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.

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…)

I’ve shared a number of firsts about the Scarecrow since I started blogging, such as who the first artist was supposed to be, the first (and perhaps the last) Marvel subscription ad featuring the character’s never-published stand-alone book, and Don Perlin’s first page to what was supposed to be Scarecrow #2.

And as I skimmed further through that 1974 issue of The Comic Reader which I told you about last week, I came upon another first—the first time fans would have found out such a character even existed.

In the Marvel News section, which included a blurb that “a Spider-Man live action film and a new TV series are being planned” (for which we’d all have to wait, as that TV show wouldn’t air until 1978, while a film wouldn’t hit theaters for another 28 years), readers wound find this item.

I’ve no idea when the August issue of The Comic Reader would have gone to press, but as I started on staff at Marvel on June 24 of that year, I obviously wasn’t there that long before then-editor Len Wein leapt on my idea … even though my name is never mentioned in that announcement.

And as those familiar with the history of the Scarecrow already know, it never did appear in the pages of Monsters Unleashed, nor in its next announced location, as a backup in Giant-Size Werewolf by Night, but instead ended up debuting in Dead of Night #11.

That wasn’t the only fascinating thing I found in this issue of The Comic Reader. Check out this curious factoid about Marvel’s Planet of the Apes series.

And now we know why Don McGregor never got that assignment.

ba-dum ching!

(I kid, Don, I kid! You know I love you.)

Two important comics events occurred on June 24, 1974.

It was my first day on staff at Marvel.

And it was the day Seaboard Periodicals, run by Martin Goodman—Marvel Comics founder and former Magazine Management publisher—opened its office.

Seaboard launched Atlas Comics, which I told you about five years ago when I shared a snarky memo I wrote in 1975 to Marvel’s publisher because he was worried our company was being plagiarized.

(For those in a TL;DR mood—no, it wasn’t.)

Most fans first learned of Atlas/Seaboard from a blurb in The Comic Reader #109 (August 1974), which quoted an unnamed source as saying that the new company would “change the look of the industry.”

(For those still in a TL;DR mood—no, it didn’t.)

(more…)

I’ve already told you how the only reason I got my job at Marvel Comics in the ’70s was because of a serendipitous encounter with the late Duffy Vohland. But in a way, I almost lost that job because of Duffy, too. Or at least … I thought I was going to.

Before Duffy pulled me into comics as a professional, he pulled me into his corner of comics fandom. Oh, I’d already been going to cons, buying fanzines, and getting involved in lots of other fanac, but he hooked me up with a bunch of guys who published and/or wrote and/or drew for a fanzine titled CPL—that is, Contemporary Pictorial Literature. If you know anything about comics, you’ve heard of some of those guys, because Bob Layton, Roger Stern, John Byrne, and Roger Slifer all went on to professional comics careers of their own.

Duffy wrote a column known as “Duffy’s Tavern” for that (and other) fanzines, and asked me to fill in for an issue, which I did, writing an essay that appeared in the CPL #8, which featured this spiffy cover penciled by John and inked by Duffy.

My essay, titled “Comic Art: Fact or Fiction?” was written when I was still a fan, and took a very jaundiced view of the creative state of the field. I wrote, among other things, that “There are very few comic books which even come close to what a comic should be.” I sent the piece off, and forgot all about it, until it was published … by which time I was working on staff at Marvel. And upon rereading it, I thought—What have I done? Once Roy Thomas reads this, he’s going to can me for sure!

I trembled for several weeks waiting for the axe to fall, or at the very least for the two us to have an extremely uncomfortable conversation due to my having written an essay which basically maligned most of Marvel’s output. As far as I recall, though, nothing was ever said, either because Roy never read it or had read it but just thought it was too silly to even comment on.

Rereading it now, it occurs to me that though It doesn’t quite express my feelings today, it does basically explain why I don’t like those recently announced Watchmen prequels and why I have no plans to read them. So some feelings never change.

But enough about me. Whatever you think of my essay, I’m sure you’ll find it far more entertaining to look at some of the great art from that issue, including a naked Ben Grimm.

That’s right. A named Ben Grimm.

By none other than the legendary Joe Sinnott! (more…)

As I wrote in my remembrance of Tom Fagan, who passed away last month, he often mentioned me in his con reports back in the day. I just came across one such report in a copy of the 1972 fanzine Ragnarok, published by my friends Mark Collins and David Simons. (Note the spiffy Marie Severin cover.)

The issue included (along with an extensive Marie Severin interview, the reason for the cover) Tom’s write-up of that year’s New York Comic Art Convention, organized by the legendary dealer and con-runner, Phil Seuling.

It was the first one of those cons for which I got a hotel room (along with Mark and David) rather than being a daytripper, and it seems as if, based on Tom’s report, that I took full advantage of my presence there, and acted like a wild man, for he mentioned my doings multiple times, at one point dubbing me “irrepressible.” (more…)