Over on Facebook in a Marvel Comics alumni group, Ted Jalbert has posted a July 1976 Get Well card to Stan Lee which I’d completely forgotten I’d ever signed, dug out of the archives The Man had donated to the University of Wyoming.

It shows Stan on crutches wearing a cast, so I’m guessing he’d broken a leg—though perhaps that was only metaphorical—and was drawn by Paty Cockrum. Included are caricatures of Stan, John Verpoorten, Archie Goodwin, and many other Marvel staffers, plus the signatures of John Romita (both Sr. and Jr.), Walt Simonson, my wife Irene Vartanoff, Steve Edelson …

Steve Edelson? Wait—who’s Steve Edelson?

I’m Steve Edelson!

The reason I signed the card that way was because even though I was the one who organized the panels for the 1975 Mighty Marvel Con and edited the program book (so you’d think Stan would get my name right), when it came time there for him to introduce all us Marvel staffers from the stage, he pointed me out and called me … you guessed it … Steve Edelson.

So, of course, I’d tease him about that whenever I’d get the chance. When this card was put in front of me the following year, I apparently couldn’t resist.

Can you blame me?

While being interviewed the other day by Shaun Clancy about Captain Marvel for an article which will appear in an upcoming issue of Back Issue magazine, I got to talking about my first published comic book—which also happened to be the first appearance of Marvel’s Scarecrow. And when Shaun mentioned in passing that the character came out of a painting, right, I told him that, yes, he did, and I have that painting.

Which may leave you thinking … huh? But the painting from the story wasn’t real … was it?

If you ever read the initial Scarecrow story in Dead of Night #11, you’d have seen that painting as the fifth page of story by artist Rico Rival, which is first an action scene and later an object being auctioned.

But what you never saw, unless you were working beside me in the Marvel Bullpen back in the ’70s, was the original art for that page. (more…)

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…)