Since this has been a tumultuous couple of weeks in comics, I thought I’d share a second Stan Lee memo regarding personnel changes, in addition to the one I showed you several days ago.

Though the following item is signed, it’s undated, so I can’t tell you exactly when it was written. What I can tell you is that in my orderly file folder of memos from that period, it was between a memo dated March 24, 1976 (from me to John David Warner with due dates for upcoming issues of Son of Satan) and one dated April 20, 1976 (from Sol Brodsky regarding Jim Shooter’s … well … I’ll let that be a post for another day).

Yet another souvenir from Marvel’s revolving-door editor-in-chief position of the mid-’70s.

First Disney buys Marvel …

… then Paul Levitz is out at DC …

… and now this!

Where will it end?

Continuing my efforts to make sure history won’t be the lost in the event anything catastrophic were to happen to my possessions—one reason I shared a never-before-seen Don Perlin drawing two weeks ago—here’s another missing piece of the Marvel puzzle.

Back in the late ’70s, I wrote seven issues of Captain Marvel. (That’s Marvel Comics’ alien Captain Marvel, not the Captain Marvel of the Billy Batson/Shazam variety.) Here’s the cover from my penultimate issue, cover-dated January 1978:

The cover was drawn by Keith Pollard, while the interior of the issue was drawn by George Tuska. All but the final page, that is, which was drawn by Dave Cockrum: (more…)

While digging through boxes of papers earlier this month in search of Clarion workshop manuscripts from 1979 which had been scrawled on by my instructors—needed for my Worldcon PowerPoint presentation “How to Respond to a Critique of Your Writing”—I came across a box containing photocopies of several pieces of artwork I hadn’t even remembered owning.

I’ll probably end up posting them all here eventually, but since I shared a a never-before seen drawing of the Scarecrow on John Byrne’s birthday last month, I thought—why not start off with a never-before-seen drawing of The Scarecrow by Don Perlin, an artist best known for Werewolf by Night, a title which had impressed me way back when.

According to the one page of script which was packed away with the photocopy, this was meant to be the splash page for Scarecrow #2, with room left at the top for one of Marvel’s introductory text paragraphs and at the bottom for the indicia.

(And forgive me if the top and bottom halves of the illustration don’t entirely line up—I don’t own a scanner large enough to fit the entire piece, and so scanned each half separately and put it all back together again with Photoshop.)

But (you may ask) whatever happened to Scarecrow #1? (more…)

Over at the wonderful ’80s comics site Blinded Me With Comics—which is a companion site to the great ’70s comics site Diversion of the Groovy Kind—a recent post highlighted Captain’s America’s run for the presidency.

This all took place back in a 1980 story arc by writer Roger Stern and artist John Byrne, though the post also reprinted the letters page from Captain America #250 in order to give credit to the two guys who first suggested that concept—Roger McKenzie and Don Perlin. (more…)

Happy birthday, John!

John Byrne and I met more than a third of a century ago, back when we were both just fans, before I’d started on staff at Marvel Comics. And since it’s traditional to embarrass old friends on their birthdays, here’s a blast from the past even he may have forgotten about! I know I almost had.

John’s first professional comic-book art was published in the Skywald black-and-white horror magazine Nightmare #20 (August 1974), just about the time I started in the Marvel Bullpen. My own first professional comic-book script appeared about a year later, in Dead of Night #11 (Aug 1975). It was the first story about the Scarecrow, which Marvel seems to be calling the Straw Man these days.

The character had gone through many incarnations before it saw print, incarnations which John had known about and, as you’ll see, even participated in. In May 1975, I received a fan letter from him in which he wrote—

Just got the first issue of SCARECROW (D. O. N. #11). Love it! Really tremendous. And I much prefer this version to my pumpkin rendition.

Enclosed is a subtle hint.

The letter was accompanied by the sketch you see below.

Now you might think as you read that note—what pumpkin version? And you know something … I was just thinking along those lines myself. (more…)

I discovered a wonderful site yesterday—The Marvel Comics Bullpen Bulletins Index, which reprints those gossipy pages which took us all behind the scenes at Marvel and enthralled me when I was a kid … and which I was eventually privileged to write!

You can see my first one, which appeared in all April 1975 Marvel Comics titles, here. (I was responsible for everything but Stan’s Soapbox, which he dutifully banged out himself each month.)

I can still remember sitting in the Bullpen typing away, and then going into Len’s office and reading it aloud to Len, my future wife Irene Vartanoff, and others, and how proud I was when they laughed as I read and then told me I’d nailed the voice.

But that’s not the Bullpen Bulletins page which I found the most interesting, at least not today. The one which just caught my attention came out the month before, in the March run of books. It included the first mention of me in a Bullpen Bulletins page, on the occasion of me making the move from my position as Associate Editor of Marvel’s British reprints to Assistant Editor on the U.S. titles. (more…)

… that I began my staff position at Marvel Comics as Associate Editor in the British Reprint Department.

More importantly, it was the day I met my wife.

I’ve shared these photos before, but on a day like today, I feel moved to share them again.

Here I am at my desk in the Bullpen, a wall of that month’s covers behind me:

And here’s my Marvel Comics ID, with a photo taken, I believe, one year into my employment there:

There’s no possible way I could overstate how that day changed my life.

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t pause to mourn and remember Duffy Vohland, who died of AIDS in 1982, and without whom that day would never have occurred. Thanks for everything, Duffy.

In response to my entry about a famous comic-book image used by poet John Ashbery in one of his collages, rtbinc wrote to point me toward a New York Times article from September about Ashbery’s artwork, which includes other examples of him making use of comic art.

You can see the most obvious one below.

In this instance, the origin of the art is at least more directly acknowledged. Here’s what Holland Cotter wrote about this particular piece:

The insouciant Pop-ish sensibility in some pieces owes a debt to Mr. Brainard’s brilliant collage work, as in Mr. Ashbery’s “Diffusion of Knowledge,” with its pair of all-American comic-strip superheroes mounting a spirited defense of the Smithsonian Institution castle in Washington.

That’s Fighting American to the left and the Guardian to the right, both created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. Here’s what those characters look like in their natural habitats:

I’m afraid I can’t point out the exact panels or covers from which Ashbery took his images. Can you?

The Spring 2009 issue of The Paris Review includes a series of collages by famed poet John Ashbery. Evidently, he became fascinated by the collage concept during his years as a student at Harvard in the 1940s, and returned to the form in 2008. The magazine prints a dozen recent examples of these, 11 inside, and one on the issue’s cover.

Dan Chiasson, who wrote a brief introductory blurb to explain what we’re about to see, delves into the symbolism of these collages. He says:

“The background elements often depict possible pasts: people on go-carts, a scene in Rotterdam of men in bowlers, and the teetering, top-heavy trucks of the twenties. The foreground elements seem to express elation or relief at having escaped those pasts to make the art he has made and keeps making.”

Symbolism is all well and good, but if you look at the color component of the collage above, you’ll note that Ashbery didn’t just use any foreground element. That man with his hands over his ears was taken from one of the most famous pieces of comic-book art ever published.

Do you recognize him? I may be the only regular reader of The Paris Review who could identify him immediately, but I’m sure that in this venue, I’m not the only one.

You’d think the source would be worth mentioning in any interpretation of the meaning of this collage. I chalk this up to another case of those concerned with supposed “high culture” failing to be aware of supposed “low culture.” Because the origin of that image matters, whether or not The Paris Review or Ashbery scholars acknowledge it.

I could say more about why that particular man is so important, but I don’t want to spoil it for those of you for whom that image doesn’t cause an immediate “I know that face!”

So—a show of hands please. Who out there can recognize that famous face? Many of you, I hope, or else I’ll be severely disappointed.

A simple yes or no will do to start, so you don’t spoil it too quickly for the puzzled.