Thirty-eight years ago this morning, a guy looking something like this …

… woke in the Brooklyn apartment he lived in with his parents and took a bus to a train to 575 Madison Avenue for his first day on the job at Marvel Comics, where he met a women looking something like this …

… after which one thing led to another.

And they lived happily ever after.

The end.

Last week, I told you how my wife was selling her copies of Amazing Fantasy #15 and Amazing Adventures #1 so that in the far-flung future, we won’t be reduced to eating cat food. But … what if your tastes run more to original art?

Then how about the wonderful Green Lantern page below, drawn by Gil Kane and Sid Greene, which not only features an encounter between the Silver and Golden Age incarnations of the character—but is signed by Martin Nodell, who created Green Lantern back in 1940!

The page was published in Green Lantern #61 (June 1968), and if you’d like it to be yours, head on over to Heritage Auctions.

Todd Klein recently posted a wonderful report about a visit to DC Comics in the ’60s, which included a floor plan of the company’s offices at 575 Lexington Avenue, and made me realize—Hey! I have a map of Marvel’s 575 Madison Avenue offices from the ’70s.

A map unseen for more than 35 years.

And mine was drawn by Mirthful Marie Severin!

I can’t say for sure exactly when this map was sketched, but it was obviously begun when Roy Thomas was still Editor-in-Chief (since his name is visibly crossed out), but finished before Len Wein resigned and ceded the position to Marv Wolfman, which to me places it somewhere between late 1974 and early 1975.

This map was created to figure out where to put all the warm bodies, and not as a guide to the famous cover Marie drew around a year later for FOOM #16 (December 1976). (more…)

It’s Irene’s birthday tomorrow, and as part of the weekend’s celebration, we’ll be driving to Richmond for a visit to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts to catch their Fabergé exhibit. While we’re there, I hope to snag her one of those eggs I keep hearing so much about.

And along the way, I hope to add two more Man v. Food restaurants to my “yeah, I’ve eaten there” list—Buz & Ned’s Real BBQ and The Black Sheep.

But as for Caliente … never. I don’t do heat, and poor Irene would probably burst into flames if we even drove past the place.

I’ll let you know what I thought of these restaurants—and how they compare to other Man v. Food picks—once we get back.

On September 4, 1978, Irene and I celebrated our second anniversary by having lunch at Windows on the World restaurant. It was part of an anniversary weekend that included a rented Rolls Royce, orchestra tickets to the then-hit Broadway show On the Twentieth Century, dinner at the reopened Stork Club, and a suite at the Plaza Hotel overlooking Central Park. (No, we weren’t rich … but I’d just gotten paid for The Captain Midnight Book of Sports, Health and Nutrition and decided to blow most of the proceeds celebrating.)

For those who don’t remember … Windows on the World was on top of the north tower of the World Trade Center.

The original to this photo is displayed to the right of my desk, which means I see it and think about that lunch and that venue every day.

I sure wish we lived in a world in which we could go back there again for some future anniversary …

As we rode the Spaceship Earth attraction at Walt Disney World during our 35th anniversary weekend, our pictures were snapped and dropped into a personalized video showing our future, which was screened for us as the ride was ending … and then emailed so it would be waiting for us when we arrived home.

So here’s what Irene and I will be doing in the world of tomorrow!

We giggled when this unexpected video popped up.

We did a LOT of giggling at Disney World …

When Irene and I decided we would replicate our honeymoon on our 35th anniversary by returning to Walt Disney World and staying in the same hotel we stayed in back then—the Contemporary (the one that has the monorail going through the building)—we had no idea of the sort of celebration Disney had in store for us. Because over the course of the weekend, we were wished a happy anniversary by hundreds of people each day!

I’d mentioned while making the reservations that we’d been at Disney World back in 1976, and that information made it into our profile, which meant that it all started when the driver of the Magical Express bus announced over his loudspeaker as we were being driven from the Orlando Airport to our hotel that there were two very special guests aboard celebrating an anniversary—us!

And when we checked in at the Contemporary, we were each given one of the buttons below to wear, resulting in us getting a cheery “Happy anniversary!” from every employee and many of the regular folks as well, which gave the weekend a party atmosphere.

We were far from the only ones there celebrating an anniversary—we chatted briefly with another couple who were celebrating their 67th (yes, 67th!) anniversary. So now we’ve got something to aim for! (more…)

… that two were made one.

Just in case yesterday’s pics weren’t enough for you to figure out where Irene and I spent our honeymoon and where we returned to celebrate our 35th anniversary, here are two more which should definitely give it away.

And if those don’t help you, all I can say is … what planet are you from, anyway?

Irene and I will celebrate our 35th wedding anniversary the day after tomorrow after tomorrow, on September 4th. Here’s a photo from the day before yesterday before yesterday before a whole lot of other yesterdays, taken early on during our courtship.

Two questions.

Does anybody still use the word “courtship” anymore?

And—how is it that I’ve gotten older and she hasn’t changed a bit?