wolowitz … and who knows, maybe you.

FEBRUARY 2010

I dreamt I stole a baby being mistreated at an old timey exhibit, brought him (or maybe her) home, and then put him up for adoption. 28 Feb

I dreamt I was a kid and snuck into my neighbor’s yard to pet her huge dog. She turned out to be Helen Keller, and we talked. Yes. Talked. 28 Feb

I dreamt I wandered a UK children’s museum, where I met and became friends with Ellen Page, who turned out to work there in her spare time. 28 Feb

I dreamt I arrived at Sovereign Media as if I had a job there, but couldn’t talk to any of my coworkers because they were all on the phone. 27 Feb

I dreamt my son dropped by and told us that he’d lost his wallet, but the more he talked about the more it seemed like he’d been mugged. 27 Feb

I dreamt I followed V’s Erica Evans through the streets of D.C., eating endless apples and dropping their cores behind me to leave a trail. 26 Feb

I dreamt I partied in a speakeasy with a young Frank Sinatra as the liquor flowed freely, flappers danced around us, and tough mugs gambled. 26 Feb

I dreamt I bumped into John Mellencamp in a bookstore, but wanted to respect him and give him his space, so didn’t speak, but merely nodded. 25 Feb

I dreamt that after a workout with The Biggest Loser’s Bob Harper, we agreed to do it again on a specific date and time … in two years. 25 Feb

I dreamt I was far from home and desperately trying to make it home by nightfall. Not quite sure what would happen if I didn’t, though. 25 Feb (more…)

There’s a full-page ad in the April 1924 issue of The Mentor magazine for Webster’s New International Dictionary, which includes an endorsement from Calvin Coolidge in which he states that the volume “has been the official reference and authority in my office here in Washington during my service as Vice President.” Which means it wasn’t a recent endorsement at the time, since Coolidge had been President since 1923.

The ad also states that thousands of new words had been added since the previous edition, and challenges you to identify 24 of them.

Here are those 24 sample words:

Czecho-Slovak
Murman Coast
daylight saving
junior college
capital ship
duvetyn
mirrorscope
Devil Dog
overhead
hot pursuit
mystery ship
kafirin
Air Council
marquisette
vitamin
Schick test
agrimotor
mudgun
broadcast
Esthonia
aerial cascade
narcism
rotogravure
plasmon

The words or phrases I find most interesting are the ones about new-fangled technologies that are now old, like “rotogravure” and “broadcast.” How amazing once were the inventions we now think ancient!

I recognized 13 of the 24. How about you?

I launched scottedelman.com on February 2, 2002, a little more than nine years ago. I felt it was way past time for me to have a personal presence online, as opposed to my presence as editor of Science Fiction Weekly, which has over the years morphed into Blastr. I’m no Web designer, so it looked pretty basic even then, with snippets of html taken from various sites I liked and cobbled together into something that while admittedly clunky was passable for my needs.

But what was passable nearly a decade ago soon looked primitive … and then embarrassingly dated.

For at least two years, I’ve been telling myself I needed to redesign the site, but whenever I started noodling around with it, I’d eventually be forced to admit that a) with everything else going on in my life, I didn’t really have the time to do it myself, and b) no matter how much I thought I had the ability, both technical and artistic, to design a functional and aesthetically pleasing site, I didn’t. I needed help!

And so I finally threw myself on the mercy of Jeremy Tolbert at Clockpunk Studios, who’d designed many of my friends’ sites, and now that he’s worked his magic, the all-new look of scottedelman.com goes live today.

I look forward to hearing what you guys think!

Allen Pierleoni, who runs the Sacramento Bee Book Club, has a column in the February 21 issue of Publishers Weekly about his experiences dealing with authors … and audiences.

Fans don’t come off as being happy. Well, the male fans anyway.

Here’s what Pierleoni had to say:

Fans run the gamut, too. Most are upbeat and seem glad to be members of the club. But the mostly male science fiction/fantasy readers who’ve attended events for Kim Stanley Robinson, Terry Brooks, and Greg Bear seem almost dour. In contrast are the female fans who flock to meetings that feature such authors as Diana Gabaldon, Rita Mae Brown, Perri O’Shaughnessy (the pseudonym for sisters Mary and Pamela O’Shaughnessy), Suzanne Brockman, and Karen Joy Fowler.

Are fans of Kim Stanley Robinson dour? And are fans of Karen Joy Fowler … not?

I wonder whether this is a difference only evident in fans who aren’t a part of organized fandom, that is, enthusiastic but non-convention-going readers. Fans, not faans.

What do you think? Because Pierleoni’s male/female observation isn’t a distinction I’ve ever noticed before.

Have you?

Been so busy lately that I haven’t had time to blog, so those of you who don’t follow my brief updates on Twitter or Facebook might be wondering whether I still live. I do. It’s just that I haven’t had the time for anything more than those short bursts.

But now that it’s the first day of a three-day weekend (even though that first day is almost at an end), I figured … time for something more. So let’s start with a treat, something I dug up to share with Sean Howe, who’s writing what I hope will be the definitive history of Marvel Comics in the ’70s.

Below is a redacted memo written during my Marvel staff days. It was written by … well … I’d rather not say … complaining about … well … I didn’t think the identity of that person needed to be clearly identified either … and was written during the year … well … that might give too much away. But I still think it’s interesting even with some of the embarrassing details left out.

Besides—those who really know their Marvel stuff from that period will be able to figure it all out anyway. If you really want to know, you should have to work for it, I say.

Thought you’d all (well, all who are fanatics for that time period in Marvel’s history) would enjoy yet another peek behind the scenes …

As a writer, I’ve published 135+ short stories, and am an eight-time Stoker Award finalist. As an editor, I worked for the Syfy Channel for 13+ years, and thanks to Science Fiction Age, have been a four-time Best Editor Hugo Award nominee.

My most recent short story, “Oh, to Be a Wooden Ship, Sailing an Endless Sea!,” a strange little tale of found family, was released October 2025 in the anthology Bizarro Circus of Madness.

My books have run the gamut from collections of science fiction, fantasy, and horror short stories to a Lambda Award-nominated vampire novel to unauthorized wrestling biographies of Chyna and Steve Austin.

I’ve been going to science fiction, comics, horror, and fantasy conventions since I was 15, and after all those years am now replicating in podcast form one of my favorite parts of any con — good conversation with good friends over good food.