Carol Tilley—who’ll be speaking Thursday at the National Archives about letters kids wrote to the Senate defending comics in 1954—just posted over on Facebook the front page from the August 25, 1940 issue of Fantasy News … and I can’t resist sharing one part of it here.

Thomas S. Gardner, whose short fiction had been published in the ’30s in Wonder Stories, complained that the new science fiction comics were so inane as to cause some readers to give up on science fiction entirely. Plus comics (or so he claimed) were even damaging the reputation of science fiction—and the fans themselves.

Science Fiction is being guffawed, ballyhooed, and ridiculed out of existence. The readers and magazines are being classified as morons as a result of the comic books.

Luckily, though, the prescient Gardner predicted comic books wouldn’t be around for long.

The comic magazines are a fly-by-night affair in all probability. The fact that few appear for the second issue but start out with a new series hoping to sell the first copies is pretty good proof of their impermanence.

Gardner lived until 1963, after the Golden Age of comics had ended and the Silver Age had begun. Wonder whether that was long enough for him to change his mind?

You can read the issue in its entirety over at FANAC.

Sunday afternoon was one of the highlights of my year, because at the end of an extended weekend in New York—during which I recorded four new episodes of Eating the Fantastic—I got to take Marie Severin to lunch and then spend several hours sitting outside in the sun with her on an unseasonably warm October day.

And when I say I did those things, I of course mean we did those things—for any visit to the Mirthful one must include the Impish one—my wife, Irene Vartanoff. (more…)

In honor of Luke Cage, which debuted today as a Netflix series, and in memory of my young teen years as an annoying fan with a sketchbook, may I present a drawing done for me by Billy Graham, the legendary artist who drew that character for Marvel Comics in the ’70s.

Though I’d eventually come to know Graham as a fellow creator at Marvel, this undated drawing was done long before then, likely in 1972, or at the latest, 1973, back when I was just another pleading kid.

We never got particularly close later during my comics pro years, so he was just an acquaintance with whom I’d have the occasional conversation, but whenever our paths did cross in the Bullpen, he was friendly, and seemed like a nice guy.

I wish he could have seen the character to whom he’d contributed so much get this level of attention, but alas, he died in 1999.

Have you ever wanted to own a page—or perhaps two—of rare original DC Comics art from the ’60s? Now’s your chance!

My wife has decided to part with the following pages which have been in her collection for more than 50 years.

First up—this beautiful Joe Kubert art from the Hawkman and Hawkgirl story “The Men Who Moved the World,” which appeared in Brave and Bold #44 (October-November 1962).

Place your bids here. (more…)

Last night, I attended a screening of experimental films at The Arts Centre in Martinsburg, hosted by Don Diego Ramirez, director of the award-winning documentary Trailer Trash. He showed us the works of Maya Deren, Stan Brakhage, Stan VanDerBeek and others, plus one of his own student films. Equally interesting was the display of camera equipment, as well as books and magazines related to independent filmmaking.

A certain copy of Super 8 Filmaker caught my eye. Take a look and I’m sure you’ll understand why.

Seeing Spider-Man on the cover of an October 1974 magazine—which based on magazine cover dates and publishing schedules could have gone on sale just a few weeks after I started working at Marvel Comics—stirred some memories. And flipping to the Table of Contents to see who wrote that cover story stirred a few more … (more…)

I find it hard to believe I haven’t shared this Al Jaffee drawing before—but perhaps I was saving it for a milestone moment like this, when I could wish the man a happy 95th birthday!

Jaffee sketched out this self-portrait for me at a National Cartoonist Society Ruben Awards banquet held at the Waldorf Astoria in 1973, to which I was invited by Bill Kresse, a cartoonist I’d met during a class trip to the Daily News. I was an annoying teen fanboy in those days (now I’m only annoying), yet he was willing to put up with me when I interrupted his chowing down on rubber chicken and presented him with my pad and marker.

Forty-three years later, I am still grateful for his patience. (And for the patience of Curt Swan, Gary Trudeau, Paul Fung, Jr., and others that night as well!)

So thank you for that, Al Jaffee—and for ensuring I own no copies of MAD in mint condition due to my inability to resist folding and creasing those famous inside back cover fold-ins of yours.

Happy birthday!

The Paris Review—to which I’ve had a lifetime subscription since the late ’70s—has provided me with yet another comics-related mystery. Over the years, they’ve published many collages which have used comics imagery, such as this one, by poet John Ashbery, which incorporated one of the most famous faces of all and so was immediately identifiable by me, and this, by an artist known as Jess, for which I needed help tracking down the original source.

In the current Spring 2016 issue, to accompany an interview with Luc Sante, the magazine published a flyer the writer had created in 1980 promoting a gig by the band the Del-Byzanteens. As you can see below, the promo repurposed panels from comics which seem to me to have the feel of comic strips rather than comics books, though I might be wrong about that, and I could instead be perceiving the style difference between UK and U.S. comics.

Of course, I could easily be wrong about it all.

Take a look and tell me what you think.

So?

I have no idea who the original artist might be here. Do you?

UPDATE: Well, that was fast!

Sean Howe, author of the wonderful Marvel Comics: The Untold Story as well as the upcoming Agents of Chaos (about the founder of High Times) reached out directly to Sante—because Sean knows everyone—and was told:

They’re from a stack of promotional offprints I found when I was working at the Strand, aimed at newspapers and syndicates, for a strip called “Drift Marlo,” by Tom Cooke. Never having seen the strip anywhere else, I’d always assumed it had gone nowhere, but I was wrong …

Sante also provided a link to an entry on Ger Apeldoorn’s blog which included some of the strips from which Sante created his flyer. Including this one, the center panel of which provided the central panel above.

Mystery solved! Thanks, guys!

Over on Facebook in a Marvel Comics alumni group, Ted Jalbert has posted a July 1976 Get Well card to Stan Lee which I’d completely forgotten I’d ever signed, dug out of the archives The Man had donated to the University of Wyoming.

It shows Stan on crutches wearing a cast, so I’m guessing he’d broken a leg—though perhaps that was only metaphorical—and was drawn by Paty Cockrum. Included are caricatures of Stan, John Verpoorten, Archie Goodwin, and many other Marvel staffers, plus the signatures of John Romita (both Sr. and Jr.), Walt Simonson, my wife Irene Vartanoff, Steve Edelson …

Steve Edelson? Wait—who’s Steve Edelson?

I’m Steve Edelson!

The reason I signed the card that way was because even though I was the one who organized the panels for the 1975 Mighty Marvel Con and edited the program book (so you’d think Stan would get my name right), when it came time there for him to introduce all us Marvel staffers from the stage, he pointed me out and called me … you guessed it … Steve Edelson.

So, of course, I’d tease him about that whenever I’d get the chance. When this card was put in front of me the following year, I apparently couldn’t resist.

Can you blame me?

So I was searching for comic books which contained references to ukuleles—as one does—and came across Blue Ribbon Comics #2, which has a cover date of December 1939. A one-pager titled “Strange But True” featured the following fact.

I’d have reproduced the whole of the page, but unfortunately, one of the accompanying strange facts was head-slappingly racist, so I don’t feel I should spread it around. (Though those who’d like to see how clueless folks were back in 1939 can go to the scan of that issue and click through to page 34.)

But what I found more fascinating about the issue was an editorial which advised that since “Dad may seem a bit worried at times recently” because of things like “war and poor markets and slow business,” the kids who were the presumed readers should leave it around where Dad could find the comic so he’d then read it and cheer up.

That’s right, in a message which likely would have gone to press in September or October of 1939—almost immediately after World War II began on September 1 of that year—kids were being told comics could help Dad get over it.

Somehow, I doubt the adventures of Rang-a-Tang the Wonder Dog and Buck Stacey, Range Detective were going to be enough to take Dad’s mind off what at the time surely seemed like the beginning of the end of world …

While digging out that 44-year-old Analog rejection letter I shared with you, I also ran across one of my own letters, sent just a few years later, which speaks to the ambitions of me at 19.

Because (as the letter reveals) I was trying to become George R. R. Martin’s publisher.

Back in 1975, when I was still living with my parents, flush with earnings from my new job at Marvel Comics, and feeling myself then to be more a part of comics than science fiction, I decided I’d start a publishing company which would do for comics what Advent Press was then doing for SF.

At the time, George had only published around a dozen short stories, had yet to come out with a novel, and I knew him best for his prose appearances in the pages of Star-Studded Comics, a fanzine out of Texas.

One such superhero adventure was “Powerman vs. the Blue Barrier,” which had appeared 10 years earlier. (more…)