Join me as I look back at the trouble I had getting out of an elevator at the first Star Trek convention, what my ballot looked like when I voted for the 1968 Alley Awards, the composers who wrote the music to match the lyrics I had Rick Jones sing in Captain Marvel #50, what teen me got wrong (twice!) about Jim Steranko, the three comics characters I almost cosplayed as at the 1972 Rutland Halloween parade, the mystery woman who would have been my Beautiful Dreamer on a Forever People float, and much more.

You can eavesdrop on those memories via the embed below or download at the site of your choice.

Here are some images to accompany the listening experience —

The cover to my 1969 Poetry Journal

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If you’ve been following me on social media lately, you’d have learned that earlier this month while trying to verify some information I wanted to talk about on an episode of my Why Not Say What Happened? podcast, I discovered a box containing some early teen writing which had somehow escaped my previous purge of that work. And you’d also know that since my discovery, as of this date, I’ve shredded 1,850 pages of poetry, short stories, and a novel, too, written from 1971 through 1974 … that is, from ages 16 through 19.

Some of you are aghast, and we can discuss that another time, but for now, let me assure you it’s only my own unsatisfactory words which are being made into confetti, not any writing or documents created by others. All those have been saved and will probably be turned over to a university archive someday. One forgotten find within that batch — my invitation from Tom Fagan to the 1972 incarnation of his famed Rutland, Vermont Halloween parade, as well as our correspondence about my attendance there, all from two years before I began working professionally in comics.

When I posted the interior of that invite on social media, someone responded with awe that the 1972 incarnation of that event was the same one celebrated in a crossover commemorated in the pages of DC’s Justice League of America #103, and Marvel’s Amazing Adventures #16 and Thor #207.

Not quite. (more…)