I woke this morning to learn that Jennifer Swift, whom I’d met in 1979 when we both attended the Clarion Science Fiction Writers Workshop in East Lansing, passed away this morning at 1:15 a.m. after a rapid decline. Her husband, Timothy Bartel, wrote her many friends to pass on the sad news. A memorial service will be held in Oxford, with details to be provided later.

Jennifer had a wonderful laugh. She was intelligent, witty, and grew into a talented writer. She published excellent stories in Amazing, Asimov’s, F&SF, and Interzone. She’d also written articles and essays on bioethics for The Guardian, New Scientist, The Daily Telegraph, and other publications.

Soon after Clarion, Jennifer emigrated to Oxford with her husband, and due to the transatlantic nature of the friendship, we mostly kept up on the details of each other’s lives via e-mail. We only managed to get together in the flesh twice since Clarion, both times in Glasgow, both meetings involving lengthy meals in Indian restaurants. It was odd that these two lunches—in 1995 and 2005—only came about due to the scheduling of World Science Fiction Conventions. Last time we were together (which is when I snapped the picture below), we joked that we hoped we wouldn’t have to wait until a 2015 Glasgow Worldcon to see each other again. Sadly, that next meeting will never take place, at least not in this world.

Jennifer will be much in my thoughts today.

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Usually, my weekends are not that much different from my weekdays—it’s work, work, work, whether on SCI FI Wire, or my own writing, or the house and yard. After all, it’s almost time to start putting another batch of daffodils in the ground!

About half the months of the year, I’m off to a convention of some kind. During July, I’m usually off to two—Readercon and the San Diego Comic-Con. But it just occurred to me that I’ll be breaking some sort of record with October, because I’m scheduled to be making peregrinations four of the month’s five weekends!

The second weekend in October, I’ll be going to Edgar Allan Poe’s funeral. As much as I like hearing Ellen Datlow speak, I have to admit that I’m most looking forward to discovering what Alfred Hitchcock, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, H.P. Lovecraft, Jules Verne, and Alexander Dumas have to say.

The third weekend in October, I’ll be attending Capclave in Rockville, Maryland.

The fourth weekend in October, I’ll be accompanying Irene to the New Jersey Romance Writers Conference. I won’t be attending the actual con, but I’ll use the weekend to have another reunion with editors from my high-school newspaper. Plus, once Irene’s done with her con, we’ll be taking Marie Severin out to lunch.

And the fifth weekend in October, I’ll be heading off to San Jose for this year’s World Fantasy Convention.

Too bad there’s nothing going on the first weekend in October, or else I’d have a Grand Slam!

Let me know whether I can expect to see any of you at any of these events.

There were hundreds (actually, probably more like thousands) of mini-comics for sale in Bethesda at SPX, but I only came home with about a dozen of them.

My rules for avoiding becoming overwhelmed were that: 1) I only picked up a book when something about the cover made me curious, and 2) I only bought that book when something about the insides made me smile.

So I’d walk the aisles, scanning the tables for an image or title that would make me go “Hmmmm … ”

To those first two rules, I guess I should add a third—that I’m only going to tell you about those comics and creators I actually enjoyed enough to want to track down more of their work and whose work I think you should track down, too.

East 9th St.

What caught my eye about the unfoldable comic by John Mejias was the dark ink and stark art of the handmade woodcut print. What made me buy it was that the punchline of the short strip made me smile. I thought of the incident he described as rather Pekar-esque in its pacing, though East 9th St. made me happy, which is something Pekar never does. Studying it further after I got home, I wished I bought more of his stuff. Luckily, you and I can both click to his online store.

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I got to the Small Press Expo in Bethesda, MD, yesterday when it opened at 11:00, and in-between multiple circuits of the dealers room, managed to catch three presentations, all of them entertaining. I’d never attended SPX before, since in the past it’s often been opposite Capclave, so I had no idea what to expect in terms of access. Panels at Comic-Con can be so over-attended that they’re often difficult to get into, and I worried I’d find more of the same here, especially once I saw how small the rooms were. But I had no trouble getting good seats.

At 1:00 p.m., I attended R. Sikoryak’s Masterpiece Comics. I was familiar with the cartoonist’s blending of Batman with Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, but not much more than that. Sikoryak discussed his new career-spanning collection that pulled together his other mash-ups, including Wuthering Heights as if done as an EC comic drawn by Jack Davis, The Portrait of Dorian Gray as if done by Windsor McKay as a Little Nemo strip, and so on. During his slideshow, he took us through his step-by-step process on the Wuthering Heights adaptation, and I was impressed by the care he took to make sure that he wasn’t just spoofing EC Comics in general, but all of Davis’ specific narrative tics. He handed out 3-D glasses for one portion of his presentation, involving pirates who couldn’t see the 3-D effects themselves until they removed those furshlugginer eye patches! (more…)

I’m just back home from the Small Press Expo, during which I attended three presentations, made multiple circuits of the dealers’ room, and bought a bunch of fun minicomics. Now I’m too tired to tell you any of the details.

This picture will have to stand in for those, at least for tonight. That’s me with one of my idols, Gahan Wilson, after I’d shown him a picture on my iPhone of how I’d framed an original of his I’d purchased from him a couple of years ago at the World Horror Convention in Toronto.

As for any other reporting from the front lines of SPX, that will just have to wait until tomorrow …

Since I’ll be spending the day tomorrow over in Bethesda at SPX, the Small Press Expo, where I’ll wander a dealers’ room filled with minicomics and other alternative publications, I figured—why not show off some of my own early comics fanzines?

Below are three covers of Call It … Fate, which I published back in 1971. Well, to be honest, all I can be sure of is that I published one of them back in 1971, because the only printed issue I still own a copy of is the one on the left with the green cover, which is the second issue. I don’t seem to own a copy of the first issue any more, and as for those other two covers, all I have are the originals, each marked #3.

I have no memory whatsoever as to what that was about! Was I trying to do a split-run with two different covers? Had I intended one for the third issue and the other for the fourth? Whatever the truth of the matter, it’s lost to me now. (And if you own a copy of the first or third issue, please feel free to surprise me!)

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Seventeen years ago this month, the first issue of Science Fiction Age magazine made its debut at MagiCon, the 1992 World Science Fiction convention held in Orlando. On page 20, in the middle of Jim Steranko’s “Movies” column, we printed a sidebar announcing the launch of something called … the Sci-Fi Channel, which went on the air exactly 17 years ago today.

I could already tell that Science Fiction Age had changed my life, even with only that single issue, let alone the many more to follow. I was to edit it until 2000, the same year (after a brief break editing Satellite Orbit for a company called CommTek) I started editing Science Fiction Weekly nine years ago this month for … the Sci-Fi Channel. (more…)

For those of you hoping for more Stan Lee commentary on the recent sale of Marvel Comics, check this out:

“They want to make some real dynamite movies and TV shows based on all your favorite characters, plus any new, original ideas we come up with. And they know how to put excitement on the screen.”

You can check it out here as part of a Stan’s Soapbox on the sale.

Ooops! My mistake, folks! That isn’t Stan commenting on the recent sale of Marvel to Disney—that’s Stan writing in 1986 on the sale of Marvel to New World from the pages of the June 1987 Marvel Age.

As they say, the more things change …

I read a Classic Peanuts reprint in the paper today that brought back memories of 9/11. (Actually, I was catching up with Thursday’s Washington Post. See—I’m behind on all of my reading!)

I know that’s not what Charles Schultz had on his mind when he drew this particular strip sometime in the ’80s. And yet, the first panel of the pair brought it all back.

Tell me—is it just me? If you had seen this without my pointing out the unintended allusion, would your mind also have been sent back to 9/11?

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to come across a mention of towers being knocked over without that horrible day coming back.

You can see the full strip, with its far more innocent punchline, below. (more…)

Today was supposed to have been Steve Gerber’s 62nd birthday. In a just world, he’d still be with us. In a just world, when Steve was still alive, he would have participated financially in the success of Howard the Duck, instead of having to engage in legal battles which proved expensive and exhausting.

Sure, all most people remember now is the punch line that the Howard the Duck film became, but remember, too, there was a valid reason the film got made in the first place. Long before the film, the character had been a genuine hit. So on Steve’s birthday that might have been, should have been, let’s take a look back at a happier time—the moment Marvel Comics seemed to recognize exactly what it had on its hands.

There’s plenty of interesting info in this memo, but the two items of note today, the two things which would have thrilled Steve, are a note (on the first page) that “Howard the Duck will go to a monthly frequency, effective #9, December,” and a request (on the second page) to “Please schedule a new $1.50 special, (Treasury size) entitled HOWARD THE DUCK #1, 1976, 80 pages.”

Steve must have been thrilled that his creation had done so well in the marketplace that it went monthly and spawned a treasury edition.

Unfortunately, that joy wouldn’t last. A bitter battle was still to come.

But spare a thought for Steve on his birthday today anyway, OK?