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.

Will Eisner was born March 6, 1917, which means he would have turned 94 tomorrow. Google Australia has decided that’s an event worth celebrating (good for them!), and so turned its logo into an image of The Spirit for the day. But since it’s already tomorrow over in Australia (it’s always the future over there), we can see it that way now.

Though if you should happen to click that link when it’s no longer March 6 in Oz, you’ll have to content yourself with checking out the logo below.

I’m very pleased, even though it would be nice if the art style looked at little more … I don’t know … Eisnery. But I guess I shouldn’t look a gift Spirit in the mask.

Will the U.S. Google follow suit at midnight tonight and give us its own homage to Eisner? I sure hope so!

The Champions was a Marvel Comics supergroup of the mid-’70s created by Tony Isabella which starred Hercules, Ghost Rider, the Black Widow, Angel, and Iceman. Except for a fill-in issue by Chris Claremont, and one scripting assist by Bill Mantlo, Tony handled the first seven issues.

But with The Champions #8, the October 1976 issue (cover below), Bill took over the title and wrote the book until it was cancelled with #17, the January 1978 issue.

But before he began, he laid out his plans for the book in a two-page memo to Gerry Conway and Jim Shooter. Would you like to be able to compare his plans for the group with what actually happened? Well, thanks to my Marvel memo packrat ways, you can. Because here’s that memo!

I’ll leave it up to someone else to check the memo against the books themselves and provide a point by point comparison.

Why am I sharing this with you now? For those who haven’t seen my other findings from the vault (and by vault I mean the couple of file folders I’ve been lugging around for more than three decades)—

First, Sean Howe, editor of the fascinating Give Our Regards to the Atomsmashers!, is working on a history of Marvel in the ’70s, and I’m trying to make sure he has all the info he needs to make it the best possible book it can be. And since I’m going to the effort of scanning these memos and letting him see them, I figure you should get a look at them, too.

But also—when Len Wein suffered a house fire a few years back, which damaged not only his comic book and original art collections but also many historical documents about the secret history of the business, I started to think … what if my house burned down, and it turned out I had the only copies of some of these memos? So I decided to get as many of them online as I could, because the info doesn’t just belong to me, it belongs to everybody who loves comics.

So when you see other posts like this from me in the future … now you’ll know why.

With my birthday at the other end of this month—why, it’s exactly four weeks from today!—I know you’re wracking your brain trying to figure out exactly what to get me to celebrate the date. Well, wrack no further, because over on eBay, I’ve located the perfect gift.

Back in 1994, just two months before his death, Jack Kirby recreated his original cover for Amazing Fantasy #15 (first published in 1962), and that beautiful penciled artwork is now up for sale. The asking price is a mere $60,000. And I know that when it comes to showing your love for me, cost is no object.

Don’t worry. If a couple of you feel you need to chip in together, I won’t hold it against you.

If there’s one thing that my old boss Stan Lee wasn’t known for, it was humility. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Shepherding the Marvel Universe into being was hard enough, but selling it to the world was even harder. You’ve got to be a salesman. And that requires bombast, which Stan had (still has) oozing out of his pores. But humility? Not so much.

Why is why, when Bill Mantlo, who was the writer of Marvel Two-in-One, which teamed up The Thing with a different character each issue, suggested Stan as one month’s co-star, it was surprising that The Man would say … well, see below.

Nothing ever came of it, and I have no idea why. Was it Marv? Was it Roy, Len, or Archie? Or was it that mysterious “etc.”? Who knows? But the team-up never happened.

What’s that? You say you remember a team-up between Stan and Benjamin J. Grimm? Ah, but that wasn’t 35 years ago, just five, in Stan Lee Meets the Thing, published in 2006.

Bill Mantlo had nothing to do with this eventual meet-up. Instead, the issue was written by The Man himself, and drawn by Lee Weeks and Nelson DeCastro.

I won’t say it was a story 30 years in the making … but Bill Mantlo was there first.

Been so busy lately that I haven’t had time to blog, so those of you who don’t follow my brief updates on Twitter or Facebook might be wondering whether I still live. I do. It’s just that I haven’t had the time for anything more than those short bursts.

But now that it’s the first day of a three-day weekend (even though that first day is almost at an end), I figured … time for something more. So let’s start with a treat, something I dug up to share with Sean Howe, who’s writing what I hope will be the definitive history of Marvel Comics in the ’70s.

Below is a redacted memo written during my Marvel staff days. It was written by … well … I’d rather not say … complaining about … well … I didn’t think the identity of that person needed to be clearly identified either … and was written during the year … well … that might give too much away. But I still think it’s interesting even with some of the embarrassing details left out.

Besides—those who really know their Marvel stuff from that period will be able to figure it all out anyway. If you really want to know, you should have to work for it, I say.

Thought you’d all (well, all who are fanatics for that time period in Marvel’s history) would enjoy yet another peek behind the scenes …

While we’re all celebrating the fact that the Comics Code is dead, here’s a document that takes me back to when it was very much alive. Let’s see how different things used to be, shall we?

Among the many facts we’re told by a July 20, 1976 newsletter put out by the Comics Magazine Association of America is that “there are now only about 400 wholesalers (against more than 700 not that long ago).” Horrors!

What else was new? “Veteran artist Joe Kubert has opened a school of Cartoon and Graphic Art, to train artists for comics, featuring a two-year course.” Wonder how that worked out?

Plus, “Publishers Weekly reports that sales of books in the first quarter of 1976 were better than in the first quarter of 1975.” (What? No info on how ebooks did during those years?)

Check out the whole thing below.

I know I was a pretty annoying comic book fan, as my previous posts easily prove. But I’d forgotten how annoying I was when I first became a comic book professional.

As a fan, I was always bothering the pros for sketches, autographs, and behind-the-scenes info. But once I became a pro myself, that pestering was instead directed toward the other pros who were now my bosses.

Pros like … Stan Lee.

I’ve been going through my stash of Marvel memos to pick out ones that might be useful to Sean Howe (who definitely needs a Marvel nickname), who’s writing a history of Marvel in the ’70s, and while doing this I came across one of my many suggestions to Stan. I had the bizarre idea that we could start a Dial-a-Superhero service than would allow fans to hear pre-recorded messages from Marvel’s greatest.

Check out my note to Stan below.

Stan’s response? Take a look.

He liked the idea, and asked me to see if I could make it happen.

I couldn’t.

Why? After all these years, I no longer remember whether I reached out to an existing company that already knew how to provide such services and was rebuffed, or if some other reason prevented the concept from coming together. But consider yourself lucky.

And if you think that was the craziest thing I ever suggested to Stan, well, all I can say is … you’ll see.

You’ll see.

Last March, I shared with you a Phantom sketch I got from Sy Barry on September 26, 1971 at a 75th anniversary celebration for the comic strip which was co-sponsored by the Newspaper Comics Council of New York and the New York Daily News. You may remember I also managed to get a sketch of Joe Palooka by Tony DiPreta.

I promised I’d someday post the picture of the crowd that ran in the paper the following day. A picture that included me. Well, someday is now.

Check out the crowd below. Click on the image as many times as it takes to make it as large as possible.

Can you spot me?

Need a hint? I’m wearing the same jacket you see me in here. And in the first image here as well.

Did that help? If not, you might as well give up and content yourself with a look below at the true stars of the day. (more…)