I like Christmas. I really do.

I love going out at night and driving around looking at lights, I lust after fruitcake, and I can’t watch It’s a Wonderful Life without sobbing like a baby.

So why is it that as I searched for Christmas imagery to illustrate the day, the only pieces of art which spoke to me show poor Santa either threatened …

… or dead? (more…)

I ran across two stories this week dealing with African-American comic-book creators, one meant to make me laugh, the other designed to tug at my heartstrings. The piece that wanted to move me succeeded, the other … not so much.

The supposedly funny skit appeared as part of the Chocolate News TV series on Comedy Central. I’m a big fan of David Alan Grier, and have been ever since In Living Color. I like him still. Only what I tend to enjoy most about the new series is the personality he lets shine through during his monologues, rather than the skits, which can be hit and miss.

The bit on Blomicon 2008, The Black Comic Con, was one of those misses. It could have been funnier. It should have been funnier. Here it is for those of you who might not have caught it when it aired. Maybe you’ll find it funnier than I did.

Then there’s the recent Washington Post article, “Comic Book Hero” written by David Rowell, which follows Andre Campbell as he navigates the 15th Annual Pittsburgh Comic Con. Campbell is a legally blind artist who has created more than 500 characters and hopes to someday make it as a comic-book creator. I wish him well.

In my final dream this morning, a dream which has since become rather fuzzy, Doctor Octopus was engaged in one of his nefarious schemes, only it seemed something larger than what Doc Ock would normally do, almost on a grand Doctor Doom scale of criminal plot.

I vaguely recall that it had something to do with scooping up Manhattan and shrinking the island down so that he could make a souvenir for himself, much like Braniac did with the bottled city of Kandor. The details are fading away, but in the dream I was a witness to this actually happening.

But then the dream took on a meta-level, and I found myself sitting next to Len Wein while the two of us calmly debated whether or not this was something Doc Ock would actually do. Len felt that this action was not characteristic of this particular super-villain, and was way beyond him, while I was taking the position that Doc Ock could have pulled it off. I was quoting scenes from early issues of Spider-Man to defend my position (which in the light of day does not seem defensible).

What was the weirdest thing to me about the dream what that it was as if the villainy was both happening and not happening. I don’t think that if Manhattan was really being stolen that two guys would be calmly discussing the event as if they were Siskel and Ebert reviewing a movie.

I woke in the midst of this bantering with Len, but because I didn’t immediately scribble down the dream, much of it has evaporated.

Last week, while digging out a Marie Severin illustration with which to wish Chris Claremont a happy 58th birthday, I came across another drawing which brought back the old days, and a photo, too, all three from the pages of the June 1975 issue of Marvel Comics’ own fan magazine, FOOM.

I was the editor of FOOM back then, and issue #10 was an X-Men special, in honor of the relaunch which had occurred just a few months earlier in the pages of Giant-Sized X-Men #1. I filled that issue of FOOM with many articles and drawings about the mutant supergroup, including this Paty Cockrum illustration of Marvel Bullpenners as members of the original X-Men.

The piece, which appeared on one of the issue’s two editorial pages, shows Duffy Vohland as The Angel, me as the Beast (and yes, that’s an accurate depiction of my coiffure back then), Stan Lee as Professor X, Marv Wolfman as Iceman, Len Wein as Cyclops, and Paty as Marvel Girl.

You’re probably familiar with all of us in the artwork above save for Duffy Vohland, who isn’t much remembered by many outside of the industry these days, but without whom I’d never have gotten a job at Marvel in the first place. Though I’d been a convention-attending fan for years before I was hired by Marvel Comics, Duffy was the one who urged me to apply for an open position editing the company’s British line, when I’d previously avoided trying to make a living at something I loved, not wanting to mix business and pleasure. (I’ll leave further details of that ambivalence for some other time.) (more…)

The first horrific dreams I ever had which were inspired by a book or magazine as opposed to arising from the depths of my own depraved brain came about when I was nine due to the image on the cover of this July 1964 issue of Famous Monsters of Filmland, edited by Forrest J Ackerman.

As a result, my parents forbade me from reading it or any other monster magazines for at least a week, hoping to protect my impressionable mind.

I couldn’t keep away, though (sorry, Mom and Dad!), and snuck back to them as often as I could. (more…)

In a recent Washington Post article about Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley Under Ground, the reviewer mentioned in passing about the author of Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley that “after graduating from Barnard, Highsmith supported herself writing for comic books.”

Am I the only one who did not know this?

I guess so, because according to Highsmith’s Wikipedia entry (and we all know that Wikipedia is never wrong):

Living in New York City and Mexico between 1942 and 1948, she wrote for comic book publishers, turning out two stories a day for $55-a-week paychecks. With Nedor/Standard/Pines (1942-43), she wrote Sgt. Bill King stories and contributed to Black Terror. For Real Fact, Real Heroes and True Comics, she wrote comic book profiles of Einstein, Galileo, Barney Ross, Edward Rickenbacker, Oliver Cromwell, Sir Isaac Newton, David Livingstone and others. In 1943-45 she wrote for Fawcett Publications, scripting for such Fawcett Comics characters as the Golden Arrow, Spy Smasher, Captain Midnight, Crisco and Jasper. She wrote for Western Comics in 1945-47.

So this seems to have been more than just a brief fling.

That information on the non-fiction narratives of famous people sounds very specific, so I’m assuming that I could track them down if I wanted to. But do we know exactly which issues of fictional superhero adventures she wrote? Those sound far more intriguing.

I can’t find this information online (well, maybe I could, but I’m not having much luck), so if anyone can point me in the right direction, please pipe up!

Happy birthday, Jack!

Thanks for a lifetime of amazing art, and also for illustrating the most grotesque, over-the-top ending to a horror comic ever!

Check out these unforgettable panels from “Foul Play,” which originally appeared in The Haunt of Fear #19 back in 1953, based on a story idea by William Gaines and a script by Al Feldstein.

And thanks, too, for your quick caricature back at the EC Comics Convention in 1972!

Stan’s Soapbox: The Collection, which I’ve told you about many times before, is finally out. The book, which collects all of Stan Lee’s “Stan’s Soapbox” columns which originally appeared from 1967 through 1980, plus essays from people such as Joe Quesada, Roy Thomas, and others, including me, has been published by the Hero Initiative as part of its fundraising efforts for comic-book creators in need of financial support.

The large trade paperback is in full color, beautifully illustrated, and turns out to be far more elegantly designed than I’d anticipated. You should all rush out and buy it right now!

But I must admit that there was one page of the book which took me aback. (more…)

Chris Claremont, with whom I worked at Marvel Comics back in the ’70s, turns 58 today. Chris is perhaps best known for his 16-year run on Uncanny X-Men.

But Chris wasn’t always the trusted comics veteran that he is today. When I was editing the Marvel fan magazine FOOM, I asked Marie Severin to draw this image for the June 1975 issue just as Chris was at the beginning of that amazing run.

According to the caption, the image depicts “What the fans wanted to do to Chris Claremont, Len Wein, and Dave Cockrum for destroying the X-men before they saw the book. Once the finished product was in their hands, they quickly changed their minds.”

But as I look at the expression of agony on Chris’ face, I suspect that what this picture really shows is how he might be feeling inside today as the realization sinks in that another year has gone by.

Happy birthday, Chris!

Over at The Beat, Heidi MacDonald recently shared a photo taken in a comics shop in 1967. She found the photo at the UCLA Charles E. Young Research Library Department of Special Collections, which has digitized 5,746 images from its photographic archives which originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times and the Los Angeles Daily News from the 1920s to the 1990s.

As fascinating a photo as that is—you can see a copy of Action Comics #1 out on a table rather than under glass—I’m not going to share it with you here, since you can wander over to Heidi’s site and check it out for yourself. But as soon as I heard of the existence of those UCLA archives, I immediately went and did some research of my own. I found this fascinating photo of Los Angeles city councilman Ernest Debs holding horror comic books which he had purchased in his district.

I have no idea what Deb’s role was during the comics censorship scare, but from his expression, I’m guessing that he didn’t enjoy the experience!

With a little browsing at The Grand Comics Database Project, I was able to identify all six comics. They are Tales From the Crypt #43 (August-September 1954), Chamber of Chills #24 (July 1954), Forbidden Worlds #31 (July 1954), Marvel Tales #125 (July 1954), Strange Mysteries #17 (May 1954), and Fight Against Crime #20 (July 1954). I’m not 100% sure that’s the correct Chamber of Chills issue, since so much of the cover is obscured, but the other IDs are definite.

And here they are! (more…)