In 1975, I interviewed Steve Gerber, as I’d interviewed so many of Marvel’s writers when I worked there and (among other things) edited FOOM, the company’s fan magazine. I’d decided that rather than have a standard news section on oncoming comics, I’d print edited transcripts of the writers talking about what was around the corner, so readers would get a taste of creator personalities as well.

So here’s Steve talking about Crazy magazine as well as his work on Man-Thing and The Defenders in the only surviving tape from those years. Parts of this interview appeared transcribed in FOOM #9, the March 1975 issue.

And once more I ask myself—Did I really sound like that? I am forced to admit that I did. How did those of you who knew me then ever put up with me?

Back in 1975, while on staff at Marvel Comics, I edited the company’s official fan magazine, FOOM. One of the things I did as editor was to change the format of the news section. Rather than just running unadorned information, I decided I’d print interviews with the various writers and editors about what was upcoming on their titles. That way the fans would not only get facts, but also an insight into Bullpen personalities.

Some of those interviews were more successful than others.

As you’ll hear in the clip below—if you can even make out what I’m asking through the thick Brooklyn accent I had back then—my inability to get anything useful out of Archie could just as easily have been the fault of my goofy questions as anything else.

Keep listening for a special guest star—because the brief clip includes an even briefer cameo by Marv Wolfman.

And if you happen to remember why I would have made a joke back then about out-of-work police officers, please let me know—because I remember nothing!

(Thanks to Alan Light for the use of the photo I married to my audio. It’s a 1982 pic with a 1975 voice, but I hope you won’t find it too jarring.)

Yesterday’s posting of four rejection notes I received from Paul Levitz caused one of you to ask whether one-line rejections were common. Since many of the rejects I received back during my comics years were received orally in face-to-face pitch meetings, I don’t have that much experience with written rejection. But I found one more reject from the late ’70s that will give a little more documentation of what it was like to have stories kicked back by a comics editor. At least from a horror anthology, that is.

Once I was no longer on staff at Marvel and was free to try selling comics scripts elsewhere, I not only hit up the editors at DC, but at Gold Key as well, because the latter company was still publishing both Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery and The Twilight Zone.

Here’s what editor Denise Van Lear had to say about three plots I’d submitted to her.

I’m not entirely sure when this letter would have been written, but the two Gold Key comics she suggested I try submitting stories for, Boris Karloff #87 and The Twilight Zone #89, were cover dated December 1978 and February 1979 respectively.

As for her suggestion that one of my stories, “A Model Murder,” might be “better suited for Marvel or D.C.,” she was right—the story ended up being published in House of Mystery #270 (July 1979).

And guess what? You can read it here!

I’ve been sharing lots of old timey comics memorabilia from my personal files lately, some of it tied into birthdays and anniversaries, some related to events that happen to be in the news, and some simply to make sure possibly historic info is out in the world should something catastrophic strike here.

And then there are the letters, memos, and clippings I dig out because some comics historian is writing an essay about something that happened more than 30 years ago, and I head into the vault in search of data that might shed a little light or spark some memories.

So when I was contacted by a writer researching a piece about DC’s horror books like House of Mystery and House of Secrets for Back Issue magazine, I went looking for some of my plots or scripts that I thought I’d held on to … but no. They were nowhere to be found. I did, however, come across four late-’70s rejection notes written to me by editor Paul Levitz. (Don’t worry—he was also buying many other similar tales from me at the same time.)

I have no memory whatsoever as to the plots of the rejected stories. What legal problems was I going to cause? What industry in-joke was I hoping to get away with? No idea. I’m thinking that perhaps the cancer plot might have tuned into my short story “The Man Who Would Be Vampire,” but I can’t be sure.

Anyway, since I’ve shared these with that writer, I figured I should share them with you, too.

As soon as I saw the collection of tributes to individual Jack Kirby panels over at HiLobrow, I not only knew I wanted to be a part of the project, but I also immediately knew which panel deserved my love.

It came from one of my favorite issues of the Fantastic Four, issue #11, from February 1963, which unlike most issues, contained two stories. The Impossible Man was introduced in one of them, while we fans were able to get up close and personal with our heroes during “A Visit with the Fantastic Four” in the other.

In the panel below, which I would have seen when I was seven, the supergroup bumps into a group of kids pretending to be them, and as my brief essay explains … I could have been one of those kids.

The post begins:

When I was a kid, I grew up on the streets of Brooklyn, a borough of—not Metropolis, not Gotham, not Central City—but New York. You know—where the Marvel superheroes lived.

Which meant that although I could never hope to catch a glimpse of Superman flying by, there was always a chance I might turn the corner and bump into the Fantastic Four. Because I lived in New York City.

Jack Kirby’s city.

You can read the full story here.

Giant-Size Marvel Triple Action #1 was a 1975 reprint book that collected stories from mid-’60s issues of The Avengers, Daredevil, and Strange Tales. You wouldn’t think much could be learned from the cover of such a recycled Marvel comic. But there was always something more to be learned from Stan Lee.

Take a look at the preliminary cover to the left, and compare it with the published cover on the right. Notice anything different?

Aside from noting the obvious differences—color vs. black and white, a penciled word balloon and caption—take a look at Giant-Man’s face. Doesn’t he look fiercer in the printed version? How do you think he got that way?

Stan, of course!

In the memo to Len Wein that came attached to the preliminary cover, Stan gave a crash course in how to create a compelling cover.

About those scribbles on the cover, Stan wrote, among other things:

“Always look for, and try to recognize, these so-called ‘dead areas.’ By livening them up, either with addl. artwork, or zippy copy, you can often add a helluva lot more excitement to a cover. It’s one of the things that always gave, and will give us an edge over the competish.”

But—oh, no!—I now see that the “Avengers Assemble!” exclamation Stan asked for wasn’t added. Watch out, Len! If Stan finds out you ignored his request, he’ll come gunning for you! He doesn’t believe in the statute of limitations!

Luckily, Len did make sure that some of the heroes’ expressions were tweaked, based on Stan’s other comment:

I’ve told this to all our staff a million times over the years, but it can’t be mentioned too often. It’s VITALLY important. Often a story that seems dull could seem twice as exciting with more excitement being registered by the characters. Always look for, and try to remedy, such situations.”

There’s more detail in the memo itself, which I advise you read in full. After all, you wouldn’t want the competish to get the upper hand!

As anyone who’s ever seen me play softball or touch football knows (or should I say, as anyone who’s ever seen me try to play softball or touch football knows), I’m about the least athletic person on the planet. Which is why I’m glad that I’m able to provide evidence that during the summer of ’76, I was able to raise my game from pathetic to merely embarrassing as part of the Marvel Comics softball team.

What position did I play? I was put wherever the rest of the team felt I could do the least damage at any given moment.

As the certificate below proves, I was the team’s Most Improved Player. But just to show how miserable my performance really was, I’ll point out that the certificate calls me the Most Improved Player … for a Boy. If not for parsing the categories that finely, I’m sure that when the time came to hand out the awards at the banquet at the end of the season, I’d have walked away empty handed.

Because calling any change in my playing abilities an improvement was an act of kindness. Believe me.

The certificate was designed by … wait a second. Let’s make this a quiz.

If you’d like to guess who created these certificates, stop reading now, examine the lettering closely, and think about it for a bit. Then take your guess, scroll down, and see if you were right.

Are you done cogitating?

Ready to know who’s responsible?

Are you sure?

Well, then …

… it’s …

… it’s …

… Marie Severin, of course!

Did you guess correctly?

When I worked in the Marvel Bullpen in the mid-’70s, one of the many things I’m still amazed the company would let a kid like me be in charge of was the 1975 Marvel Comic Con. Phil Seuling, who’d been running the famed July 4th weekend comic book conventions, was the organizational brains of the event, dealing with the hotel, the dealers, the memberships, etc., while I took care of the creative aspects—the panels, the program book, wrangling the talent, and so on.

As a result, there were dozens of memos flying around the office as we tried to pull the thing together, many of them written by me, but quite a few from Stan Lee. Unless there’s a demand for it (which I’m not expecting), I’m going to spare you from having to read any of the memos I wrote while trying to get this off the ground, and just share the missives from those who matter … like the following two-pager from Stan in response to one of my many lists of programming suggestions.

To me, the most intriguing part of the memo is Stan’s insistence that we eschew the word “horror,” because it’s “like waving a red flag to a bull in regards to most parents.” Things have changed a bit in the intervening decades. At least, it seems like they have. (They have, haven’t they?)

As for his comments that the panels needed more artists, that they were too writer-heavy … yeah, what can I say, I was guilty. He had me dead to rights. My writerly bias was showing and Stan properly reined it in … which I hope any of you who made it to the con in 1975 saw.

And speaking of that, a show of hands. How many of you DID attend that convention, now almost 36 years ago?

Back on September 12, 2009, I hinted at an April 20, 1976 memo from Sol Brodsky that somehow related to Jim Shooter. And ever since then, every couple of months, Sean Howe, the guy who’s writing that history of Marvel in the ’70s, has emailed to tell me that he really wants to see that memo. So I figure it’s time I put him out of his misery.

But I’m afraid that for most of you, the memo (I almost typed “email,” which shows how much difficulty I have in looking back so far into the past) will be anticlimactic. Because there won’t seem to be anything intriguing about it at all. For some small number of you, though, it will open a mystery for which I have no answer.

As you can see, Sol’s memo states that Jim had resigned his position as Associate Editor, and that his last day would be May 6, 1976.

But (you might be asking yourself) how can Shooter be quitting? Didn’t he hang around to later take over as Editor-in-Chief in 1978?

Why yes. Yes, he did.

And if you are one of the few who knew that factoid, you probably wish I could explain the meaning of this memo. Well, I can’t. Too much time has passed.

Did Jim quit, take a hiatus from his employment at Marvel, and later return to eventually ascend to the position of Editor-in-Chief? Or did he instead just threaten to quit for some forgotten personal or political reason and get talked out of it, so there was no break at all? I seem to recall the latter, but my memory is so hazy it could just as easily have been the former.

And so I hand this memo over to the care of the corps of truly dedicated Marvel historians out there to figure out what it truly means.

Which may just mean I’m handing it over to Sean and Sean alone. But that’s OK. As I’ve said before, the truth wants to be free.

I created my earliest fiction (well, save for the lies I told my parents) somewhere between age 8 and 11. And the story I wrote was an adventure I couldn’t then get from comic books; not because it couldn’t be done, but because comics hadn’t yet evolved to the point where the corporate entities had the will to do it. It starred all of the Marvel and DC heroes of the day in an epic melee, battling across company lines. Because that was a fannish dream—to erase the boundaries between Marvel and DC and put those heroes and villains in one big playground.

I’d have to wait until 1976 to see the real thing, in the first ever company crossover, Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man, written by Gerry Conway.

One of the many documents I’ve been saving since my days in the Marvel Bullpen has been a photocopy of Gerry’s original Marvel-style plot for the book. I haven’t bothered sharing this synopsis online up until now because I was sure someone else must surely have already done it. But an Internet search, as well as a survey of those who ought to know, revealed to me that no one’s ever posted the following outline of Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man before.

And so—because information wants to be free—check out something I’ve been lugging around in a file folder for more than three decades. Enjoy another taste of behind-the-scenes secret history.