While destroying hundreds of pages of bad poetry I scribbled as a teenager, I made a few surprising discoveries which cause me to reminisce about my poem “Ode on Comic Book Company Loyalty,” written 18 days after I was hired by Marvel Comics, my extremely rough sketch for the second Scarecrow splash page, my team-up with Quicksilver and 7-Eleven to freeze your brain with Slurpees during the summer of 1975, Tony Isabella’s heavy edit on my early Avengers script assist (and why we should all be grateful), my forgotten horror pitches bounced by Marvel in 1974, 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 which will enhance your listening experience, and probably won’t make much sense without it —

My 1975 Park Slope Apartment

My Scarecrow Splash Page Sketch

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In 1974, Marvel published Planet of the Apes #1, which both told and continued the movie’s story. But even though this was a black-and-white magazine rather than a color comic, and therefore not subject to the Comics Code, there’s something you didn’t get to see — naked butts.

George Tuska’s artwork for the film adaptation clearly showed the crew of the crashed spaceship nude, both when they were bathing in a lake, and when they were chasing the humans who’d stolen their clothes. But in panel after panel, someone (I’m guessing not George) added pants. (more…)

When I was interviewed by Dewey Cassell about the origins of Marvel’s Scarecrow for an article which was to appear in Back Issue magazine #60 (October 2012), one of the things he wanted to know was—who was originally intended to be that character’s first artist?

The reason that even came up was because back in the the pages of Dead of Night #11 (August 1975), I’d mentioned in an essay that “the artist who the assignment was given to had since disappeared into the wilds of the city.” So Dewey asked … which artist?

It had been more than three decades since he had vanished, but I had a pretty good idea who that artist had been—Bill Draut. After a little research, though, I began to doubt my gut, and as you can see in an excerpt below from Dewey’s published article, I’d decided I must have been wrong.

But thanks to the latest installment of Comic Book Legends: Revealed, I learned today that I’d been right all along! (more…)

I recently ran across an interview I did way back in 1976 for a newspaper called Compass, and while I’m surprised by what I’ve forgotten since then, I’m also a little surprised by what I remember now that I didn’t seem to remember then.

Let’s see what those forgotten facts are/were, shall we?

I said: “I remember picking up Fantastic Four #1. I guess I was bored by comics before then—I can’t remember anything before that. There may have been others, but if there were, I’ve forgotten them.”

And yet … how could that be? Because today I remember, among other things, reading copies of pre-Fantastic Four issues of Tales to Astonish, Tales of Suspense, and The Brave and The Bold, particularly the issue of that latter title that included the first appearance of the Justice League of America. Did I only read them as used copies traded for or bought later? But surely I read comics before FF #1. Am I misremembering now or was I misremembering then? There’s no way to know now!

And what’s this? I sold a story to Marvel the year before I went on staff there as an editor? And Craig Russell was going to draw it? Really?

I have zero memory of this, but apparently, five years before my short horror story “Picasso Fever” appeared in the DC Comics’ title Secrets of Haunted House, Tony Isabella had accepted it to appear in an issue of Monsters Unleashed—to be drawn by Craig Russell! When I now tell the story of how I got into comics, it all begins with my job in Marvel’s British reprint department. If I hadn’t read this anecdote with the words quoted as coming out of my own mouth, I’d never have believed it! But man, I sure would have loved to have seen what Craig would have done with that story!

There was a lawsuit threatened over the Scarecrow? Really? (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…)

I dreamt this morning that I was visiting with Tony Isabella, a comic book writer and editor I first met a very long time ago. To give you some idea as to how long, I’d never have gotten my job at Marvel Comics without him. (There we are below in a Marie Severin caricature originally published in an ancient issue of Marvel’s fan magazine FOOM.)

In the dream, I was hanging with him in a hotel room, where we were accompanied by a couple of PR flacks I’d never met before. We chatted for awhile, catching up, and then Tony playfully said, “Hmmm … I wonder where I’m going to find someone to finish this aliens story I don’t have time to write?” Which was his way of asking whether I would take over a project he couldn’t complete.

I told him it sounded good to me, and then those corporate types jumped in, clarifying with the details. It seems I’d misinterpreted when Tony had spoken of lower-case “aliens,” because this was no tale of random aliens I was needed to tell, but rather some sort of continuation of the film Aliens. For some reason, they also thought it important to mention that there be no music in whatever I wrote, that these aliens did not have that art form. Since it had never occurred to that they would, that didn’t bother me.

The dream ended with Tony and me sitting and talking, just two old friends who haven’t seen each other in an awfully long time filling in the missing years.

In a later dream, I was in a phone conversation with Michael Dirda while he was in Cambridge and I was at home, and I was recommending what bookstores he should visit while there … as if Michael would ever need advice from me on where the best bookstores are!