Unlike Mark Evanier, I never met Marcia Strassman, who portrayed Julie Kotter, the wife of Gabe Kaplan’s character on Welcome Back, Kotter. Strangely, though, I felt as if I had, because I wrote two issues of the DC Comics series based on that TV show, and so got paid to put words into the mouth of an actress who never actually got to speak them.

As I’ve mentioned here before, I believe I was given the chance to script that comic because I was a Sweathog. (Don’t believe me? Just listen to what I sounded like back then.) Which meant that I had far more in common with guys from Brooklyn than those who would marry them after they grew up. (Or, to put it more accurately, after they didn’t grow up.) But still, I did my best to channel the character she embodied.

In my first issue, that consisted primarily of her reacting to the antics of those around her …

… which while accurate to the show, was also what, according to Evanier, had her dissatisfied with it. (more…)

Robert Hegyes, who played Juan Epstein on the ’70s TV series Welcome Back, Kotter, died yesterday of a heart attack. I never knew Hegyes … but boy, did I know Epstein!

In fact, because I grew up in Brooklyn, I felt as if I knew all the Sweathogs. (Which, for those of you who never watched the show, was the name for the gang of kids in Kotter’s class at James Buchanan High School.) And I’ve got a feeling that one reason I was given the assignment of writing a couple of issues of the Welcome Back, Kotter comic for DC back in the late ’70s was because Joe Orlando thought I was a Sweathog.

Oh, I know that the two issues I wrote list Larry Hama as the editor, but as I recall, all of my interactions on the title were with Orlando. I can remember him laughing as we worked out the plot for Welcome Back, Kotter #9 because I was embarrassingly just as ignorant as Vinnie Barbarino would have been about certain historical events. (And no, I’m not going to tell you what they were.) I think that tickled Joe. (more…)