(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…)

As you might have noticed if you’ve visited here before, I enjoy reading obituaries. And not just those of the famous, but also those unlikely to make the front pages.

The obituary for Virginia Durr, which appeared in a recent issue of the Washington Post, was particularly fascinating. Here’s why—

I found it odd for the notice to mention within its first paragraph that Durr died “on the 61 anniversary of the arrest of Rosa Parks.” After all, many people die on the anniversaries of famous events. So I was curious why that particular event would be a fact worth bringing up.

The second paragraph provides an explanation … managing at the same time to make me even more curious.

It turns out that Durr’s parents were the ones who “bailed Rose Parks out of jail after she was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus on December 1, 1955.”

Was the date of her death a coincidence? Or something more?

Because apparently, this action by Durr’s parents, who were civil rights organizers, “took a toll” on her, as the obituary put it, and led to her being “shunned,” taken out of school, and sent to a private school “up north.”

Was the date so infused with emotion for Virginia Durr that considering the anniversary this year caused her fatal heart attack? The obituary doesn’t make that connection, and the Internet provides no answer.

But I wonder …

As I’ve told you before, I’m addicted to the obituary pages of newspapers, and not just so I can read summations of the lives of the rich and famous. I’ve always been moved by the passing of regular folks, too, and sometimes, certain write-ups stand out.

And so, here’s your uplifting obituary of the day.

I regret never having met Henry Frank Kulesza.

I’d have liked to listen to polka and eaten some kielbasa with him.

I can’t remember the first time I met Doug Fratz, but I know the first time we were under the same roof—though I don’t think I knew it at the time. It was in 1971, at Phil Seuling’s annual 4th of July Comic Art Convention, and thanks to Mike Zeck, a comics fan turned comic pro just like me, a photo turned up from that day a few years back.

Here we are more than 45 years ago …

That’s me in shadows to the left, in the front row as always, wearing my denim jacket emblazoned with studs and a barely visible “War is not healthy for children and other living things” patch. (Yes, I was a hippie.) And there to the right, half a dozen rows back, is Doug, his hair at the time equally as long as mine, if not longer.

I have no idea what panel we were waiting for when Mike ran to the front of the room and snapped a photo of the crowd, or whether Doug and I actually met that weekend. No matter. We met sometime within the next few years, and I became a constant reader of his fanzine Thrust, which eventually changed its name to Quantum, earning five Hugo nominations along the way. And when it came time for me to edit Science Fiction Age, and later Science Fiction Weekly, he became a frequent book review contributor.

When we last spoke, just a few months ago at the Kansas City Worldcon, we reminisced about Discon II, the 1974 Worldcon which had been the first for both of us. I’d hoped to see him again at Capclave next weekend. Instead, I’ll be taking his place on a panel there about book reviewing, when I’d much rather have been in the audience hearing him talk on the subject. He was a nice guy, an excellent critic, and will be greatly missed.

For more details about Doug, check out his entry at the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.

As some of you may know, I wrote a biography of Joanie Laurer a.k.a. Chyna that was published in 2000. Because it was unauthorized, I never interviewed her, and so assembled the book based on the facts I already knew from editing a pro wrestling magazine plus what I could pick up through research, which I combined to tell the arc of her life up until then.

On hearing of her death, I went back and skimmed what I’d written, which led me to the following paragraphs near the end of the book—

When Joanie Laurer transformed herself from an uncertain teenager into Chyna, the Ninth Wonder of the World, she became many things, not all of them expected. If life went as she had planned and hoped from the beginning, she knew that she would have money and fame without limit. But it is doubtful she could have foreseen that she would not only become a celebrity, but she would also be taken up as a role model and a feminist icon. We expect wrestling to be entertaining, not inspirational. How refreshing that Joanie Laurer was able to surprise us all by doing both.

The corporate world has its infamous glass ceiling, and though this woman warrior went in for the Federation instead of the corporation, Joanie Laurer has burst all expectations in her own way, by ripping through wrestling’s canvas ceiling.

Hyperbolic much? Yes. But hey, why shouldn’t writing about pro wrestling be hyperbolic?

In any case, however purple the prose, I stand by those feelings, which remain sincere.

I liked her before I was contracted to write Warrior Queen, and in the writing of it, came to like her even more. I’d hoped she’d live into her 90s, like Mae Young, but alas, she only made it half as far.

R.I.P. to the Ninth Wonder of the World.

Artificial Intelligence pioneer Marvin Minsky passed away two days ago, which immediately brought back memories of the Science Forum in which he took part in the (gulp!) March 1993 issue of Science Fiction Age.

Those memories proved not to be entirely accurate, as I learned when I thought of digging out the tapes from that session to see if any of the audio would be of a quality worth posting here. (more…)

I’ve been attending science fiction conventions for a relatively long time—my first Lunacon was in 1972, my first Worldcon in 1974—and I can’t remember David Hartwell ever not being there. That he will no longer be there seems wrong.

But though I won’t see him at conventions, he will live on in our memories, and in the many books he either edited or inspired.

Strangely, though it’s science fiction which has kept us bound together all these years, it was poetry that caused me to first reach out to him. I was a newbie teen back in those early days of con-going, so we moved in different circles, but I was also writing a great deal of poetry then, and David was the editor of the literary journal The Little Magazine, which published the likes of Thomas Disch, Samuel R. Delany, Joanna Russ, and Ursula K. Le Guin. (more…)

Another old comics acquaintance has passed, and though I hadn’t spoken to her for decades, the world still seems a little smaller today.

It’s being reported that Michelle Wrightson has died suddenly, apparently of natural causes. And though I did know her last by that name, I first became acquainted with her when she was Michelle Brand, and not in the flesh, but rather through her groundbreaking underground comics work.

This is how I remember her looking when we finally did meet, as seen in a photo of her and her husband Roger Brand taken by Patrick Rosenkranz.

My acquaintance with her work goes back just about as far as my connection with organized comics fandom itself. I went to my first convention at age 15 in July 1970, which was the same month the all-women’s underground It Ain’t Me Babe was published, featuring Michelle’s “Tirade Funnies.” I can’t say for sure that I bought my copy at that first con, but as I did buy other undergrounds such as Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary that weekend, it was either then or shortly thereafter. (more…)

As if I wasn’t morose enough yesterday, it having been my late father’s birthday, I also learned that Rocky Wood, former president of the Horror Writers Association, and one of the nicest guys you could ever meet, had succumbed to ALS, with which he’d been diagnosed in 2010.

I didn’t think I’d ever taken a picture with Rocky, but it turns out that Ellen Datlow caught us at the Stoker Awards weekend in 2009.

Rocky and I had many lengthy conversations over the years across many continents, several on the subject of Stephen King, something he knew more about than anyone in the world, even King himself. I’m going to miss those talks, and I’m not alone. His contributions to the horror field in general and to the smooth running of the Horror Writers Association in specific cannot be measured. (more…)

If you worked at Marvel or DC in the mid-’70s, and were not lucky enough to have connected with a counterpart at your competitor who was willing to trade you a weekly package of all of their company’s comics for those published by your own (as I sadly was not), you surely ended up at Ed Summer’s Supersnipe Comic Book Emporium.

I can’t count the times someone in the Bullpen would cry out, “I’m heading up to Supersnipe” as the day wound down, and we’d march en masse from 575 Madison Avenue to 84th Street and Second Avenue to squeeze into the tiny store (seen above in an image borrowed from Sean Howe’s blog) that was the comics shop of the day. And when I say tiny, I mean it. In my memory, no more than half a dozen people could squeeze inside at a time, as most of the narrow store was behind the counter. (more…)