With the future seeming bleak, I felt the need to gaze into the past instead, sharing about the day in 1970 I met Jim Steranko, the reason I continually cause archivists to cry, my day trip to see Steve Ditko’s pre-Marvel sketch of Dr. Strange, my night at a highly redacted 1978 DC Comics poker game, which writing of mine Barry Malzberg immediately suggested I burn, the thickness of time at the 1979 Clarion Science Fiction Writing Workshop, why, when, and where I intend to destroy fifty years of journals, and more.

Here, however, are a few journal entries you can read.

As well as a couple of images related to the episode —

My autographed copy of the Steranko Portfolio

A surreptitious 2018 photo with Jim Steranko

In addition to the Jazzy Johnny Romita and Valiant Val Mayerik originals I picked up in 1974 that I’m currently in the middle of auctioning off to fund next year’s trip to the Melbourne Worldcon, I put four other items on the block today.

Check them out below!

First is the signed and numbered Abyss promotional portfolio with artwork by Berni Wrightson, Jeffrey Jones, Bruce Jones, and Mike Kaluta. Those are the Kaluta and Wrightson plates below. I picked up this rare set at a Phil Seuling July 4th con sometime in the early ’70s.

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I love Jim Steranko. Always have, ever since he first appeared on the comics scene. His work immediately blew me away, and I became a Steranko fanboy, which is why I bought a copy of what Wikipedia calls “the extremely limited edition Steranko Portfolio One” as soon as I saw it.

Here’s the cover to the copy I picked up at one of Phil Seuling’s July 4th cons, either in ’70 or ’71. I think it was in ’70, the same con at which I paid for my copy of The Steranko History of Comics. (I write “paid for” because it wasn’t yet available except as an advance order. I can still remember paging through the thick mock-up of what it would eventually look like.) As you can see below, I made sure to have Jim sign his Portfolio.

I was still a kid when, not so long after, I read an article about him that appeared in the September 16, 1971 issue of Rolling Stone. For some reason, I was upset by the tales included there of his criminal youth, and decided to write him a letter about it to see if they were true. (more…)

I woke at 4:30 in the morning from a dream in which I was attending some convention so large it could have been the San Diego Comic-Con, only it wasn’t exactly the San Diego Comic-Con. I enter an auditorium in which a film is about to be played and find the room half full. I see Neal Adams in the audience, only not the Neal Adams of today, but rather the Neal Adams of the 1970s, even though it was today in the dream. He has a huge bucket of popcorn in his lap, as if he’s about to watch a blockbuster in his local theater instead of the documentary about Harlan Ellison which is about to begin.

I step outside for a moment—to get my own bucket of popcorn perhaps?—and when I return the theater is more populated, and I can no longer sit next to Neal the way I’d planned to. So I sit somewhere else. And then the film begins, but I can remember none of it. Not because I’ve forgotten what was playing out onscreen, but because the dream jump cuts to after the lights come back on.

And guess what? Someone has been murdered. I think. My memory is vague on that now. But I do remember that some horrible crime has been committed, which could have been murder, but it also could have been something else equally heinous, whatever that might be. (more…)