Found among late my late sister-in-law Ellen Vartanoff’s papers — two scripts written by Jack Miller for Young Love #82 (October 1970).

Miller wrote comics from the ’40s through the ’60s, including such titles as Deadman, Batman, Aquaman, Blackhawk, Jimmy Olsen, and many others. (more…)

Here’s another 1950s horror story which raised concerns with the Comics Code Authority when Marvel chose to reprint it during the 1970s, as revealed by documents I found among my sister-in-law Ellen Vartanoff’s papers. The original appeared in Uncanny Tales #3 (October 1952).

When it came time for the three-page “Crazy” — scripted by Stan Lee and drawn by Jerry Robinson — to be republished in Where Monsters Dwell #34 (March 1975), the CCA had a question about the tale of a hit-and-run driver. (Note: neither time was the story considered cover worthy.)

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Ready for another mid-’70s Marvel Comics mystery?

Back then, Marvel reprinted many 1950s horror stories which had first been published before the existence of the Comics Code Authority. Such was the case with “He Lurks in the Shadows,” originally seen in Uncanny Tales #6 (March 1953).

Twenty-two years later, when that story was slated to appear in Crypt of Shadows #16 (March 1975), there were two differences — its premise was no longer considered cover worthy — plus this time around, the Comics Code needed to approve each page before it was published.

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Howard the Duck was supposed to get laid (sort of) in his debut issue cover-dated January 1976 — and though I no longer remember why he didn’t get laid, I have proof of that editorial alteration thanks to papers discovered in my late sister-in-law Ellen Vartanoff’s collection.

In that issue, there’s a scene where Howard lands in a nest and explains how it “reminds me of where I was first hatched.” But that is not how the word balloon was originally lettered. (more…)

I was horrified to hear that David Anthony Kraft — whom I first met 40+ years ago when my comics career began and last saw at the 2019 Marvel Celebrates Stan Lee afterparty — died on May 19, 2021 of pneumonia induced by COVID-19.

Here he is with Jo Duffy and me at that latter event.

Saying I was shocked and stunned is too tame. Though I can’t be sure, I likely met Dave at Marvel the same day I met my wife. My first day on staff there was June 24, 1974. I was 19. Irene’s first day was April 15, 1974. And Dave began in the Bullpen slightly earlier than either of us, on March 25, 1974.

An additional reason David Anthony Kraft’s death felt and still feels unbelievable — aside from the fact the death of any contemporary seems shocking — is only 24 hours prior to learning of his death, I discovered the apoplectic paperwork sent by the Comics Code Authority censoring one of his stories, and was going to call him.

As those who’ve been following me know, I’ve been sorting through my late sister-in-law Ellen Vartanoff’s collection. She taught comics and art, and over the decades was donated artifacts which showed how the sausage was made. This particular find relates to Giant-Sized Dracula #4 (March 1975). (more…)

I’d planned to take a day trip to New York last year to chat with Jim Salicrup, whom I’d met during the mid-‘70s when we both worked in the Marvel Comics Bullpen, but (for reasons I’m sure you understand) that couldn’t happen. And as I continue to pretend we’re living in the world we want, rather than the one we’ve been handed, I recently had that meal … albeit remotely.

For the past 15 years, Jim’s been the editor-in-chief at Papercutz, which publishes Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, Smurfs, Asterix, and more, but when I met him, he was at the start of his 20-year Marvel career, where he wrote Transformers, Sledge Hammer, The A-Team, Spidey Super Stories, the infamous Incredible Hulk toilet paper, and much more. He also edited The Avengers, The Uncanny X-Men, The Fantastic Four, and The Amazing Spider-Man. In between those two jobs, he worked at Topps, where edited books such as Bram Stoker’s Dracula, X-Files, Zorro, and a line of Jack Kirby superhero comics — and also did a stint at Stan Lee Media as well.

We discussed the illustrated postcard which convinced Marvel Comics to hire him at age 15, how John Romita Sr. caused him to change his name the first day on the job, what he did to enrage MAD magazine’s Al Feldstein, his late-night mission to secure Stan Lee’s toupee, what editor Mark Gruenwald had in common with Bill Murray, why the 1970s’ X-Men revival was like Amazing Fantasy #15, how he convinced Todd McFarlane to stick to Spider-Man (which eventually led to a blockbuster new comic), the possible connection between Stan’s love of crossword puzzles and the famed Marvel Method, and much more.

Here’s how you can take a seat at the table with us — (more…)

My last restaurant meal took place March 10, 2020 with Michael Dirda — on which you got to eavesdrop during Episode 117 of this podcast. I’d planned to get together for lunch with this episode’s guest three days later at a Thai restaurant in Silver Spring, Maryland, but before that day could come, I realized COVID-19 had made such a meeting unwise.

More than 10 months later, with no sense we’re coming to the end of this pandemic any time soon, I’m once again refusing to let this world steal a good conversation, and so longtime comics retailer Joel Pollack and I are reclaiming that lost meal — though with bagels and cream cheese and whitefish and smoked salmon rather than Pad Thai.

Joel Pollack has been a part of comics fandom even longer than I have — he attended one of Phil Seuling’s 4th of July Comic Art Conventions two years before I did — in 1968 — and founded Big Planet Comics in Bethesda, Maryland in 1986. That flagship store has expanded to other locations in Washington, D.C., College Park, MD, and Vienna VA, and I thought it would be fun to chat about the world of comics and comics fandom of the past half century, and how comics retailing has changed over the past three and a half decades.

We discussed what the pandemic has done to the comics shop business, the comic his mother bought him which changed his life, the card game which led to him getting his first piece of original art, how his run-in with a young Howard Chaykin convinced him he wasn’t cut out to be a professional comics artist, what opening day was like at the first of his Big Planet comic book stores, the biggest sales event he’s seen during his 35-year retailing career, what inspired Bernie Wrightson to draw a freaky issue of Swamp Thing, how he fights back against the Comic Book Guy cliche to makes his shops welcoming places, our joint distaste of slabbing, why he doesn’t like doing appraisals, and much more.

Here’s how you can eavesdrop on our conversation — (more…)

After 189 guests and more than 224 hours of ear candy, Eating the Fantastic makes history — by offering you an episode with the greatest discrepancy between the quality of the guest and the quality of the food being eaten.

I’ve known that guest, Danny Fingeroth, for more than 40 years. A Marvelous Life: The Amazing Story of Stan Lee, his biography of “The Man,” has just been released in paperback. That’s but the latest of his many accomplishments since he started in comics back in the ’70s as an assistant at Marvel to previous guest Larry Lieber.

Danny went on to become group editor for all the Spider-Man titles, and writer of the Deadly Foes of Spider-Man and Lethal Foes of Spider-Man mini-series, plus long runs on Dazzler and Darkhawk. His other books in addition to that Stan Lee bio include Superman On The Couch: What Superheroes Really Tell Us About Ourselves and Society and Disguised as Clark Kent: Jews, Comics, and the Creation of the Superhero.

As for dinner … our multi-course meal was made up of nothing but Marvel-branded food — which clearly should be ingested for their novelty value only — about which you’ll hear us kibitz during our conversation.

We discussed his start (like mine) in the Marvel British reprint department, what was wrong with the early letters he wrote to comics as a kid, his admittedly over-generalized theory that there were only two kinds of people on staff at Marvel, our differing reactions to the same first comic book convention in 1970, our somewhat similar regrets about the old-timers we worked beside during our early days in comics, the reason working in comics was wonderful and heartbreaking at the same time, why he wanted to be not only Stan Lee, but both Stan and Jack Kirby, how he was able to interview “The Man” and get him to say things he’d never said before, why comics was the perfect medium for Stan Lee, and much more.

Here’s how you can eavesdrop on our conversation — (more…)

I first met comic book artist and writer Larry Lieber when I worked in the Marvel Comics Bullpen of the mid-‘70s. Though perhaps that’s not really accurate — because that was only when I first met him in the flesh. I really first met him when I was seven, the year I picked up copies of Tales of Suspense #39, in which he co-created Iron Man, Journey into Mystery #83, in which he co-created Thor, and Tales to Astonish #35, in which he co-created Ant-Man.

Larry also contributed to comics in many other ways, with long stints working on the Marvel western comic Rawhide Kid, the syndicated newspaper strips devoted to Spider-Man and The Hulk, and so much more. He’s also responsible for one of the most memorable moments of my early comics career. During a party hosted by Bullpen pal Tony Isabella at his midtown Manhattan penthouse apartment atop the Hotel Edison, he and I and Tony sang “New York, New York” from “On the Town” while we danced back and forth across the roof, pretending we were Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Jules Munchin.

A week before Larry’s 88th birthday, we met for dinner at his favorite French restaurant, Bistro Le Steak, on the corner of Third Avenue and East 75th Street in Manhattan, where we chatted about the old days, as well as what he has planned for the days still to come.

We discussed the old-time radio shows which most influenced him, what he learned about humanity from reading Margaret Mead back in the ’50s, how the only reason he became a writer was because he was too slow to make a living an artist, who told him back at the start of his career that comics was a “dying industry,” the tips Stan Lee gave to make him a better writer, why his attempts to work for DC Comics never worked out, the warning artist Syd Shores offered he wishes he hadn’t heeded, how a quote he heard in a movie about Irish playwright Sean O’Casey helped him understand the arc of his own life, the three best-selling books he read before writing his own novel, his mixed feelings on winning the Bill Finger Award, how Jim Shooter helped him relearn how to be an artist, which comics assignment he enjoyed the most, what Stan Lee told him about the Rawhide Kid that made him decide to take it over from Jack Kirby, why he feels like Don Quixote, the surprising thing he thinks is the best thing he’s ever written, and much more.

Here’s how you can eavesdrop on our conversation — (more…)

And now we are 100! And who better to be a guest on Eating the Fantastic’s 100th episode than writer/editor Mark Evanier, who as this episode goes live, is currently taking part in so many panels at San Diego Comic-Con he should earn a place in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Evanier started his comic book career way back in 1969, and over the years has written issues of Blackhawk, Groo the Wanderer, DNAgents, and (like me) Welcome Back, Kotter. He worked as Jack Kirby’s production assistant, which eventually resulted in his award-winning book Kirby: King of Comics. He’s won multiple Will Eisner Awards, as well an an Inkpot Award and a Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award.

But Mark has also led a whole other life writing for television, working on live-action shows such as The Nancy Walker Show, The McLean Stevenson Show, and Welcome Back, Kotter, plus animated series like Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo, Thundarr the Barbarian, Dungeons & Dragons, and The Garfield Show.

Our meal took place at Canter’s Delicatessen in Los Angeles, resulting in a sense of terroir greater than any other episode. As you’ll hear, he’s eaten there with both Jack Kirby and Stan Lee over the years — though not together — and he has plenty to say about both of them.

We discussed the lesson he learned watching Stan Lee write one of his famous Bullpen Bulletins pages, how his first sale to Laugh-In magazine led him to believe he could make it as a professional writer, the lunch at which Jack Kirby swore him to secrecy about quitting Marvel, the inker Kirby would have chosen if he was allowed to choose only one (and why it wouldn’t be Vince Colletta), his stupefied reaction when Sergio Aragonés placed the original art for the first issue of MAD in his hands (and how Mark later stupefied Jerry Lewis), whether he can imagine a world in which Stan Lee and Jack Kirby could have ironed out their differences, and much, much more.

Here’s how you can eavesdrop on our conversation at Canter’s Deli — (more…)