Irene and I accomplished many things during our extended weekend trip to New Jersey and New York—she while attending the New Jersey Romance Writers conference, me while recording three new episodes of my Eating the Fantastic podcast—but the most important thing we did was to spend Sunday hanging out with our dear friend Marie Severin.

And as usual when visiting Marvel’s Mirthful One, there was much kibitzing involved.

Did you recognize Marie? No?

Then about about now? (more…)

I first met Fabulous Flo Steinberg (who passed away on July 23) when I was eight years old, not that she knew it at the time. And not that I knew it at the time either.

What happened was, I’d read an issue of the Fantastic Four during the first few years of that title in which The Thing said he had a headache. I’m no longer sure why he made that claim. Perhaps it had something to do with the Yancy Street Gang getting on his nerves. In any case, little kid me was incensed.

How could The Thing have a headache? After all, wasn’t he super?

So I sat down and scribbled a note to Marvel Comics, and soon received a postcard back explaining it all.

“You see, Scott,” said the card. “It was a super headache!”

The card was signed “Stan & the Gang,” but it was, of course, from Flo, who at that time would have been in her first year as Marvel’s “Corresponding Secretary and Gal Friday.”

Flo’s face was first revealed to fans in the pages of Marvel Tales #1 (which bore a cover date of 1964), and we first heard her voice on a record which was produced in 1965 as part of the package I received when I joined the Merry Marvel Marching Society.

She sent me that membership kit when I was 10, along with a button I wore Sunday afternoon at the Society of Illustrators as I gathered with her friends, which included many current and former Marvel Bullpenners, to remember her. (more…)

In 1975, when I was working in the Bullpen at Marvel Comics, I flew to Toronto to appear on a panel at CosmicCon along with Marv Wolfman, Len Wein, and … someone whose name I no longer remember.

Neither does Marv.

And since the reason I dug out this photo was as part of my mourning process for Len, we’ll never know if he might have remembered.

When I recently shared the image on Twitter and Facebook in the hopes someone could identify the face at the far right, suggestions included Bernie Wrightson and Howard Chaykin (I blame the sideburns), but … it wasn’t either of those two.

If you happen to know who that is, please let me know!

UPDATED 9/26/2017: Thanks to Ron Kasman, who wrote this article about the history of CosmicCon, I learned that’s Jim Craig, who worked for Atlas Comics at the time, and went on work for Marvel on such titles as Master of Kung Fu and The 3-D Man.

Here’s a photo of him which appeared a couple of years later in FOOM.

Thanks, Internet, for solving this mystery!

(I struggled Sunday to find the words which would explain how important Len Wein was in my life, but found I could’t bring myself to write the eulogy he deserved. All I could manage was the following series of tweets, which I gather here in lieu of a proper celebration which I hope will come later.)

I first met Len Wein at Phil Seuling’s 1970 4th of July Comic Art Convention. I was member #38. Len was member #65. I was only 15 years old.

A year later, at the Times Square Nathan’s, Len—who’d wanted to be an artist, not writer—drew this sketch of a character he’d created. (more…)

Yesterday, while searching for something completely differently, I came across correspondence I’d received from the Comics Code Authority in 1976 which ordered Marvel Comics to change a panel in an issue of Omega the Unknown I’d written.

I’d referenced this incident about Omega the Unknown #7 (March 1976) when artist Jim Mooney passed, but back then I didn’t have my hands on the CCA note. Now I do!

And you can read it below …

But before you do, look more closely at the villain in that panel as he runs off. Notice anything odd and clumsy about his gait? Or about the position of his right hand?

Well, that’s because something was once in that blank space to his right—a policeman swatted aside by Blockbuster.

A policeman the Comics Code requested we remove.

Why?

Well … (more…)

I’d thought I’d shared all the gems from my Marvel Comics days which I have squirreled away in my subterranean vault … until a query from a Dave Cockrum fan proved me wrong.

I got an email an hour ago asking about a villain I’d come up with for Captain Marvel #55 (March 1978)—Deathgrip!

I’d previously told you how I’d seen artist Dave Cockrum design that character’s costume, and he wanted to know whether any of Dave’s preliminary drawings still existed. And that made me suddenly realize …

Why … yes.

Not sure why I never thought to let you see this aspect of Dave’s genius before, but here it is now—Deathgrip as we in the Marvel Bullpen first saw him.

Amazing, isn’t it?

I’m so glad Dave’s dream—which I recently discovered expressed in an interview published in Fantastic Fanzine #10 (1969)—came true.

Aren’t you?

Forty-three years ago today, on June 24, 1974, I arrived at 575 Madison Avenue for the first day of my new job at Marvel Comics, looking something like this …

… and that was the end of that!

That Bullpen caption contest I shared with you recently wasn’t the only bit of Marvel memorabilia I uncovered during my dive into the vault. I also found the original guide which would have been sent to the printer so they could properly complete the color separations.

Was it Marie Severin who took brush in hand and decided which colors would appear on the cover to Dead of Night #11? Could it have been Glynis Wein?

I’m afraid from this distance, I no longer have any idea. But regardless, the marching orders given to World Color Press are now yours to behold!

While rummaging through the detritus of my Marvel Comics years in search of something other than what I’m about to share, I found evidence of a frequent Bullpen pastime—the caption contest.

Somebody would tape a photo to the wall, and everybody else would attempt to write something funny about it. That this was indeed something done frequently can be seen by the fact that whoever filched the photo from me numbered this particular contest 12,439,874,869,710.

So take a look below if you want a small taste of what it was like to work in the Marvel Comics Bullpen of the mid-’70s.

Some of the jokes will only be funny if you recognize the woman with whom I’m posed.

Do you?

I won’t give it away so that those don’t immediately know who she is have a chance to guess based on the captions themselves, but here’s one hint—I met her at a Halloween party run by the National Cartoonist Society, to which I was invited by Bill Kresse.

As you should all have figured out by now, it’s Margaret Hamilton, the Wicked Witch of the West!

And I was very happy to have been her Munchkin that night.

Seeing Carol Tilley lecture at the National Archives on the letters kids wrote to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Special Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency in 1954 defending comics books turned out not to be the only comics-related thing in my life this afternoon. Because as I was heading back to Union Station for my train home, I came upon the following street art which made political statements by tweaking actual covers from old comic books.

Here are the four I saw, accompanied by the original covers I tracked down.

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