If you’d like to own the original art for a complete 23-page Green Lantern story from the ’60s, you’ve got a little over three weeks to make your move. The story, titled “This is the Way the World Ends,” was written by Denny O’Neil and drawn by Jack Sparling and Sid Greene. It appeared in Green Lantern #63 (September 1968), and I believe (you’ll correct me if I’m wrong, of course) it was Denny’s first script for what would become one of his signature titles.

Why am I telling you this? Because a) the art in question is being sold by my wife as part of our grand decluttering project, and b) the funds will be used for another one of our exotic trips. Maybe Easter Island. And you want us to go to Easter Island, don’t you?

Check out the splash page below.

And now that you’ve gone gaga over that, go take a look at the rest of the issue over at Heritage Auctions, where you’ll also be able to place your bids.

You know you want to. How often does a complete Silver Age story turn up? And with the original DC inventory envelope the book was stored in as well!

Just to show how seriously the Marvel staff took its softball, the memo below will fill you in. VERY seriously.

The June 30, 1976 memo to the Ruling Board of the Publishers’ Softball League—which was written by co-captains Jim Novak and Irene Vartanoff (hmmm … where have I heard that second name before?)—protested a loss to MacMillan that apparently occurred due to a violation of the rules.

Reading this 35-year-old memo, what I find most fascinating isn’t the intricate plea for justice, but one of the league rules that now seems quaint, and shows how far we’ve come.

You’ll note on page 2 that rule #4 states, “All teams are co-ed with at least 4 women in line up.” That alone isn’t the interesting part—but the fact that there were so few women in publishing at the time, or so few women in publishing willing to play softball, that SEVEN of the teams, including Marvel, were allowed an exemption, IS.

That’s right. In 1976, Marvel, in addition to New American Library, Franklin Watts, New Times, Saturday Review, Screw, and the Society of Illustrators, couldn’t reliably find four women to play softball each week.

Based on the league’s current rules—a league which says that it has been “bringing you the inept athletic stylings of the book and magazine industry for more than 40 years”—no such exemptions are allowed. The current rules regarding gender balance state:

A team must have a minimum of four women in the lineup at all times. A team may play the game with six men and three women, but in that case, the team must list four women in the lineup, leave the fourth outfield position vacant and take an automatic out each time the missing woman’s place comes around in the batting order.

That’s progress, right?

During a trip Irene and I made to London in 1977, the year after we’d gotten married, I found a panel in a British romance comic that seemed to represent our future. Hopeless romantic that I am, I cut it out and carried it in my wallet for several decades until it began to crumble, at which point I realized I’d better set it aside before it completely fell to pieces.

Here’s all that’s left of it.

I no longer have any memory of what comic this panel is from. But since you were all so helpful in solving my last comics mystery, it occurs to me that one of you must know. So—any ideas?

(Check out a larger scan of the panel over on Flickr if you think it would help.)

On June 24, 1974 (a Monday that year), I woke up in Brooklyn with a big day ahead of me. It was to be my first day on the job at Marvel Comics, and as I headed into Manhattan to that famous address of 575 Madison Avenue, I was thrilled.

But I had no idea that something even more important was in store for me that day, because once I arrived, I met my future wife, Irene Vartanoff, who had started at Marvel just a few months earlier.

One thing we did to celebrate today was to pull out our photo albums to relive some of the old days, so here’s a photo of the happy couple.

OK, all right, you got me. That isn’t me and Irene. It’s instead me and Walter Jon Williams during the 1997 Nebula Awards weekend in Kansas City, Missouri. (more…)

You’ve probably already heard this one. A couple, about to get married, go through their family albums in order to put together a wedding video and discover a photo of the two of them taken during separate family vacations at Disneyland long before they’d ever met.

Just in case this one passed you by, here’s the story:

The reason I’m bringing this up is because it got me to thinking about another photo which might exist somewhere out there—one taken of Irene and me long before we met. (more…)

I’ve autographed many artifacts over the years, but none has affected me as deeply as copies of the 1975 Marvel Con program books which arrived yesterday from a collector. One of the highlights of that program were eight pages of photos of the Bullpen as it existed 35 years ago. (You can see those photos on display over at Diversions of the Groovy Kind.)

This fan wanted to get as many of those photos signed as was still possible, but before I signed my name, I looked through those pictures of old friends, many with autographs from those who were no longer with us to autograph anything ever again, and I found myself getting choked up and near tears.

I had to set aside the books for signing until today, when was I better prepared to look through those pages without weeping.

There was Irene, looking as I’d first met her. (And there we both are below, as I’ve already shared with you.)

(more…)

Over at Diversions of the Groovy Kind, The Groovy Agent posted an eight-page photo feature from the 1975 Mighty Marvel Convention program book. Included on those pages were 71 photos of Bullpenners, including two who are particularly near and dear to my heart.

One is me. The other is Irene, my wife of nearly 34 years.

As I study those faces, my heart grows heavy. About one-third of these old friends are gone now, absent forever.

But … as I study those faces, my heart also sings. Because working there, surrounded by such people, was magical.

If my younger self, ensorceled by Stan Lee and standing with 12 cents in his palm trying to decide between Avengers #1 and X-Men #1 (as they both hit newsstands the same day), could have looked ahead to my slightly-less-young younger self, he would have thought, Scott, you’ve made it to Heaven.

And so I had.

Irene and I have turned into LPs today—we are now 33 1/3. To translate that, we were married on September 4, 1976, which means that as of today, January 4, 2010, we’ve been married 33 years and four months.

Here we are many, many (many, many) years ago on that date in a photo taken in Irene’s Mom’s backyard in Bethesda. This is the photo that has resided in my wallet ever since that life-changing event.

Irene and I will celebrate the day by locking ourselves in our respective offices and working like dogs, occasionally blowing kisses up and down the stairs.

Back in 1978, Irene and I celebrated our second wedding anniversary with a big blowout. I’d just gotten a massive freelance paycheck—for The Captain Midnight Book of Sports, Health and Nutrition, I think—and I decided to spend almost all of the proceeds on our special day. In the evening, we had a rented Rolls Royce, orchestra tickets to the then-hit Broadway show On the Twentieth Century, dinner reservations at the reopened Stork Club, and a suite at the Plaza Hotel overlooking Central Park.

But the fun had actually started earlier in the day, when we picked up the Best Man and the Maid of Honor in a stretch limo and took them for lunch at … Windows on the World, the restaurant which had once operated on top of the north tower of the World Trade Center.

This photo was snapped during that lunch. I see it whenever I look up my computer screen. And when I do, I remember that we can never go back.

And I remember why.

I’ll let pictures stand in for words today.

One of the images below is from September 4, 1976. The other is from September 4, 2009.

I’ll leave it to you to figure out which is which.

Hard to tell the difference, isn’t it?