Mark Evanier reports that Tony DiPreta, best known (to me at least) as the artist of the Joe Palooka comic strip from 1959-1984, has died at the age of 88. I don’t think Palooka is much remembered today outside of comics aficionados, but it was once one of the top newspaper strips in the country, and I enjoyed it as a kid when New York had far more newspapers than it does today.

I only met DiPreta once, on September 26, 1971, at the same 75th anniversary celebration for the U.S. comic strip at which I also met Sy Barry. One reason I’m so sure of the date can be seen in the sketch I obtained from him that day.

If you click on the image below to view it at a larger size, you’ll be able to see that Joe Palooka’s right eye (well, his left actually, but it’s to your right) looks a bit … odd.

That’s because as we stood in front of the Central Park bandshell, a few raindrops fell. Two landed to smudge DiPreta’s name, and the third got the old prizefighter right in the eye. Since that event was the only time I ever begged for sketches outdoors, there can be no doubt as to the date.

I share this tidbit of info not only so you’ll take a moment to remember DiPreta … but also to show that, as some of you have hinted, why, yes, I have met almost everyone.

I just found out today via Mark Evanier that writer/artist/editor Bill DuBay died two weeks ago on April 15. I don’t think I ever met DuBay during my years as a comics pro, but I was certainly familiar with his work from my years as a comics fan.

I devoured his writing and editing at Warren Publishing in the pages of Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella in the ’70s, but what I remember most (which I’m guessing probably wouldn’t have pleased him) is a series of humorous strips he wrote and drew for the program books of Phil Seuling’s 1972 and 1973 New York Comic Art Conventions.

These two pages, starring DuBay himself, gave me a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the world of publishing and comics I had no idea I would eventually enter.

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I’ve always loved reading obituaries, and not just those of the famous, but of the rest of us, too. So in addition to reading the lengthy write-ups newspaper editors assemble, I always scan the pages of smaller paid ads families insert to remember the deceased. Which is why I found myself reading the obituaries from yesterday’s Washington Post while eating lunch today.

I like to see the photos that have been chosen (sometimes of the memorialized both young and old), the nicknames (this issue included Gigi, Duke, and Cootie), and the odd facts (Edward Ramond Seibert “participated in field tests on the rifle that Lee Harvey Oswald used to assassinate President Kennedy”).

As I scanned the obits today, I noticed a photo that was quite … unusual. How odd, I thought, that someone had chosen, in the midst of page after page of dignified photos, to be remembered dressed up like a pro wrestler. But when I looked more closely, I saw that—Hey! That’s not just someone dressed like a pro wrestler—that is a pro wrestler!

Don’t know who Big John Studd was? Then you’d better check out both parts of this classic match! (more…)

I just learned that pioneering space artist Robert McCall passed away Friday at the age of 90. I never got the chance to meet him, at least not in the flesh, but as for his spirit … I met and was touched by that a long, long time ago.

In addition to inspiring me with his visions for as long as I can remember, he also played a very important specific role in my life, by allowing Sovereign Media to use his images in the first issue of Science Fiction Age. We printed an art gallery in each issue of the magazine, but McCall was the first.

Here, from the pages of that November 1992 issue, is a gallery of McCall’s artwork, accompanied by strong words of praise from Ray Bradbury. Give it a read and gaze in awe at the pictures so that even if you’ve never heard of the man, you’ll know why you should, too, be celebrating his life and mourning his death.

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In the mid-’60s, I didn’t just like Soupy Sales, I loved Soupy Sales. There was a great joy to his TV show, combined with a delightful anarchy. He had the ability to make me feel like I was one of his friends, something Stan Lee was also accomplishing at around the same time via his Bullpen Bulletins pages back when the Marvel Comics universe was born.

That show was eventually canceled, but in the late ’70s, Soupy came back with The New Soupy Sales Show. After about a year, it was also in danger of cancellation. And though I might not have been able to do anything about the loss of Soupy’s first show, I swore I would do something this time. (more…)

I published a poem by Gene van Troyer 25 years ago in Last Wave, but I never got to know him as well as I would have liked. That’s primarily because he moved to Japan (sometime in the mid-’70s, I think), and so our paths never crossed on the con circuit.

The one time we got to sit and talk at length was at the Worldcon in Yokohama, at which we spent an undisturbed hour in the SFWA suite catching up on each other’s lives and promising to spend more time together during some future trip to Japan. Sadly, that won’t be happening, as he died July 17, 2009 of cancer. Here we are back in 2007.

Here’s what SFWA had to say about him. He seemed like a nice guy, and I wish I’d gotten to know him better. I plan on pulling down some of his poetry today and spending some time remembering him.

Here’s one of his poems so you can do the same.

Here’s another.

Reading of the death of French pastry genius Gaston Lenôtre in the pages of The New York Times brought me immediately back to mid-’70s Manhattan, when I first met the woman who was to become my wife and love was in bloom. I need no madeleine to bring back my past; give me an inspired Lenôtre creation any day.

The obituary refers to Chateau France, an 80-seat restaurant and pâtisserie, which he opened on East 59th Street in April 1974, the same month Irene began work at Marvel Comics, and two months before my start date. I don’t remember ever eating in the restaurant, but the pâtisserie, which in my memory was simply called Lenôtre’s, was immediately next to the restaurant, and once Irene and I discovered each other it became somewhat of a hangout for us.

I can close my eyes and remember specific pastries, Irene and I holding hands across the table as we ate. There was a swan encased in spun-sugar. A large orange filled with cream. Irene and I would walk there during our lunch hours, or after work, and enjoy Lenôtre’s amazing confections, and our budding relationship. Lenôtre was a culinary god, and his pastries were so sensual that eating them was almost a form of foreplay.

Lenôtre apprentice Michel Richards is quoted as saying about the restaurant, “It closed a year later. Americans weren’t ready for his pastries.” Irene and I surely were. You may remember what music was playing when you fell in love. I remember what I was eating. And often, what I was eating was the brainchild of Gaston Lenôtre.

Continued Richard, “When you’ve been at Lenôtre, it’s like a drug. You’ve been injected with his recipes that you have to carry your whole life.”

I have. I do. And almost 35 years later, I’m still high.

I once complained that Deep Throat didn’t go to prison. I wasn’t to learn what I’d done for several decades, though.

When Mark Felt—not Henry Kissinger, or Alexander Haig, or L. Patrick Gray, or any one of a number of other suspects—was revealed three years ago to be Deep Throat, the man who helped bring down Nixon, the first thing I thought was—”Wait a second! I know that name!”

And I did, but not from a Watergate context. It’s because I sent the following letter to the White House on April 20, 1981:

Dear President Reagan:

I must write this letter to strongly protest your recent pardoning of W. Mark Felt and Edward S. Miller, both of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, both of whom were convicted in a court of law of conspiring to violate the constitutional rights of Americans in the early 1970s.

At the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, we, the victors, introduced the important Nuremberg Principle—”I was only following orders” was determined not to be an allowable defense for the commission of a crime. With your pardon you have canceled our this important principle, telling employees of the United States Government, in effect: “Go ahead and do what your bosses tell you. Don’t bother your head about whether it’s moral or not, or whether it’s legal. Just do it. If you do something wrong and you’re found out, someone will come along with a pardon to haul your ashes out of the fire.” And you have done just that, sir, like a Mafia don springing his faithful henchmen.

This is supposed to be a democracy—one citizen, one vote—and no man, not even a President, should be allowed to overrule the wisdom of a jury’s democratic verdict with a capricious pardon.

I must strongly urge you not to make similar misuses of your pardoning power in the future.

Sincerely yours,

Scott Edelman

I know, I know. Not only was the tone of my letter over the top, but its message was unlikely to be heard. Plus, letters like these— of which I wrote many in the early ’80s to various elected officials—probably got me an F.B.I. file. But at the time, it seemed important to let the emperor know that he wore no clothes.

If anyone had told me back then that someday we’d have a president who’d make me long for Reagan—or even Nixon—I’d have called them mad!

Anyway, farewell to Mark Felt. Whatever your other sins, it turned out that you deserved kudos after all.

The first horrific dreams I ever had which were inspired by a book or magazine as opposed to arising from the depths of my own depraved brain came about when I was nine due to the image on the cover of this July 1964 issue of Famous Monsters of Filmland, edited by Forrest J Ackerman.

As a result, my parents forbade me from reading it or any other monster magazines for at least a week, hoping to protect my impressionable mind.

I couldn’t keep away, though (sorry, Mom and Dad!), and snuck back to them as often as I could. (more…)

As reported by The Comics Reporter, Mark Evanier, The Rutland Herald, and others, Tom Fagan died on Tuesday at the age of 76. Tom Fagan was a comic-book fan who founded the annual Rutland, Vermont Halloween parade back in 1959, an event which later drew many fans and pros, was featured in both Marvel and DC comics of the ’70s, and even led to an unofficial crossover between the two companies.

I got a chill when I heard the news, because even though I haven’t spoken to Tom in at least a decade, he was the first person to make an impression on me at my first comic-book convention. Which means that my acquaintance with him extends back as far as Phil Seuling’s July 4th weekend Comic-Con in 1970. (more…)