Jarrod Buttery, who’s interviewed me many times for Back Issue magazine on the comics I wrote in the ’70s, is now doing a piece on comics editing—specifically, the editing of Marvel’s reprint books. Which has sent me back to the vault in which I keep all the memos I sent and received during my days in the Bullpen. And the half dozen I’ve chosen to scan and share below prove one important thing—if you were pissed back then that the reprint books weren’t complete, I’m the guy responsible.

The fact I was even involved with those reprints is a thing for which I later felt a need to apologize to my wife—check out this column I wrote for The Comics Journal to learn why.

When cobbling together the reprint annuals, the number of pages from 3-4 old stories added together rarely matched the exact number of pages we had to fill, which meant cuts usually had to be made. Some of my memos reveal the number of pages that needed to be slashed, but not the specific cuts that would get us there …

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I was skimming through my old diaries in search of what I’d had to say about an incident which I remembered occurring in the early ’80s (an incident I’m not going to tell you about, so there), and in the course of that search came across something completely different—a mysterious job opportunity mentioned in an entry from November 16, 1979—

I responded to this ad in the Village Voice yesterday: “WRITER—Gag writer needed to collaborate w/cartoonist for cartoon strip. Call Richard Maneely [phone numbers redacted].” Well, I did, and gave my name and phone number to an answering service. Maneely called back this morning, and it turns out he is the AGENT for a cartoonist who tried to do a strip years ago with a writer. The strip failed to sell, the writer quit, and the cartoonist has been doing work in advertising the past years. He’d like to revive the project with a different writer now. Maneely is mailing me copies of the strip to look at. If I like it I’m supposed to call Maneely back and then we can work out a deal and the artist (whoever it is) and I can start working together.

I’d completely that this had ever happened.

Also forgotten? What happened next.

Why exactly did I never get get involved in this comic strip?

Did I see take one look at the samples and decide the collaboration would never work? Or did I, on the other hand, like the strip and want to move forward, only to get shot down by the artist?

In fact—did the samples ever show up the mail for us to even get that far?

No idea.

I looked carefully through my diaries—in which I’ve written on a near-daily basis since November 2, 1978—and found that I never referenced this project again. Whatever happened to it is a total mystery.

So I’m going to toss out these very thin facts to the comic strip gurus and ask—do you know of a strip growing out of this kind of relationship during that time period? Perhaps some other writer got the chance to script a strip I don’t think I even got a chance to see.

What say you, experts?

I’m already on record about how much I despise Roy Lichtenstein, so it would be redundant to repeat all that today.

But now, it seems, I have 50,000,000 more reasons.

Over on Facebook, David Barsalou—who’s been cataloguing Lichtenstein’s sins for many years—brought to my attention that Lichtenstein’s appropriation of a Ted Galindo comic book panel is about to be offered by Sotheby’s for $50,000,000.

Yes, $50,000,000. I doubt Galindo even got $50 for drawing the panel that inspired it.

That’s Galindo’s original occupying most of the image above, with Lichtenstein’s swipe inset. You can read more about Galindo’s history as a comic book artist here.

It would have been nice to see a mention of Galindo in the ArtNet story about that coming sale. But then, you know me—I believe every article about one of these Lichtenstein’s should include a reference to the source material, the same way I feel gallery operators and museum curators owe it to history to include those references in their literature and wall placards. They fail in their duties whenever they don’t.

All artists deserve respect. And not just the ones whose works sell for $50,000,000.

How wide is Brenda Starr’s cousin Abretha Breez? Based on the cover to Brenda Starr #6, so wide she can’t even fit through the kitchen door to get more cake!

Brenda Starr, created by Dale Messick, is a newspaper reporter always on the trail of a scoop. Think Lois Lane in a world without Superman. She started out in a comic strip of the same name in 1940, then moved on to comic books in 1947. But it seems (at least based on the content of this story) as if cousin Abretha didn’t debut until the comic’s January 1949 issue.

And continuing with my look at how women with body types society had deemed unacceptable were depicted in yesterday’s comics (you can find the previous installment here, plus links to the ones before that), let’s check it out! (more…)

I’ve been sharing quite a bit lately about fat-shaming in romance comics, but now it’s time for something a little different—fat-shaming (of a sort) in a non-romance comic. “Chubby, But Oh My!” appeared in My Little Margie #18 (Dec 1957).

My Little Margie was based on a TV sitcom that ran from 1952-1955, which means I should have no first-hand memory of it, but it was still in reruns when I was a kid. I have no idea whether the characters of Sonya and Dimples ever appeared in the original series, but based on IMDb, I suspect they were created for the comic.

As the story begins, Sonya is digging into an ice cream sundae—but Dimples passes on one because she hopes to lose weight in order to beat Sonya in a beauty contest.

Sonya disses Dimples, saying that her friend is too chubby to win, and will never lose weight. Instead of overturning that sundae on Sonya’s head as some of us might have done, Dimples simply insists that from now on, she “won’t eat a single fattening thing.” (more…)

One reason Golden Age comics are so valuable is that many of them were pulped due to recycling efforts during World War II. And one reason so many of them were pulped in the first place might just be due to pleas in the comics themselves that readers salvage paper because “every scrap of paper you can collect goes into immediate war production!”

As you can see from a wartime run of Captain Marvel, Jr., each issue from June 1944 through March 1946 included a shout-out on page 3 from “the world’s mightiest boy” for readers to do their part to help win the war.

(Apologies for the culturally insensitive nature of that first such example, which unfortunately was not out of line with the standards of the ’40s.) (more…)

I always wince at those old-style comedians who joke about how much they hate their spouses and would rather be anywhere than with them. That “take my wife … please” kind of comedy has always rubbed me the wrong way, in part because I believe that if you really do have problems with your partner, it should stay between the two of you until it’s either solved or not. Mend it or end it, just don’t joke about it to me.

But it also bothers me because I think the reason some guys talk about their relationships that way—and this is sadder—is they’re afraid to make themselves seem vulnerable and weak by admitting, yes, they do love another person, and so instead joke about “the old ball and chain.”

Which is why I didn’t find the product advertised on the inside front cover of Top Love Stories #14 (1953) to be either funny or romantic. And yet the manufacturer thought it was both!

Jail-Jamas—with “genuine prison stripes” and a card that says “lose all hope ye who enter here”—are advertised as “romantic” and “sure to make a hit with love birds who have gone down the road to matrimony.”

For those who are slightly embarrassed that they’re in love, and so feel a need to mock that genuine emotion … perhaps. But for the rest of us, including the young women who probably made up most of the readers of that romance comic book … I don’t think so.

Not romantic. Not romantic at all.

Over on News From Me the other day, Mark Evanier posted an episode of The Abbott & Costello Show which is well worth watching, and not just for the classic bits. There’s also a scene during which Lou Costello is shown reading a comic book, one seen so briefly and so incompletely that we’ll likely never learn which comic book.

And you know how I get when I can’t identify a comic being used as a prop!

As you can see from the screen grab above, we never get a glimpse of the cover, just some blurry panels that would probably only be recognizable to someone who had completely memorized the interiors of every comic from that period.

That person isn’t me, and probably isn’t you either. But in the hope this might reach someone who does have such an eidetic memory, I’m putting the info out there.

Because if I don’t find out what comic book that was, how will I ever know peace?

The romance comic Top Love Stories #16 (February 1954) wants you to know that whatever your size, it’s the wrong size!

The first thing you see upon opening the issue is an ad on the inside front cover for Wate-On homogenized liquid, designed to make readers worry that they’re “skinny” and “scrawny” when instead they should have “firm, good-looking healthy flesh” and “extra pounds.”

Meanwhile, the last thing you see after reading the stories within is a back cover ad for Kelpidine chewing gum—with Hexitol—certain to make readers insecure that they have “ugly fatty bulges” rather than “that dreamed about silhouette.” (more…)

I was watching the opening of Annie Hall recently, and was immediately distracted by a comic book Woody Allen’s character Alvy Singer is seen reading in a flashback. Distracted because, whenever I see a comic in a movie or on TV, I’m immediately overcome by a desire to know what that comic is, and whether it’s real or merely a prop mocked up for the screen.

Sometimes it’s the latter, as when a kid in a 1975 episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show was reading an issue of The Fantastic Blob. But often the comics are real, which I know because I’ve been able to track those issues down, such as The Eternals in a 2010 episode of Law & Order, Justice Society of America in a 2012 episode of Alcatraz, or Saga of the Human Torch in a 2013 episode of Revolution.

So when a comic book guest-starred in Annie Hall, I had to know—was the comic book real, and if so which comic was it? (Of course, the other question is, why hadn’t I noticed this before? But let’s set that one aside for another time.)

Here’s the issue spread open in a screen grab.

I can’t seem to find anyone else online who attempted to figure this out. I’m hoping now that I’m asking the question, perhaps you can figure it out. (more…)