I’d planned to take a day trip to New York last year to chat with Jim Salicrup, whom I’d met during the mid-‘70s when we both worked in the Marvel Comics Bullpen, but (for reasons I’m sure you understand) that couldn’t happen. And as I continue to pretend we’re living in the world we want, rather than the one we’ve been handed, I recently had that meal … albeit remotely.

For the past 15 years, Jim’s been the editor-in-chief at Papercutz, which publishes Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, Smurfs, Asterix, and more, but when I met him, he was at the start of his 20-year Marvel career, where he wrote Transformers, Sledge Hammer, The A-Team, Spidey Super Stories, the infamous Incredible Hulk toilet paper, and much more. He also edited The Avengers, The Uncanny X-Men, The Fantastic Four, and The Amazing Spider-Man. In between those two jobs, he worked at Topps, where edited books such as Bram Stoker’s Dracula, X-Files, Zorro, and a line of Jack Kirby superhero comics — and also did a stint at Stan Lee Media as well.

We discussed the illustrated postcard which convinced Marvel Comics to hire him at age 15, how John Romita Sr. caused him to change his name the first day on the job, what he did to enrage MAD magazine’s Al Feldstein, his late-night mission to secure Stan Lee’s toupee, what editor Mark Gruenwald had in common with Bill Murray, why the 1970s’ X-Men revival was like Amazing Fantasy #15, how he convinced Todd McFarlane to stick to Spider-Man (which eventually led to a blockbuster new comic), the possible connection between Stan’s love of crossword puzzles and the famed Marvel Method, and much more.

Here’s how you can take a seat at the table with us — (more…)

In 1974, Marvel published Planet of the Apes #1, which both told and continued the movie’s story. But even though this was a black-and-white magazine rather than a color comic, and therefore not subject to the Comics Code, there’s something you didn’t get to see — naked butts.

George Tuska’s artwork for the film adaptation clearly showed the crew of the crashed spaceship nude, both when they were bathing in a lake, and when they were chasing the humans who’d stolen their clothes. But in panel after panel, someone (I’m guessing not George) added pants. (more…)

Reading what my old boss Roy Thomas had to say today over at The Hollywood Reporter about Stan Lee and what’s come to be known as the Marvel Method reminded me I own a few things which I feel shed a small amount of light on the collaborative nature of creating comics when there’s no full script prior to the art —

Stan’s typed plot for a romance story intended to be titled “But One of Us Must Lose!”

Ross Andru’s pencils turning that plot into seven pages of art.

And then the published story, as inked by Jack Abel, which appeared in Our Love Story #17 (June 1972) under the title “When Love is Lost!”

Since so few plots remain from that period, and even if they do, the accompanying pencil art has rarely survived, I thought something could be gained from a comparison of Stan’s plot to Ross’s art to Stan’s final dialogue.

I won’t share all of Ross’s pencil art here, both because what I most want to point out is the altered ending … and because my scanner isn’t large enough to capture full pages of ’70s-era original art. Maybe someday I’ll share it all, but for now, here’s what I think matters.

First, Stan’s plot —

Though I’m fascinated by Stan’s direction to Ross that he should — “Always make sure most of the panels in a romance story show the heroine looking sad rather than happy. For some reason, girl readers want to read about people with PROBLEMS, not happy-looking people.” — that’s not the part that speaks most to the collaborative process. For that, I direct your attention to the ending.

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Thanks to a query from the prolific comics historian Brian Cronin, it’s time to step forward as the author of yet another piece of uncredited Marvel Comics promotional copy from the ’70s. He reached out to ask who wrote the one-line blurbs which appeared for awhile underneath the artwork at the bottom of most comics pages —

— which made me realize that though over the years I’d confessed to being the writer behind the Bullpen Bulletins pages (save for Stan’s Soapbox), the copy which appeared on top of the splash pages, a set of 60 Marvel Slurpee cups, and other promotional materials, I’d yet to out myself as being the author behind that particular project.

I have no idea who wrote those one-liners before I arrived on the scene in the Bullpen, moving over from the British reprint department, but during much of my time there, I was responsible for creating those distracting slugs.

The only writer I remember creating their own was Tony Isabella. I have no idea after all this time whether that was because he was the one who wrote them before I did and handed over his assignment, and so perhaps felt more invested in their creation, or was simply protective of the promotion of the titles he scripted. We are talking about more than 40 years ago! But … I don’t remember anyone else handing in each month’s content like that.

I also don’t remember exactly how or when the task was handed over to me — I assume it had to have been Len Wein who gave me the assignment — but each month, I would interview the writers about what they had planned and create catchy write-ups with that information. And not (while we’re on the subject of stepping out from behind the mask) just for a single purpose. I also wrote up the news for F.O.O.M. (which I’ve already admitted) and cobbled together the Mighty Marvel Checklists, those half-page promos which appeared each week across the entire Marvel line.

Here are two I definitely wrote —

As to why I’m sure I wrote them — I scanned them just a few moments ago from the portfolio I used to carry to job interviews in the late ‘70s when I was trying to get a post-comics job. As to the precise comics in which they originally appeared, well … I’ll leave that to historians like Brian Cronin!

The journey to the meal you’re about to share — my dinner with Don McGregor, who I worked beside in the Marvel Bullpen of the mid-‘70s — began a year ago, as I was returning home from Readercon and learned from former guest Paul Di Filippo — Episode 62, check it out — that Don had moved back to Rhode Island, not very far from the airport out of which I’d be flying. That’s when I started making plans for an episode I hoped I’d be able to pull off on the way home from this year’s Readercon.

I reached out to Dauntless Don — we all had nicknames back them; he was Dauntless, I was Sparkling — and said, hey, how about if when I’m on the way back to the airport at the end of Readercon, I swoop down, take you out for dinner, and we chew over the old times. And that’s exactly what we did, at the Safehouse in East Greenwich, Rhode Island, along with Dauntless Don’s wife, the Marvelous Marsha, whose voice you’ll occasionally hear in the background of this episode.

Don started out his career in comics by writing some of the best horror stories to appear in the pages of Creepy and Eerie — and I remember well reading the first of them in the early ’70s. When he moved on to Marvel Comics, he did groundbreaking work with such characters as Black Panther, Killraven, and Luke Cage. In fact, his two-year “Panther’s Rage” arc was ranked as the third most important Marvel Comics storyline of the ’70s by Comics Bulletin. In 2015, he was awarded the Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing at San Diego Comic-Con International.

We discussed how meeting Jim Steranko led to him selling his first comics story, why when he was 13 years old, he wanted to be Efrem Zimbalist Jr., what he learned from Naked City creator Stirling Silliphant, how his first meeting with future Black Panther artist Billy Graham could have been disastrous, why the comics he wrote in the ’70s wouldn’t have been able to exist two years later, the reasons Archie Goodwin was such a great editor, how he convinced Stan Lee to allow the first interracial kiss in mainstream comics, what life lessons he took from Westerns in general and Hopalong Cassidy in particular, why he almost stopped writing Lady Rawhide, and much more.

Here’s how you can share some sirloin with us— (more…)

For decades, people have been asking me which of two brothers had his body taken over by the Scarecrow, a character I created back at Marvel Comics in the mid-’70s. And for decades, I’ve been telling those people—I can’t remember!

But at last, the answer can be revealed.

For while going through a box of papers recently, I discovered my plot for a Scarecrow adventure which was never drawn. And this being Halloween, it seemed like a good time to unleash it on the world.

The Scarecrow concept led a complicated life, both before and after his first story was published.

I created him to appear as a backup in Monsters Unleashed, one of Marvel’s black-and-white books, where he was meant to rotate with Tigra and Frankenstein. His debut there was even announced in the August 1974 issue of the fanzine The Comic Reader.

But Monsters Unleashed was cancelled before the world ever got to see him.

Next up, he was going to appear as a back-up feature in Giant-Size Werewolf by Night … which also got cancelled before the world could meet him.

But at last, the first Scarecrow story was published … in Dead of Night #11, the final issue of what had previously been a reprint title.

After that, he was scheduled to move on to his own comic, as you can see from this subscription ad.

But that book never launched, swallowed by the great Marvel implosion, and the story which was to have been in Scarecrow #1 was burned off in Marvel Spotlight #26. (more…)

Irene and I accomplished many things during our extended weekend trip to New Jersey and New York—she while attending the New Jersey Romance Writers conference, me while recording three new episodes of my Eating the Fantastic podcast—but the most important thing we did was to spend Sunday hanging out with our dear friend Marie Severin.

And as usual when visiting Marvel’s Mirthful One, there was much kibitzing involved.

Did you recognize Marie? No?

Then about about now? (more…)

I first met Fabulous Flo Steinberg (who passed away on July 23) when I was eight years old, not that she knew it at the time. And not that I knew it at the time either.

What happened was, I’d read an issue of the Fantastic Four during the first few years of that title in which The Thing said he had a headache. I’m no longer sure why he made that claim. Perhaps it had something to do with the Yancy Street Gang getting on his nerves. In any case, little kid me was incensed.

How could The Thing have a headache? After all, wasn’t he super?

So I sat down and scribbled a note to Marvel Comics, and soon received a postcard back explaining it all.

“You see, Scott,” said the card. “It was a super headache!”

The card was signed “Stan & the Gang,” but it was, of course, from Flo, who at that time would have been in her first year as Marvel’s “Corresponding Secretary and Gal Friday.”

Flo’s face was first revealed to fans in the pages of Marvel Tales #1 (which bore a cover date of 1964), and we first heard her voice on a record which was produced in 1965 as part of the package I received when I joined the Merry Marvel Marching Society.

She sent me that membership kit when I was 10, along with a button I wore Sunday afternoon at the Society of Illustrators as I gathered with her friends, which included many current and former Marvel Bullpenners, to remember her. (more…)

(I struggled Sunday to find the words which would explain how important Len Wein was in my life, but found I could’t bring myself to write the eulogy he deserved. All I could manage was the following series of tweets, which I gather here in lieu of a proper celebration which I hope will come later.)

I first met Len Wein at Phil Seuling’s 1970 4th of July Comic Art Convention. I was member #38. Len was member #65. I was only 15 years old.

A year later, at the Times Square Nathan’s, Len—who’d wanted to be an artist, not writer—drew this sketch of a character he’d created. (more…)

Yesterday, while searching for something completely differently, I came across correspondence I’d received from the Comics Code Authority in 1976 which ordered Marvel Comics to change a panel in an issue of Omega the Unknown I’d written.

I’d referenced this incident about Omega the Unknown #7 (March 1976) when artist Jim Mooney passed, but back then I didn’t have my hands on the CCA note. Now I do!

And you can read it below …

But before you do, look more closely at the villain in that panel as he runs off. Notice anything odd and clumsy about his gait? Or about the position of his right hand?

Well, that’s because something was once in that blank space to his right—a policeman swatted aside by Blockbuster.

A policeman the Comics Code requested we remove.

Why?

Well … (more…)