… that I began my staff position at Marvel Comics as Associate Editor in the British Reprint Department.

More importantly, it was the day I met my wife.

I’ve shared these photos before, but on a day like today, I feel moved to share them again.

Here I am at my desk in the Bullpen, a wall of that month’s covers behind me:

And here’s my Marvel Comics ID, with a photo taken, I believe, one year into my employment there:

There’s no possible way I could overstate how that day changed my life.

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t pause to mourn and remember Duffy Vohland, who died of AIDS in 1982, and without whom that day would never have occurred. Thanks for everything, Duffy.

A review by John Seavey over at fraggmented takes a look at the Scarecrow stories I wrote for Marvel Comics more than three decades ago and finds them wanting.

Luckily, Seavey is so hilarious in his description of the plot that I couldn’t help but laugh.

Besides—when I wrote those comics, I was just a tadpole. He’s probably right about everything!

Here’s my favorite part of his review:

And finally we get “The Scarecrow.” No, no, not that Scarecrow. No, not that Scarecrow either. This is an entirely different Scarecrow, who is … um … he lives in a painting, and there’s this cult that hates him, or maybe he hates them, and he’s getting revenge on them for, um … something, but they want the painting, and there’s a demon, and this guy keeps vanishing, and he’s got the power to … do stuff, I guess, and … it’s all actually more than a little confusing.

There’s more, which you can find here.

Whether he loved them or hated them is almost beside the point. The fact that anyone is still bothering to think about these at all so many years later is flattering enough!

How would you like to buy a copy of Spider-Man #51 for only 20 cents? Or get a 12-issue subscription to The Fantastic Four for only $1.75? No problem! Just make sure that you have your time machine set to take you back to 1968.

Here are two mimeographed fliers sent out by Marvel Comics and received by me forty years ago, one selling back issues and the other hawking subscriptions. The ink is fairly faded, but if you click on the image several times, you’ll be able to view readable copies.

I got these in the mail on April 26, 1968, presumably because I was a member of the Merry Marvel Marching Society. I know the exact date because I scribbled that information on the back of one of the sheets in the clumsy handwriting of a 13-year-old. I guess that seemed important at the time.

Note that on the subscription flier, someone—maybe even Fabulous Flo Steinberg, perhaps?—had manually crossed out the offer for Ghost Rider subs, since the final issue of that character’s run had been cover-dated November 1967. (That would have been for the western hero, as opposed to the not-yet-invented motorcycle-riding one.)

I remember how, in response to this solicitation, I taped nickels, dimes, and quarters to index cards, mailed the whole sticky mess to 625 Madison Avenue, and waited anxiously for the issues I’d somehow missed. I wish I could do that again!

Don’t you?

An inordinate amount of attention is suddenly being paid to the Scarecrow stories I wrote for Marvel back in the ’70s, especially considering the lack of attention that was paid to them at the time. The recent reprintings of the tales in the Legion of Monsters hardcover and the Essential Marvel Horror volume two trade paperback has caused a flurry of blogging about those ancient stories lately, such as the comment from Greg Hatcher over at Comic Book Resources this week that “there are moments of real potential in Scott Edelman’s work on the Scarecrow.”

Whether there was or not, that potential remained unfulfilled, as I only ever got to script two issues about the character. But since people are talking about the Scarecrow again, it seems a good time to share some never-before-reprinted art which appeared in Marvel’s UK titles when the stories were reprinted there.

First up, three covers of the weekly black-and-white book The Super-Heroes from the mid-’70s:

(more…)

Last week, while digging out a Marie Severin illustration with which to wish Chris Claremont a happy 58th birthday, I came across another drawing which brought back the old days, and a photo, too, all three from the pages of the June 1975 issue of Marvel Comics’ own fan magazine, FOOM.

I was the editor of FOOM back then, and issue #10 was an X-Men special, in honor of the relaunch which had occurred just a few months earlier in the pages of Giant-Sized X-Men #1. I filled that issue of FOOM with many articles and drawings about the mutant supergroup, including this Paty Cockrum illustration of Marvel Bullpenners as members of the original X-Men.

The piece, which appeared on one of the issue’s two editorial pages, shows Duffy Vohland as The Angel, me as the Beast (and yes, that’s an accurate depiction of my coiffure back then), Stan Lee as Professor X, Marv Wolfman as Iceman, Len Wein as Cyclops, and Paty as Marvel Girl.

You’re probably familiar with all of us in the artwork above save for Duffy Vohland, who isn’t much remembered by many outside of the industry these days, but without whom I’d never have gotten a job at Marvel in the first place. Though I’d been a convention-attending fan for years before I was hired by Marvel Comics, Duffy was the one who urged me to apply for an open position editing the company’s British line, when I’d previously avoided trying to make a living at something I loved, not wanting to mix business and pleasure. (I’ll leave further details of that ambivalence for some other time.) (more…)

Stan’s Soapbox: The Collection, which I’ve told you about many times before, is finally out. The book, which collects all of Stan Lee’s “Stan’s Soapbox” columns which originally appeared from 1967 through 1980, plus essays from people such as Joe Quesada, Roy Thomas, and others, including me, has been published by the Hero Initiative as part of its fundraising efforts for comic-book creators in need of financial support.

The large trade paperback is in full color, beautifully illustrated, and turns out to be far more elegantly designed than I’d anticipated. You should all rush out and buy it right now!

But I must admit that there was one page of the book which took me aback. (more…)

Chris Claremont, with whom I worked at Marvel Comics back in the ’70s, turns 58 today. Chris is perhaps best known for his 16-year run on Uncanny X-Men.

But Chris wasn’t always the trusted comics veteran that he is today. When I was editing the Marvel fan magazine FOOM, I asked Marie Severin to draw this image for the June 1975 issue just as Chris was at the beginning of that amazing run.

According to the caption, the image depicts “What the fans wanted to do to Chris Claremont, Len Wein, and Dave Cockrum for destroying the X-men before they saw the book. Once the finished product was in their hands, they quickly changed their minds.”

But as I look at the expression of agony on Chris’ face, I suspect that what this picture really shows is how he might be feeling inside today as the realization sinks in that another year has gone by.

Happy birthday, Chris!

For those of you who’ve grown tired of seeing endless photos of the Stan Lee of 2008 due to the National Medal of the Arts he received from President Bush at the White House last Monday, here he is 41 years ago at the 1967 New York Comic Convention.

That’s Big Name Fan turned pro Dave Kaler on the right.

And before you ask, no—I wasn’t there to take this picture, though I wish I had been. I was only 12, and my first comic-book convention was still three years away. (As for Stan, I guess the goatee was still in his future.)

Though I’ve had the photo in a folder for decades, you’ll have to thank either Andy or Pat Yanchus for its existence. One of them (they’re not quite sure which; after all, it was 41 years ago) snapped it at this early con at the City Squire Hotel.

Remember the collection of Stan Lee’s “Stan’s Soapbox” columns I was telling you about back in August? Once I’d heard about the project, I contributed scans of a batch of Stan’s old manuscripts I’d been hanging onto since the ’70s so they could be included in the book.

Well, the tome is finally coming out, and Stan’s done a video in support of this latest fundraising effort of the Hero initiative, a corporation which provides a safety net for comic-book creators in need of financial support.

Check it out:

Not bad for a guy who’ll be turning 86 next month!

Bill Mantlo, a Marvel Comics colorist turned writer who became best known for scripting Micronauts, Rom, Cloak and Dagger, and Alpha Flight, turned 57 today. Well … that may be what the wider world thinks of first when they think of Bill, but what I remember most from the days we worked together back at Marvel was his sense of humor.

Here’s one example—

When I was putting together the December 1974 issue FOOM, Marvel’s fan magazine, I thought it would be fun to run baby pictures of the artists and writers in the news section next to stories about their upcoming projects. I wasn’t going to ask anyone to do anything I wouldn’t do myself, so this image of me appeared at the top of the section:

Many other writers and artists cooperated, and handed in photos such as these, which I will leave unidentified for the moment: (more…)