It was revealed in this week’s online chat with Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten that the paper refused to publish the January 19 installment of the comic strip Candorville.

Here it is for those of you in the DC area who had to settle for a replacement that day. (Click to see the strip at a more readable size.) I have no idea whether any other newspapers took the same action.

Participants in the chat took both sides, with a few mentioning that different versions of the joke had been made previously by comedians Dick Gregory and Dave Chapelle.

The latest installment of Scott Shaw’s Oddball Comics focuses on the May, 1960 issue of My Greatest Adventure, one of DC’s anthology comic books of science-fiction shorts.

Included in the issue are such stories as “We Were Ruled By The Emperor-Beast,” “I Fought The Sonar Creatures,” “I Became A Human Space Ship,” and more, featuring bizarre invading aliens, an atomic transmutator that converts sounds into colors and force, and a tunnel through the center of the Earth that manages to ignore the existence of the planet’s molten core.

In other words, really bad science fiction. And yet also somehow quite lovable. In fact, much of yesterday’s bad science fiction has become strangely lovable. (more…)

It’s a good thing when you look back at old writing and shudder—isn’t it? At least I hope it is, because I’ve been given many opportunities to shudder lately.

More than thirty years ago, back when I was working at Marvel Comics, I created a character called the Scarecrow, who debuted in Dead of Night #11 (August 1975), continued his adventures in Marvel Spotlight #26 (February 1976), and then faded away as the horror explosion imploded, popping up only occasionally thereafter handled by other writers. I haven’t done any work for either Marvel or DC since the early ’80s.

Marvel has recently begun packaging some of my old stories as a minor part of its compilation volumes, and the latest of these is the hardcover book Legion of Monsters, which stars Morbius the Living Vampire, Werewolf by Night, Man-Thing and others on the cover, and relegates the Scarecrow only to the two tales inside. This is the fourth reprint volume I’ve been a part of lately, and they bring about mixed emotions. (more…)