I discovered a wonderful site yesterday—The Marvel Comics Bullpen Bulletins Index, which reprints those gossipy pages which took us all behind the scenes at Marvel and enthralled me when I was a kid … and which I was eventually privileged to write!

You can see my first one, which appeared in all April 1975 Marvel Comics titles, here. (I was responsible for everything but Stan’s Soapbox, which he dutifully banged out himself each month.)

I can still remember sitting in the Bullpen typing away, and then going into Len’s office and reading it aloud to Len, my future wife Irene Vartanoff, and others, and how proud I was when they laughed as I read and then told me I’d nailed the voice.

But that’s not the Bullpen Bulletins page which I found the most interesting, at least not today. The one which just caught my attention came out the month before, in the March run of books. It included the first mention of me in a Bullpen Bulletins page, on the occasion of me making the move from my position as Associate Editor of Marvel’s British reprints to Assistant Editor on the U.S. titles. (more…)

According to Heidi MacDonald over at The Beat, you’ll soon be able to buy a complete collection of Stan Lee’s “Stan’s Soapbox” columns, which were originally published as part of the Marvel Comics’ Bullpen Bulletins pages from 1967 through 1980.

When I was a kid, it was that interstitial writing, as much as the comics themselves, which made me into a True Believer. Stan somehow made me feel as if I had a pal.

The book, which will be available in November, is being published as a fundraiser for the Hero Initiative, a federally chartered not-for-profit corporation which provides a safety net for comic-book creators in need of emergency medical aid or other financial support.

In additional to the columns themselves, the collection will also place Stan’s columns in their correct historical context via essays by current Marvel editor-in-chief Joe Quesada, Marvel Studios President of Production Kevin Feige, former Marvel editor-in-chief Roy Thomas, and others.

But one thing I’ll bet the book won’t contain is scans of the original typed copy for those Soapboxes, direct from Stan’s hands. Why, to read something like that, you’d probably have to have been working at Marvel Comics in the mid-’70s so you could go through the trash next to the typesetter’s desk.

Well … either that … or else, lacking a time machine, you could just take a look below. (more…)