Looking through a copy of the October 1944 issue of Action Comics, what attracted my attention wasn’t wasn’t any of the, well, action comics, but rather the ad below, which appeared on the back cover.

The fact that we were promised a “recipe on every wrapper” makes me think that Baby Ruth candy bars were once a baking staple, but could that really be? This is the first I’ve ever heard of it.

And how many recipes could there possibly be? Other than using them in those cookies the sailor seems so thrilled to be biting into, I can’t think of many other uses for them.

Besides—what’s he doing taking cookies from a strange woman anyway? Wasn’t he paying attention to all those WWII ads for venereal disease? He should have known better!

DC Comics would like you to pitch stories for their new “EC-type” book Strange Adventures of Science Fiction.

And by you, I mean me.

And by me, I mean me in 1979.

I received the letter below from editors Jack C. Harris and Joe Orlando almost 31 years ago to the day. January 9, 1979, in fact. Just in case the date alone doesn’t make you realize how long ago that was, perhaps their statement that “We also want the book to sell like tickets to King Tut” will!

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Scott Andrew Hutchins, who seems to be the world’s number-one fan of The Scarecrow, a comic I wrote for Marvel in the mid-’70s, has sent along this ad which offered subscriptions to the book, and to other comics which were never published. (I explained the on-again off-again nature of the character’s publication history here.)

Though the title had appeared on Marvel’s internal calendar, I’d forgotten that a public solicitation had actually appeared before the horror implosion occurred and killed the series. Click on the scan below to check it out.

I wonder how many people bothered to send in the $3.50? And when the comic they wanted became a stillborn, which title they chose instead?

I’ve been so busy digging out from under work since my return from Florida for the unveiling of my father’s grave marker that I haven’t had time to consistently post here, just micro posts over on twitter. So here’s a tiny appetizer as I rev up to regular posting again.

Remember the cover I shared with you from the June 1973 issue of the fanzine The Comic Reader? Well, it turns out that there’s fun stuff on the inside as well!

Let’s step into the time machine and read some of Paul Levitz’s editorial from that ancient publication. Anyone worried that Paul will be pulling back from his fine work on The Comic Reader due to an increasing workload at DC Comics needn’t fear—he has “no desire to make a career for myself in this industry.”

Wow! Just imagine how much further Paul might have gone had he wanted a career in the comics industry!

And here it is, the seventh and final Ethics column I published in The Comics Journal in the mid-’80s. This installment appeared in TCJ #109, the May 1986 issue, and dealt with the great dichotomy between what the superheroes I read about were doing with their lives and what I was doing with my own.

I also wrote two other columns for TCJ which were never published. One dealt with censorship over at The Comics Buyers Guide, for which I obtained a quote from Bill Gaines, and the other was about my relationship with Jim Shooter. If I can find the manuscripts, I’ll share them with you here.

I can no longer remember exactly why Gary Groth decided he didn’t want me to continue. Maybe it’s because I was growing more and more didactic.

Or, as in the case with the column below, maybe I was becoming dickish.

That’s right. Dickish.

Because this is the only one which, upon rereading, had me feeling l sounded like a dick. (Of course, you might have been feeling that all the way back at installment one.) (more…)

I headed over to Silver Spring, Maryland, this morning to catch the documentary Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential Artist. Had it not been the D.C.-area premiere, with director Andrew D. Cooke scheduled to be present for a Q&A, I might have instead waited for the DVD. But since it had the feel of an event, I thought it might be fun, and worth the drive. (After all, I’m about an hour and 45 minutes away.) Also, I was intrigued to see whether serendipity would throw me together with any other members of the comics and/or science-fiction tribe.

I’d never been to the AFI Silver Theatre before, so I made sure to get there early and scope the place out. While waiting in line wondering whether I’d see any familiar faces, who should appear but local fan Kyle Scott McAbee, someone I’d often seen at Capclave, Balticon, and even a few Worldcons. While we waited to be let in, we chatted about Walter Karig, the novel Zotz!, and the Stratemeyer Syndicate. I’d have liked to have kept talking, but unfortunately, we parted once we were let in, since he wanted to sit in the back row and I preferred to sit closer to the front. (Sorry, Kyle!) (more…)

I was going through some old comics to prepare them for sale (a story for another time) when I noticed something on the cover of Strange Adventures #71, the August 1956 issue.

Floating above the image of an interplanetary clock counting down the time until the death of Earth was a banner which read “EXCITING NEWS! GIGANTIC CONTEST!” And what did you have to do to win one of those “5000 PRIZES?” Simply come up with a new slogan to describe DC Comics.

DC provided a few (rather lame) examples, such as “I buy when I see DC,” “DC Comics are Decent Comics,” and “Your reading key is the symbol DC.”

[I’m sorry the interior pages aren’t crisp and clear, but considering the comics’ age and value, scanning was out of the question, so I simply snapped the best photos I could.]

There were no details yet on how to enter. That was to come later, as announced on the cover of Mystery in Space #34, the October/November 1956 issue. Inner pages provided a list of prizes and an entry form. (more…)

Below are scans of the sixth Ethics column I published in The Comics Journal back in the mid-’80s, after I’d left the field and was trying to make sense of it all. This one appeared in TCJ #107, the April 1986 issue.

This installment dealt with sexism in the comics industry, and the politics of privilege, how those of us who benefit from an unfair institutionalized situation often cannot see the workings of the machinery that acts in our favor.

If I could temper anything I wrote here, it would be … well, give the piece a read, and I’ll see you on the other side.

As I was saying …

I shouldn’t have allowed my disappointment with Women in the Comics, by Trina Robbins and Cat Yronwode, to cause me to damn it to the extent that I did. Yes, I felt, and still feel, that the many silences I noted should have been documented, still need to be documented. But I can see, as I could not see then, that I gave in to hyperbole, and it wasn’t the evil book I painted it to be. I didn’t necessarily need to trash their efforts to make the case I was trying to make, and I’m sorry.

Only one published Ethics column remains. There were two further ones written which The Comics Journal never printed. Will I share them here? We’ll see …

Long before Paul Levitz became first a comic-book editor and then the president of DC Comics, he was both the editor and publisher of a monthly fanzine titled The Comic Reader. Below is the cover to issue #98, dated June 1973, with an image that highlighted “the crowded and confused Marvel universe.”

In addition to containing news of upcoming comics, that issue also reported on the death of Syd Shores on June 3rd, the upcoming move of DC Comics (still being referred to as National) to 75 Rockefeller Plaza on July 27th, and the fact that Phil Seuling’s legal troubles for allegedly selling underground comic books to a minor was still unresolved.

But back to that cover.

Now that you’ve studied the image, can you tell me which future comic-book writer and editor, not at all known for being an artist, provided the illustration?

I’ve erased the signature so as not to spoil it for you.

The only thing further I’ll say is that it wasn’t Paul, and it wasn’t me.

Any guesses?

Here’s the fifth Ethics column I published in The Comics Journal back in the mid-’80s. This one appeared in issue #106, the March 1986 issue, and dealt with my realization that I’d spent my entire career in comics trying to be Stan Lee, rather than myself.

But by the time I realized that, it was too late.

That issue of Captain Marvel I mentioned? You can read more about it here. I see now that when I’d written that entry in August, I’d forgotten the Space Phantom was meant to be a part of the story. Was it him impersonating Wonder Man on that final page, which would have lead to a confrontation between Captain Marvel and the real Wonder Man the following issue?

We may never know. But I guess I should never say never, for who knows what else I might discover in the vault?

As for the main point of the essay, I do sometimes regret that I didn’t start to find my voice in the comics field until just as I was leaving it. Will I ever give comics a try again? It seems impossible now with all the many things I’m trying to get done each day, but as I’ve already written above … never say never.