Roy Thomas, the first editor-in-chief under whom I served at Marvel Comics, turned 69 today. If he hadn’t brought me on board for my first position working on Marvel’s British reprint books, I likely wouldn’t have ended up where I am today.

And I’m not just talking about professionally, but personally as well, since otherwise I’d never have met my wife, Irene Vartanoff, who was hired just a couple of months before I was.

So thanks for everything, Roy!

Just to show my appreciation, here’s a blast from the past—a letter Roy wrote to Joe Brancatelli’s fanzine Comic Fandom Monthly that was printed in its April 1972 issue, in which he debated the merits of the famed Stan Lee at Carnegie Hall event.

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Thanks to a tip from Stephen Segal, Irene and I went to Gifts Inn of Boonsboro this evening for the opening night reception of Brigid Ashwood‘s exhibit “Winged Things & Improbable Machines.” He’d described her work as being in the steampunk/fantasy vein, and put out a call to his local facebook friends that they shouldn’t miss her gallery show. So Irene and I headed over to Boonsboro, about an hour away, getting to the shop around 5:15.

We approached Brigid fairly quickly, and she gave us a tour of her art, explaining her technique. I was particularly interested in her silverpoint drawings, a method I knew nothing about. We talked quite a bit about the origins of steampunk , and why it’s so popular. I said it’s nostalgia for a future that never was, though I couldn’t recall who originated that theory and phrase.

I could see Brigid’s work fitting in at a science fiction or fantasy convention, and found it fascinating that she and her peers moved in an entirely different circuit of cons, ones dedicated specifically to faerie. There was a cognitive dissonance present, because though our paths had never crossed, it felt as if they should have crossed long before now. I talked up the local SF con scene, so maybe we’ll see her at a Balticon or Capclave someday.

Here she is at the gallery surrounded by some of her work:

She obviously has her fans, as the lower color image by her elbow was marked SOLD by the time we left a few minutes after 7:00. (more…)

An original Frank Frazetta painting originally used as the cover to the Lancer paperback edition of Conan the Conqueror sold last week for $1,000,000.

I may not own a Frazetta painting, but I do have his autograph, as you can see below, obtained back in the early ’70s when I was an annoying kid with a sketchpad. The sheet below was signed either at the 1971 or 1972 July 4th weekend Phil Seuling Comic-Con. It couldn’t have been any earlier because I didn’t start doing this until after my first con, and it couldn’t have been later because Syd Shores passed away before the ’73 convention.

In addition to Shores and Frazetta, you can also see Bruce Jones, Harvey Kurtzman, Jeff Jones, John Putnam, and Jerry DeFuccio below

I know that without a painting attached, the Frazetta signature alone isn’t worth $1,000,000, so I’ll tell you what—feel free to knock off a zero. Heck, I’ll even knock off two.

So who wants to start the bidding?

I dreamt that I was talking on the phone with Stephen Segal, who in the dream had nothing to do with Weird Tales, but was now in charge of editing and publishing Locus. I was explaining the details of the current Harlequin Horizons vanity publishing fiasco, and he told me that he wanted me to write an article about it for him—and he wanted me to write it the same way the late Charles Brown would have. But that wasn’t the oddest thing about the dream. No, what was oddest was that I was wearing a bracelet made of Spanish olives. Not wax ones. Real ones. A ring of small pimento-stuffed olives was looped around my right wrist. I can understand why I might have been dreaming about Stephen—he’d sent me an e-mail a couple of days ago inviting me to a steampunk event in Frederick, MD. But where did the olives come from?

Then I had a dream in which Irene and I were moving from our current house and I was doing the final packing of last-minute forgotten items before I’d pile the boxes in the car and drive off. I was wrapping up things like extension cords and putting them in boxes by the back door. Only I had no idea where we were moving to. And, hard as it is to believe, I had no emotions one way or another about the move. I woke up, turned over, and went back to sleep, and then there we were outside of our new home, some urban apartment building. I had no idea in what city it was located, I just picked up a broom and started sweeping up all the broken glass from the street out front so we could begin moving in. I woke, still sweeping.

And then I also had a dream in which I was in a meeting with the cast of Mad Men, plotting an ad campaign. As we discussed a commercial, I wasn’t any of the characters, I was actually me, as if I’d happened to get a job there. Everyone seemed to be getting along, which was strange, if you’ve seen the show. Don Draper was actually smiling! The other strange thing? Peggy Olson was wearing a see-through blouse. Don was bemused about it, but no one told her to change. There wasn’t anything sexual about it. It was more of an “I am woman, hear me roar” ’60s moment, with Peggy expressing her independence. Thinking about her character now that I’m awake, I doubt she’d ever do such a thing. But I do see her going boldly into the ’60s in other ways as the series moves forward.

So—three remembered dreams from the night, but only one with an apparent catalyst. Who ever knows where these things come from?

Here’s the fourth Ethics column of mine which appeared a few decades ago in The Comics Journal. This one, focused on what we say about our friends when they die (well, after they die, since when they’re dying I hope we’re all calling 911 or giving CPR or something), appeared in issue #104, the January 1986 issue.

And if you’re still here after I’m gone—feel free to tell the truth about me. I won’t mind!

I’m about to sit down and try to watch AMC’s Prisoner miniseries straight through. Which might not be the best idea.

I’m a huge fan of the original series. How huge? This huge:

Back in 1972, even though I was just a teenager, I tried to organize a Prisoner convention. I left out fliers on the freebie table at Phil Seuling’s July 4th weekend Comic-Con that year, hoping to pull off a Prisoner con the following year.

Here’s a scan of probably the only surviving copy of that flier, which I only own because one of them was mailed back to me attached to a long letter from a fellow Prisoner fan offering to help.

Why did I think a teenager could pull off running a con, dealing with a hotel, organizing guests, and fulfilling such outrageous promises as listed on the flier? Probably because Adam Malin and Gary Berman, who were even younger than I was, mere tadpoles, had already started running the first of their Creation cons.

I never went ahead with the con, I’m guessing because I realized how overwhelming the project would be. And also because though I desperately wanted to attend such a con, I didn’t really have the personality capable of running it.

In any case, that’s how much I loved the original Prisoner.

Excuse me now while I pop in that DVD. I hope it’s not as bad as everyone else says it is, but if you hear screaming coming from the East Coast … that could be me.

In addition to the Jazzy Johnny Romita and Valiant Val Mayerik originals I picked up in 1974 that I’m currently in the middle of auctioning off to fund next year’s trip to the Melbourne Worldcon, I put four other items on the block today.

Check them out below!

First is the signed and numbered Abyss promotional portfolio with artwork by Berni Wrightson, Jeffrey Jones, Bruce Jones, and Mike Kaluta. Those are the Kaluta and Wrightson plates below. I picked up this rare set at a Phil Seuling July 4th con sometime in the early ’70s.

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I received my contributor copies of the anthologies The Dead That Walk and Postscripts #19 this week, and since those contain the last two stories of mine slated to appear in 2009, I figure it’s time to update you on this year’s output.

I had seven short stories published in 2009, which marked my best year yet. I don’t think I’ve ever before published more than five in a single year.

Here they are, broken down by genre:

“Glitch”
The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction: Volume Three

Fantasy Book Critic reviewed the anthology and gave my story, which is about robot sex in the future (did that get your attention?) 4 1/2 stars … which I hope was on a scale of 1 through 5. Reviewer Liviu C. Suciu also called my story “interesting, funny and dark at the same time.”

“The World Breaks”
Postscripts #19

I’ve read this tale of a small town’s struggle to survive in a post-apocalyptic U.S. aloud many times, and it’s one of those that chokes me up, as you know if you’ve heard me try to get through it. I made the mistake of reading it at Nippon 2007, having somehow forgotten the various references to nuclear weapons being dropped, and felt odd coming upon them and suddenly remembering in the midst of reading the story to a Japanese audience. (more…)

Here’s the third and final Ethics column of mine which appeared in The Comics Journal in 1985. I’d go on to publish four more of them in 1986, and write two more after that which were never published. Now that the decades have passed, I’m not sure why those final two never saw print. I’m sure if I dug out my correspondence with the editors, I’d be able to dredge up the memories, but I’m not in the mood to do that right now.

Give it a read, if the first two installments haven’t scared you away, and then join me on the other side for some thoughts my 2009 self had about what my 1985 self thought of my ’70s self.

And now, a few random comments: (more…)

The December 2009 issue of Esquire includes an interview with Jason Reitman (director of Thank You for Smoking and Juno), the son of Ivan Reitman (director of Stripes and Ghostbusters).

It was a short interview, no more than a few hundred words, and in it, Reitman the younger attempted to explain how his father’s films and his own differ, as follows:

The difference between my father’s movies and mine is this: If you imagine my father and I each as musicians, my father wants to take your favorite song and play it better than you’ve ever heard it. I want to take a song that you hate and play it so well that you learn to like it.

At first I thought, oh, what an interesting metaphor. But then I thought, what’s with all this liking? I already complained to you about that type of thing earlier this week.

Tell me you want to move me to laugh, cry, dance, or sing along … but don’t just tell me you want me to like you.

Liking is overrated.

Oh, not where you and I as human beings are concerned. But when we’re talking about art in any form, “like” is far too neutral a word. Sort of the way the word “nice” is when applied to people. If I ask you about your friend, and all you can tell me is that he or she is nice, you’ve told me far more than you really meant to.

So a truce, universe, OK?

Don’t let me read any more this week about people who want their stories, movies, songs, or restaurants to be liked, and I’ll try to be … well … nicer.