Half an hour ago, I was outbid for a unique piece of comics memorabilia. Such a thing had never been sold before, so I had no way of gauging its value or eventual price. I was willing to pay a couple of hundred bucks, but it ended up going for $1,000, far too rich for my blood, especially considering the plans I had, about which more below.

So what just sold for $1,000? Why, this—

Any idea, before you scroll down, exactly what that is? Well, yes … hair. Anyone could tell that.

But whose hair? (more…)

I’ve never thought of myself as an oblivious kind of guy, but I guess I must be, as the following anecdote will prove …

I was traveling home from last weekend’s World Fantasy Convention, and as I passed through the San Diego International Airport skybridge that connects the rental car shuttle drop-off island and the terminals, I noticed a life-sized Steve Canyon (alongside other cartoon characters) decal on the glass. Nearby was a stand stuffed with double-sided cards promoting an ongoing exhibit of cartoonists celebrating flight. I picked up one of the cards you see below, and then, since I was a couple of hours early for my flight, tried to track the thing down.

So I went to an information booth and asked where I could find the exhibit referred to on the card and advertised on the decals. Clueless volunteers sent me from one terminal to another in search of an alcove where the exhibit was purported to be, until someone finally figured out that those initial decals I saw weren’t an ad—they WERE the exhibit.

For those who won’t be passing through the San Diego Airport, here’s how the six panels looked from ground level.

You can find photos of the individual panels—featuring Canyon, Snoopy as the Red Baron, Comic-Con cofounder Shel Dorf, and more—over on Flickr.

So where does my obliviousness come in? Evidently, the passageway was decorated like that prior to Comic-Con, and so I would have passed by it back in July both coming and going … and never noticed it!

The latest Back Issue magazine takes a look at DC’s anthology horror comics, with a special focus on horror hosts. Since I wrote the fifth issue of Doorway to Nightmare, the magazine not only features my rather scattered memories (hey, I wrote the thing more than thirty years ago!) of Madame Xanadu, but also a pic of me holding the original cover art during San Diego Comic-Con just last year.

You can order the latest Back Issue and discover what I and all the other ancient comics mavens had to say right here.

As Irene and I have done for quite a few years, we used her attendance at the New Jersey Romance Writers annual conference to swoop down on Marie Severin, the nicest lady in comics, with whom we worked at Marvel during the ’70s.

She was back then, and continues to be now, a hoot.

We swung by Thursday and took her out for Italian, plying her with wine and swapping stories of the old days. As usual, we filled her in on news of all our old friends (and all our old non-friends, too).

She asked after Stan Lee, and was tickled to hear he now had a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. We tried to figure out who the oldest surviving comics creator was, and thought that it had to be Joe Simon, who just turned 98. (You’ll tell me if I’m wrong, right?) We got her talking about the old EC days, which I don’t think we’d ever done before, and she told us what a good boss Bill Gaines had been to her.

But in addition to the comics gossip—unavoidable when we get together—we of course caught up on life in general, with much laughter. (There’s GOT to be laughter when you’re around Mirthful Marie.)

And here’s the lady herself, looking 82 years young.

We’ll continue talking by phone often, but I hope we won’t have to wait until next November to see her again in the flesh.

We love you, Marie!

The following ad appeared in the July 16, 1950 issue of The New York Times Sunday Magazine. My wife, whose discerning eyes I’d trust more than anyone’s when it comes to the styles of DC artists of the ’50s and ’60s, swears both images are by Jim Mooney.

Mooney, for those not familiar with the name, was best known for drawing Supergirl from 1959-1968, though I also loved him on Dial H for Hero. On top of that, I was lucky enough to have him draw my fill-in issue of Omega the Unknown in 1977.

Give the Clorox ad below a look and let me know wherther your discerning eyes agree.

Irene was going through some boxes in her closet and came across a couple of issues I wrote way back when of Welcome Back, Kotter, and since there’s no reason for her to hang on to comics she had nothing to do with, she passed them on to me. When I flipped through the extremely yellowed pages, what I found far more interesting than my own attempts at aping the voices of those Sweathogs was the following fractional ad.

Not sure how many comics readers in 1978 were interested in investing a quarter in finding out more about what was likely just some spurious land deal. I certainly wasn’t. The only ads I paid attention to were the in-house ads and the ones for back issues. Well … those and the Twinkie ads, too, of course.

How about you? Any idea what this was about? Googling any section of the text of the ad gets me nothing, so I’m counting on the group mind out there to tell me what was going on here. If you sent a sticky quarter to Collector Enterprises, please let me know what you got in return.

I only hope you’re not an oil baron now. I wouldn’t want to have to kick myself!

Back when I told you what I bought at this year’s Small Press Expo in Bethesda, I mentioned that I’d attended three presentations. What I didn’t say was that I recorded the one that interested me the most, “The Secret History of Women in Comics.” Not just so I could share it with you, but so that my wife, Impish Irene Vartanoff, who wasn’t able to be in the audience that day but who could be considered a part of that history, would be able to witness it, too.

Sorry it’s taken me two weeks to get this up on YouTube, but, hey … I’ve been busy.

In any case, the panel, held Saturday, September 10, 2011 at SPX, was described as follows on the program: “The increased involvement of women in the comics field over the past several years has been a significant positive change in a historically male-dominated industry. However, just as it’s worth celebrating this progressive revolution, it is also worth noting that today’s women cartoonists are part of a lineage of pioneering women who have made many contributions to the field. Heidi MacDonald will discuss this history with Jessica Abel, Robyn Chapman, Alexa Dickman and Diane Noomin.”

And here it is!

Thank goodness those guys got rid of that silly upside-down spaceship headquarters in exchange for something more environmentally aware.

I didn’t get to attend the Small Press Expo last year because our trip to Melbourne for Worldcon trumped everything, so I was glad I had no SPX conflicts this time around. I only attended Saturday, but still managed to make it to three programming items—a Q&A with Roz Chast and Kate Beaton about working at the New Yorker, a panel on the Secret History of Women in Comics moderated by Heidi MacDonald and featuring Jessica Abel, Robyn Chapman, Alexa Dickman, and Diane Noomin, and a presentation by Chester Brown on his new graphic novel Paying For It. In between all that, I had drinks with John Sullivan and Jamie Gegerson, and of course made several circuits of the dealers room.

I managed to resist most impulse buys, but here are three things I found I couldn’t resist.

The first book that caught my eye was Frog & Owl: Regret is for the Weak, by Molly Lawless. There was something about the title that attracted me. Maybe it’s from too much reading of Frog and Toad are Friends to my son a couple of decades ago, but the idea of a dysfunctional relationship of a similar animal pair attracted me. So I picked it up and started to read.

The second strip in the book, titled “Love Is” (see below), made me laugh. And as I then told the artist, “OK, you made me laugh. Now I have to buy it.”

It was a good choice, because when I read the book on getting home last night, Lawless made me laugh a LOT. (more…)

Sunday, September 4th, will be our 35th wedding anniversary, which Irene and I will celebrate at an undisclosed (for now) location. As you might expect, that’s made us a wee bit nostalgic, and sent us back to our photo albums to look at how all began.

So here are a couple of pics from when we were but tadpoles, back in the mid-’70s when we both worked in the Marvel Comics Bullpen and would have first met.

Can you believe that cutie ever took a second look at that doofus?