I’ve been resting my head on these guys for decades. Well … not continuously. I do have other pillowcases, you know!

But I only noticed last night—after many, many years—that these other guys were on the flip side!

How is it that so much time has gone by without me ever noticing this before?

I say it’s all Wendy and Marvin’s fault!

Yes, I know Curt is no longer with us, but he would have turned 82 the other day, and since he was THE Superman artist of my youth, I figured I should take note. His is the face of Superman I see when I close my eyes, though you’d think, based on my age, that face could have easily belonged to Wayne Boring.

As far as I know, I only met Curt once, back in 1973 at a National Cartoonist Society Ruben Awards banquet held at the Waldorf Astoria. I was just a fanboy then, my job in the Marvel Bullpen still in the future. I was the guest of cartoonist Bill Kresse, whom I’d met thanks to a high school class trip to the New York Daily News.

I wore a old tuxedo which had belonged to a family friend, and as is true for all fanboys back then, I carried a sketch pad tucked under one arm. And to the embarrassment of my host, I interrupted the artists as they tried to eat their rubber chicken, and asked for drawings. (At least I assume my actions had to embarrass Bill. He never said. Who knows? Maybe he found them amusing.)

Here’s what Curt graciously drew for me. (more…)

I got an email earlier today from Heritage Auctions touting its latest offerings, and the most interesting part of the message wasn’t the original art I could never afford, but an observation pointed out about a change made to the cover of Action #1 before the comic was released.

Here’s the published cover we all know.

But here’s the cover as it appeared in an ad in an earlier issue of Detective.

I wish I could find a better reproduction of the ad, but in any case—could you spot the difference? (more…)

Half an hour ago, I was outbid for a unique piece of comics memorabilia. Such a thing had never been sold before, so I had no way of gauging its value or eventual price. I was willing to pay a couple of hundred bucks, but it ended up going for $1,000, far too rich for my blood, especially considering the plans I had, about which more below.

So what just sold for $1,000? Why, this—

Any idea, before you scroll down, exactly what that is? Well, yes … hair. Anyone could tell that.

But whose hair? (more…)

I created my earliest fiction (well, save for the lies I told my parents) somewhere between age 8 and 11. And the story I wrote was an adventure I couldn’t then get from comic books; not because it couldn’t be done, but because comics hadn’t yet evolved to the point where the corporate entities had the will to do it. It starred all of the Marvel and DC heroes of the day in an epic melee, battling across company lines. Because that was a fannish dream—to erase the boundaries between Marvel and DC and put those heroes and villains in one big playground.

I’d have to wait until 1976 to see the real thing, in the first ever company crossover, Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man, written by Gerry Conway.

One of the many documents I’ve been saving since my days in the Marvel Bullpen has been a photocopy of Gerry’s original Marvel-style plot for the book. I haven’t bothered sharing this synopsis online up until now because I was sure someone else must surely have already done it. But an Internet search, as well as a survey of those who ought to know, revealed to me that no one’s ever posted the following outline of Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man before.

And so—because information wants to be free—check out something I’ve been lugging around in a file folder for more than three decades. Enjoy another taste of behind-the-scenes secret history.

Letterheady is a relatively new site that’s quickly become one of my favorites. It was started a few months ago by Shaun Usher, who also runs the wonderful Letters of Note.

Letterheady is devoted to posting interesting … well … what does it sound like?

A few of my favorite letterheads have been those belonging to Nikola Tesla, Harry Houdini, and Robot Salesmen. I liked the site so much I even decided to share old Marvel Comics letterhead with them.

Browsing the site today, I discovered letterhead for an event I’d never heard of before, something called Macy’s Superman Adventure.

Macy’s Superman Adventure? What the heck was that?

I have no idea. I feel as if I should, but I don’t. And except for a few vague facts, it doesn’t look as if the Internet has much of an idea, either.

Here are a few things I was able to discover.

I was able to find out that it was a 1940 promotional show sponsored by Macy’s Department Store and WOR Radio 710. (Though, of course, that was already apparent by the strip at the bottom of the sheet.)

I was able to find a letter which had been accompanied by two complimentary passes to the event given to semi-finalists from Superman Day at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. (Now that’s an event that’s been well-documented, since it was the first public appearance of Superman in costume.)

I was able to find a poster promising that “Before your eyes the World’s mightiest Comic Book and Radio hero COMES ALIVE in a spectacular action filled adventure for all ages.”

But what I wasn’t able to learn is … If I’d gone to Macy’s 5th floor, what would I have seen? What actually happened during that spectacular adventure?

I know that out there, someone knows. So—if you know, would you please let me know?

And would it be too much to hope for pictures?

I was going through some old comics this evening and found the ad below in Jimmy Olsen #90, the January 1966 issue. The Superman 80-Page Giant being advertised was cover-dated the same month.

If you click through the image several times to blow it up as large as you can, you’ll see a couple of things that intrigued me.

First, note Superman is telling the audience of 1966 that the reprinted stories were “published before you were born,” that “less than 100 copies of this issue are still in existence” (tsk, tsk, Superman, don’t you know the proper usage should be “fewer”?) and that “collectors will pay $30.00 and up for a perfect copy!”

$30.00? Wow! (more…)

Frederick Seidel, whose first book of poetry, Final Solutions, caused a controversy in 1962, was interviewed for the Fall 2009 issue of The Paris Review.

(As I’ve explained before, I have a lifetime subscription to that magazine, instigated by my wife as a present way back in 1979. The gift that keeps on giving!)

One of the questions dealt with the poetic influence of and his friendship with Poet Laureate Robert Lowell.

An unexpected name popped up in Seidel’s answer:

“He was my mentor and a friend and certainly an influence. I went to interview him for The Paris Review in 1959. It took two days, maybe four or five hours a day—an enormous amount of effort and time. At a certain moment late in the first day, my friend Whitney Ellsworth, who was manning the tape recorder, said, I’m afraid we’ve got to start over. It turned out he hadn’t had the machine on. That’s when I got to know Lowell! We hit it off, and he became a good friend.”

Unless there’s some other Whitney Ellsworth I don’t know about, this means that the comic-book editor of Action Comics, Adventure Comics, Batman, Detective Comics and Superman in the ’40s and mid-’50s, who later became the producer and story editor on the television series The Adventures of Superman, was also hanging around with the poetry circle of the period. Is this something that was commonly known?

On the other hand, he might not have had an interest in poetry at all. Maybe it’s just that Ellsworth had been a classmate of Seidel’s, and was also one of those early adopters of the ’50s who fooled around with reel-to-reel tape recorders, and so was called into service because of that.

Does anyone out there have further information on Ellsworth’s non-comics background? I’ve been unable to turn anything up online.

In any case, it’s an interesting case of six degrees of separation, and a piece of comics history I knew nothing about.

Remember the book I was telling you about a couple of weeks ago, titled The Swap, by Antony Moore? I had been bothered by the fact that the MacGuffin of the story—a copy of Superman #1—was stated as being valueless when traded away by a kid in the UK in 1982, and now that I’ve finished the book, I’m still bothered by it.

I (first of all) found it difficult to swallow that a 12-year-old kid in 1982 would even have a copy of Superman #1 (especially when that kid lived in the UK, and there are only a total of 46 copies extant in the world today), and (second) even if he did manage to end up with a copy, that he would not suspect its worth at the time, considering all the newspaper coverage in the previous decade about the value of Golden Age comics.

The fact that the novel revolved around that particular comic took me out of the story right from the beginning, and even though it turned out to be a well-written book with nice touches of character and setting, it annoys me still. As I wrote back on August 3, I was hoping for an explanation as to how the protagonist could be so ignorant of its worth back then, and … well … I didn’t really get any. (more…)

Does anyone have a copy of the 1982 Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide at hand, and if so, can you do me the favor of looking up the value of a copy of Superman #1 back then?

I just started reading The Swap, by Antony Moore, a galley of which Anne Groell was kind enough to slip me back at Comic-Con. The novel’s conceit sounded cool—a guy who regrets trading away a comic book as a kid feels that his wretched life would be made right again if only he could get it back as an adult. It was published in the UK in 2007, and the film rights have already been snapped up by Columbia Pictures.

I’ve only just started the book, which I’m enjoying so far, but I must admit that I was taken aback when I learned on the first page that the comic book in question was Superman #1. I can’t remember exactly what copies of that first issue were going for in 1982, but I would guess in the $7,500-$15,000 range. Anyone out there have the facts? (more…)