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…)

Perhaps this is a completely inappropriate entry, but I couldn’t help but think that the recent tragedy at Wal-Mart could have been avoided if only those holiday shoppers at the Green Acres Mall had paid attention to those one-page public service ads which used to run “in cooperation with the National Social Welfare Assembly” in the pages of DC Comics.

Those ads were hokey, but I loved them anyway. Here’s a panel from “How Are Your Shopping Manners?” which could have changed the tenor of the day had it only been digested by them decades ago when they were impressionable youths.

You can check out the complete ad here, smurched from Booksteve’s Library.

I’m fairly certain that this was penciled by Carmine Infantino, and less certain that it was inked by Joe Giella … but I’m sure that one of you will show up eventually with the actual credits.

I guess I should apologize now …

With no apologies to Mark Englblom, and him’s horrible, unfun Comic Coverage site, me pass along the awful “Unhappy Bizarro Thanksgiving!” wishes which him first served up last year.

Me could not have said it worser me self!

(more…)

For those of you who’ve grown tired of seeing endless photos of the Stan Lee of 2008 due to the National Medal of the Arts he received from President Bush at the White House last Monday, here he is 41 years ago at the 1967 New York Comic Convention.

That’s Big Name Fan turned pro Dave Kaler on the right.

And before you ask, no—I wasn’t there to take this picture, though I wish I had been. I was only 12, and my first comic-book convention was still three years away. (As for Stan, I guess the goatee was still in his future.)

Though I’ve had the photo in a folder for decades, you’ll have to thank either Andy or Pat Yanchus for its existence. One of them (they’re not quite sure which; after all, it was 41 years ago) snapped it at this early con at the City Squire Hotel.

A package arrived this afternoon delivering yet another Marvel Comics reprint volume containing stories of mine from the mid-’70s. I’ve been in seven of these over the past few years.

The latest, Essential Marvel Horror Volume 2, contains—along with tales of the Living Mummy, Brother Voodoo, the Golem, and other monsters—my two stories about the Scarecrow which originally appeared in Dead of Night #11 and Marvel Spotlight #26.

As these books keep showing up unbidden at my door, catching me by surprise, I keep remembering what Faulkner wrote, how “The past isn’t dead, it isn’t even past.”

There’s no escape from yesterday!

While some of you may have been wearing buttons today proclaiming your support for Obama, McCain, or some third-party candidate, as for me, well, I decided long ago that I’d never sport a button for any candidate who was actually running at the time.

And so I wore my favorite political button of the ones I’ve managed to pick up over the years. I’d gotten this Hubert Humphrey button in 1968 after my Social Studies teacher at Junior High School 68, Mr. Botwinick, encouraged us all to take part in the political process.

When I was 13 and living in Canarsie, I joined the Thomas Jefferson Young Democratic Club and campaigned for Humphrey. I even once got a chance to shake his hand at a rally. And while putting up posters and handing out flyers all across Brooklyn, I got this beautifully designed button.

While digging into my button collection for this, I found many non-political ones which also had me feeling nostalgic. (more…)

Today’s mail brought yet another Marvel Comics’ hardcover which reprints an old comic story of mine—and at this point, they’re all old comic stories.

The book collects the adventures of such superheroes as Adam Warlock, Nova, Rocket Raccoon and others before they assembled in the 2006 Marvel Comics crossover Annihilation to battle Annihilus, the Super-Skrull, and other super villains.

My contribution to the volume was drawn by Mike Zeck and first appeared as a back-up story in a 1977 issue of Logan’s Run. It focused on an early battle between Drax the Destroyer and Thanos. This is the second time the story has been reprinted, as it also appeared in the trade paperback Silver Surfer: Rebirth of Thanos.

So many of my ’70s comic-book stories have been reprinted in recent years that I occasionally feel that old impulse surge up, and think that I’d like to publish something new in comics. I don’t know that I’ll ever try, because when ideas do pop into my head, they’re always for text-only short stories rather than anything that seems particularly suited for comics. But these reprints certainly do stoke that appetite even as they bring back good memories.

As reported by The Comics Reporter, Mark Evanier, The Rutland Herald, and others, Tom Fagan died on Tuesday at the age of 76. Tom Fagan was a comic-book fan who founded the annual Rutland, Vermont Halloween parade back in 1959, an event which later drew many fans and pros, was featured in both Marvel and DC comics of the ’70s, and even led to an unofficial crossover between the two companies.

I got a chill when I heard the news, because even though I haven’t spoken to Tom in at least a decade, he was the first person to make an impression on me at my first comic-book convention. Which means that my acquaintance with him extends back as far as Phil Seuling’s July 4th weekend Comic-Con in 1970. (more…)

Thanks to The Comics Reporter, I’ve been wandering The Little World of Harvey Kurtzman, a site devoted to the first editor of Mad magazine.

Perhaps I’m weird (scratch that—I know I’m weird), but I found this old Mad magazine letterhead fascinating. If you check out the site, you’ll find other examples.

Which leads to me believe that maybe I’m not the only one intrigued by old stationery. With that in mind, at left is a sheet of Marvel Comics letterhead from the old days when the company was at 635 Madison Avenue, with a detail at right.

I can’t remember what span of years Marvel would have been at that address, because by the time I started working there in the mid-’70s, the company was already down the street at 575 Madison Avenue.

I’ll leave it to someone else who has more free time to dig through old comics and figure out exactly when this letterhead would have been in use.

Meanwhile, treat this artifact responsibly, and don’t go forging any old letters from Marvel staffers!