With all of the love currently being shown online to the high-profile projects Steve Gerber had been involved with—including Howard the Duck, Omega the Unknown, and Man-Thing—I want to make sure that everyone also remembers his absurd work as editor of Crazy magazine.

Crazy was intended by Marvel to be just another MAD clone, and while it did have the standard movie spoofs everyone has come to expect from that sort of knock-off magazine, it also featured Bob Foster’s bizarre “History of Moosekind” series, artwork by Lee Mars, Will Eisner, and Marie Severin, and strange photo features starring unidentified members of the Marvel Bullpen.

And, oh, yes, then there were Steve’s offbeat editorials.

Here’s one of them, titled “Beat the Scuzzies,” from the August 1975 issue of Crazy. It includes Steve’s recommendation for a 1976 presidential candidate, so it’s timely again now.

The inside front cover of the same issue of Crazy spotlights another piece of Steve’s writing, this one a spoof ad featuring one of those undercover Marvel staffers I mentioned.

Me. (more…)

Following up on Dr. J. Berg Esenwein’s advice on whether it’s necessary to typewrite one’s short-story submissions and his thoughts on selling stories by paying personal visits to the editors, both cribbed from his 1908 book Writing the Short-Story: A Practical Handbook on the Rise, Structure, Writing and Sale of the Modern Short-Story, here are his thoughts on the all-important matter of getting paid.

Pay careful attention to what he has to say. One particular fact stood out for me. Let’s see whether the same thing grabs you:

If you have sold enough manuscript to warrant it, you may wish to set a price upon your story, but by doing so you run a risk. No ordinary circumstance will lead an editor to deviate from his regular rate. The fact that you have sold one or two stories at five cents a word to one magazine will not warrant your expecting another to pay you more than its accustomed honorarium. At the same time, if your minimum rate is actually five or three or two cents a word, frankly say so and abide by the consequences. If you offer a manuscript “at regular rates” do not haggle about the price after your story has been accepted. Remember that some magazines pay “on acceptance,” other pay “on publication,” while others pay not at all. …

Never put a string to your offer of a manuscript by telling the editor that you will accept his offer if it is good enough. If he is human, such a request will irritate him and may cause him to reject the story forthwith.

What struck me is that if you looked back at the cost of most things in 1908, you’d laugh. You’d chuckle about how life has changed and how cheap things were and how far we’ve come. For example, a century ago, the average annual income was $915 per year, bread was a nickle a loaf, and milk was 32 cents a gallon. You could buy a car for $500 and a house for $4,500.

And yet the price writers get for their work one hundred years later remains stable, and that’s not quite so amusing. The 1908 prices an editor might have paid are not very different from what we might be offered for our short stories today.

In 1908, you could buy a loaf of bread with a single word. How many words of short story would it take to buy a loaf of bread today?

And just try trading a 10,000-word short story for a new car!

I just learned that Steve Gerber passed away yesterday while waiting in the hospital for a lung transplant. I’m still sort of stunned right now, since he’d posted on his blog as recently as last Monday about his progress on a Dr. Fate project. He seemed hopeful, and so I was trying to remain optimistic.

I won’t attempt to go on at length here to explain to you who he was and why he mattered. You probably already know him from his work on Man-Thing, Omega the Unknown, and Howard the Duck, and I’ll leave it to others who can better keep their wits about them to recount the details of his life. You can also get more information and read remembrances from those who loved him here.

But I’d just like to quickly say that I remember him as much for what I knew of him off the page as for what the rest of the world knew of him from what was on the page. Around the Bullpen, he was always a funny guy, part Mort Sahl, part Lewis Black.

And he had no sense of shame when it came to making you laugh. Here he is, posing for a photo that appeared in the October 1975 issue of Crazy magazine, which he edited for Marvel back when I was on staff there. He used his sense of the absurd to make Crazy into more than just another clone of MAD. I’d like to remember him that way, smiling, happy, and in your face.

He followed a rough road in comics, because he pushed the envelope—both artistically and in fighting for creator rights—at a time when most didn’t bother. We need more like him.

We need him.

As I continue reading through Dr. J. Berg Esenwein’s 1908 book Writing the Short-Story: A Practical Handbook on the Rise, Structure, Writing and Sale of the Modern Short-Story (here are my first comments), I find myself drawn far more to the business side of the writing life a century ago than to any artistic advice offered.

I guess that’s because I feel that the business model of writing will always change, while the art itself is eternal. (Though I may learn differently once I dive into his century-old writing exercises.) I’m finding the differences between then and now fascinating, such as the doctor’s answer to the question: (more…)

I wasn’t the only writer to come out of the first graduating class of Brooklyn’s South Shore High School. Donna Grant, with whom I worked on the school newspaper (back when I looked like the scruffy guy in the icon at left), went that route, too, only she took a far more interesting path than I did. What’s more, that road took her to bestsellerdom.

First, she became a plus-size model, where she met Virginia DeBerry, another model who was vying with her for the same assignments. Instead of becoming rivals, the two became friends, and they teamed up to found Maxima, a fashion and lifestyle magazine for plus-size women. Eventually, they decided to try writing a book together.

Their collaboration turned into the 1997 novel Tryin’ to Sleep in the Bed You Made from St. Martin’s Press, which became a bestseller. Now it’s a decade later, and with Donna and Virginia just back from the book tour for their latest novel, Gotta Keep on Tryin’, their publisher, Touchstone, has put together a promotional video on YouTube.

With their fanbase and sales, Donna and Virginia certainly don’t need my help, so let’s just consider this a little high-school reunion.

Comic-book artist Dave Cockrum, who is most well known for his reinvigoration of two supergroups—DC Comics’ Legion of Super-Heroes and Marvel Comics’ X-Men—passed away far too soon on November 26, 2006.

Dave co-created such characters as as Nightcrawler, Colossus, and Storm, and redesigned the costumes for countless other heroes.

I have fond memories of sitting with him in the Marvel Bullpen and watching as he designed the costume for the Captain Marvel villain Deathgrip back when I was writing that book and dinosaurs still walked the Earth. Even though Dave wasn’t the artist on that title, he helped out because he was one of the greatest costume generators ever.

In addition to his prodigious talent, Dave was also one of the good guys, two qualities which aren’t always found together in the same human being. He was a gentle man who was liked by all.

Clifford Meth recently began helping Paty Cockrum liquidate the estate by selling off Dave’s personal comic-book collection. Each comic will be delivered bagged, boarded, and sealed with a “Dave Cockrum Estate” seal of authenticity.

There are even some rarities, such as a few remaining copies of The Uncanny Dave Cockrum Tribute, each containing original sketches by Dave, plus a classic copy of X-Men signed by both artist Jim Steranko and writer Arnold Drake.

If you’ve appreciated Dave’s work over the years and ever wanted to own something to remember him by, then head over to Clifford Meth’s site and check out this list for a small sample of available collectibles. And keeping checking back for updates as further items are added.

As I mentioned here earlier, two of my stories are on the preliminary ballot for the Bram Stoker Awards, given out each year by the Horror Writers Association. Voting is still going on to determine the nominated stories which will make up the final ballot.

This is just a gratuitous, self-serving reminder to all Active Members that their votes must be received by 11:59 p.m. today, which means that fewer than 16 hours remain.

My two stories appearing among the final twelve recommended in the category of Superior Achievement in Long Fiction are:

“Almost the Last Story by Almost the Last Man” (originally published in Postscripts)
“Survival of the Fittest” (originally published in Summer Chills)

If there are any voting members out there who haven’t yet made up their minds and would like to receive electronic copies of my stories for review during these final hours, please let me know.

One hundred years ago, Hinds, Noble & Eldredge published Writing the Short-Story: A Practical Handbook on the Rise, Structure, Writing and Sale of the Modern Short-Story, by Dr. J. Berg Esenwein, editor of Lippincott’s Monthly magazine.

I’ve already shared Esenwein’s magazine ad soliciting students for his correspondence school. Now let’s travel back to 1908 to absorb some of the good doctor’s practical advice on how to crack the short-story markets of his day! (more…)

As many of you have probably already read elsewhere, national treasure Marie Severin has been recovering from her recent stroke, and now that her health has improved, she’s just moved into an assisted living facility. All of us who love her look forward to her continuing with that recovery.

In addition to Marie quite possibly being the nicest person to have ever worked in the comics industry, she is also one of the funniest and most talented people I know.

Now, this might seem a rather strange and silly comparison, but back when I started working at the insane zoo that was the Marvel Comics of the ’70s, the wild and woolly Bullpen actually seemed like the Alan Brady Show to me (that fictional show within the Dick Van Dyke Show, remember?), and Marie was our Sally Rogers, the sassy wisecracking dame (a term I don’t think she would find objectionable) who always spoke her mind. She was one of the reasons it was so much fun to go to work each day at 575 Madison Avenue.

Marie is famous not only for her hilarious personality, addictive art style, and nuanced coloring, but also for her caricatures, going all the way back to her EC days. During my years on staff at Marvel, I was lucky enough to have had her draw my mug a number of times. (more…)

Writers! Are your short stories sick? Are you looking for a cure to all of your writing afflictions? Seek no further, for two doctors have the prescription for your many fiction ills.

Plucked from the pages of the April 1929 issue of Scribner’s magazine are advertisements from two doctors who are willing to show you the way to healthy prose.

First up is Dr. Esenwein, who hopes that you’ll enroll in his correspondence course in the writing and marketing of short stories. I’d never heard of Esenwein, and had no idea of the validity of his claim to be able to train his students to the point where they’d amass the talents to earn $5,000 (in 1929 dollars) in their spare time, so I figured I’d better check his credentials. A quick online search reveals Dr. Esenwein to be J. Berg Esenwein, the editor of Lippincott’s magazine and the author of the 1908 textbook Writing the Short-Story: A Practical Handbook on the Rise, Structure, Writing and Sale of the Modern Short-Story. I see that Dr. Esenwein operated out of Burlington, Massachusetts, so we now know the real reason why ReaderCon has chosen that city as its home! (more…)