Those Bronze Age Babies are at it again. Yesterday, they were talking up the character synopsis blurbs that used to appear on top of Marvel splash pages, and today they wrote about house ads and other comics ephemera. Which, though anonymous, also had authors.

And sometimes that author was me.

I’ve mentioned before how I wrote the Bullpen Bulletins page for a couple of years (save Stan’s Soapbox, of course), as well as a set of Marvel Slurpee cups, but I also wrote a whole bunch of house ads. Here are just three of them, plucked from a portfolio I assembled when I started looked for a publishing job outside of comics.

And as for who drew that illo in the last ad, well … I don’t have to tell you, right?

The graphic gurus over at Bronze Age Babies (which you should be reading daily, of course) were pondering a bit of Marvel Comics arcana today—who wrote those intro blurbs that started appearing atop splash pages during the mid-’70s?

Who do you think?

Yes, that’s right. Me, when I was an assistant editor back in the Bullpen.

I didn’t originate the idea—that would have been Stan Lee, who felt that new readers needed an easy entry way into the convoluted Marvel Universe—or start writing them—I’m pretty sure that would have been Roy Thomas—but I wrote enough of them that I included seven examples in a portfolio I put together after I quit my staff job and started looking for a new publishing position elsewhere. Which means that, luckily, I don’t have to rely solely on memory.

The seven I thought worthy enough to show off were those for the Black Panther, Captain Marvel, The Champions, The Inhumans, Killraven, Skull the Slayer, and the X-Men.

I guess I figured that these were enough to demonstrate my ability to digest and regurgitate Stan. I believe I did others, though after this length of time I can’t say for sure which ones they would have been.

Does that answer your question, you Bronze Age Babies, you?

I’d thought enough time had passed that I could forgive Jack Kirby. But I just learned I was wrong.

I was on staff at Marvel Comics in the mid-’70s when the King returned and tried to pick up where he’d left off. At the time, as I sat there in the Bullpen with my blue pencil and proofread the original art for some of his initial issues of titles such as Captain America, which he not only drew, but wrote and edited, I was horrified. The art could still be the stuff of dreams at times, but the words that came out of his characters’ mouths seemed more like a nightmare.

The buzz from us kids in the office wasn’t kind. I’ll admit it. Kirby was a god to us for what he did during the ’60s, but what he was doing at Marvel in the ’70s made us wince, and we didn’t have the tact or maturity to say it appropriately. So we acted like ungrateful punks. But now that the years have passed, as I read some of those issues of Captain America over again, I’m wincing still.

The reason I’m subjecting myself to them once more is because two of the backup stories I wrote at the time have been reprinted in The Essential Captain America Vol. 6, and after first rereading my own work (of course!), I decided to give Kirby’s another shot.

The powerful artwork still made me smile, and the frenetic pacing caused my childhood to rush back again, but as for the words on the page—Ouch!

Not only do none of the characters talk the way people actually talk—or even the hyperbolic, melodramatic way superheroes talk—but they are barely coherent. And what’s worse, in Captain America #207, old winghead, after discovering that a tyrannical dictator in a banana republic was torturing his people, decided to do NOTHING, basically declaring it none of his business!

Here’s that disturbing panel.

Until this rereading began, I was only offended by the crudeness and incomprehensibility of Kirby’s dialogue, but now, decades later, I’m also repulsed by Cap’s decision, no matter how well or poorly it was phrased.

Shame on you, Captain America!

If I ever needed a reminder of how much Stan Lee and Jack Kirby needed each other, neither ever creating separately at anywhere near the level they did when together, man oh man, this was certainly it.

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?

Today’s my birthday, as hundreds of you reminded me with your wishes on Twitter and Facebook. And as people tend to do on birthdays (and New Year’s Eve, too), I’ve been thinking a bit about how the heck I got here.

And one of the reasons I did get here, got my wife, got my life, is a guy named Duffy Vohland, who’s sort of a forgotten figure in comics. So it’s appropriate that I share today a birthday card I received from him that featured a caricature he had Paty Cockrum (then still Patry Greer, I believe) draw for the occasion.

Here’s the image that was on the front of the card, and as anyone who knew him will tell you … yeah, that was Duffy.

I say that was Duffy because he died in 1982, one of the earliest vicims of AIDS. I wish he was still around so I could thank him today for what I’ve got, but he’s gone, so I’ll tell you instead. (more…)

A recent post over at the always wonderful Giant-Size Geek sent me scurrying to the vault. Richard Guion posted pages of Bullpen photos from the 1975 Mighty Marvel Convention booklet, which happened to include pics of both me and Irene.

In case you don’t remember those pics from previous posts, here we are again.

Didn’t we used to be cute? (Well, Irene still is. Though as for me … )

But never mind that. We’re here today to talk about the cover. Here’s the cover con attendees saw back in 1975.

If you ever wondered how that layout came to be, I’ve got the answer—because among my many other Marvel staff duties at the time, I edited that program book, and I still have Marie Severin’s original sketches showing off two possible designs. (more…)

Because one taste of Steve Gerber isn’t enough—at least, not for his true fans, of which I suspect there are many of you out there—here’s an additional chunk of my 1975 interview with him which had somehow gotten separated from the first part.

This section is entirely about his plans for Crazy magazine, which he had just taken over as editor. The sound quality on this section isn’t the best, but if you love Steve you’ll be willing to put up with it.

Those of you who do struggle through will hear him discuss how his (then) year and a half of therapy qualified him to edit the humor magazine, why he got the gig in the first place, how he once thought he might go into television until he realized he was too ugly, and more.

And near the end, you’ll also get to hear a few (insulting) words from Don McGregor.

In 1975, I interviewed Steve Gerber, as I’d interviewed so many of Marvel’s writers when I worked there and (among other things) edited FOOM, the company’s fan magazine. I’d decided that rather than have a standard news section on oncoming comics, I’d print edited transcripts of the writers talking about what was around the corner, so readers would get a taste of creator personalities as well.

So here’s Steve talking about Crazy magazine as well as his work on Man-Thing and The Defenders in the only surviving tape from those years. Parts of this interview appeared transcribed in FOOM #9, the March 1975 issue.

And once more I ask myself—Did I really sound like that? I am forced to admit that I did. How did those of you who knew me then ever put up with me?

Back in 1975, while on staff at Marvel Comics, I edited the company’s official fan magazine, FOOM. One of the things I did as editor was to change the format of the news section. Rather than just running unadorned information, I decided I’d print interviews with the various writers and editors about what was upcoming on their titles. That way the fans would not only get facts, but also an insight into Bullpen personalities.

Some of those interviews were more successful than others.

As you’ll hear in the clip below—if you can even make out what I’m asking through the thick Brooklyn accent I had back then—my inability to get anything useful out of Archie could just as easily have been the fault of my goofy questions as anything else.

Keep listening for a special guest star—because the brief clip includes an even briefer cameo by Marv Wolfman.

And if you happen to remember why I would have made a joke back then about out-of-work police officers, please let me know—because I remember nothing!

(Thanks to Alan Light for the use of the photo I married to my audio. It’s a 1982 pic with a 1975 voice, but I hope you won’t find it too jarring.)

As soon as I saw the collection of tributes to individual Jack Kirby panels over at HiLobrow, I not only knew I wanted to be a part of the project, but I also immediately knew which panel deserved my love.

It came from one of my favorite issues of the Fantastic Four, issue #11, from February 1963, which unlike most issues, contained two stories. The Impossible Man was introduced in one of them, while we fans were able to get up close and personal with our heroes during “A Visit with the Fantastic Four” in the other.

In the panel below, which I would have seen when I was seven, the supergroup bumps into a group of kids pretending to be them, and as my brief essay explains … I could have been one of those kids.

The post begins:

When I was a kid, I grew up on the streets of Brooklyn, a borough of—not Metropolis, not Gotham, not Central City—but New York. You know—where the Marvel superheroes lived.

Which meant that although I could never hope to catch a glimpse of Superman flying by, there was always a chance I might turn the corner and bump into the Fantastic Four. Because I lived in New York City.

Jack Kirby’s city.

You can read the full story here.