If I were to share with you exactly how I spent my Thursday at Comic-Con, you'd likely be bored out of your gourd, because I'm here on behalf of the SCI FI Channel, and so I'm spending almost all of my time working, which means that I'm wandering the exhibit hall researching upcoming movies, games, DVDs, books, toys, and so on, as well as strengthening my relationships with the PR reps and creators who work at those companies. But I did manage to have a few encounters which might be of interest to the friends who drop by here.

I had a chance to chat with legendary EC writer and artist Al Feldstein (there we are below), whom I last met in 1972 (gulp!) at the EC Comics Convention at Manhattan's McAlpin Hotel. But this time I wasn't just an annoying kid asking irritating questions. (Who knows? It might be that my only progress since that time is that I've now become an annoying adult asking irritating questions.) Since I have a story being published in the upcoming issue of Postscripts magazine for which he drew the cover, we were able to connect better than we did 36 (yikes!) years ago.



Another moment worthy of note Thursday is that in the midst of mining the exhibit hall for information on upcoming releases, I did take a break to sneak off to the panel on Golden and Silver Age comics, a photo of which you can see if you click through here. Not to be too maudlin about it, but considering the collective ages of Al Jaffee (87), Russ Heath (81), Larry Lieber (76), Jerry Robinson (86), and Al Feldstein (82), the time we're likely to get to hear these guys spiel about the old days in the comics business is growing short, and I didn't feel I could pass it up without regretting it.

Al Jaffee explained that he'd originally wanted to draw Superman and Batman, but "I could not figure out where the muscles were located." Larry Lieber explained that his choice of drawing hand was based on forcing himself to follow his big brother Stan Lee's example, and so, "I used my left hand and regretted it ever since." Al Feldstein shared that Bill Gaines never wanted to go into the family business, that he hated it because he hated his father, and that, "He didn't want to be a publisher, he wanted to be a chemistry teacher." Interesting guys all, and you'd better track them down to chat while you still have a chance.

After the panel, I made these old guys feel even older by telling Al Jaffee about the time I got him to draw me a sketch in the midst of the 1974 Reuben Awards banquet, and Jerry Robinson about the sketch he drew for me during the famous 1972 Stan Lee at Carnegie Hall event.

At the Random House party later that night, I caught up with the gracious editors who'd invited me, as well as their authors Greg Bear, Connie Willis, David Williams, C. E. Murphy, and others. My last stop of the night was the IGN party at a restaurant in the Hard Rock Hotel, where I remained until my body suddenly remembered the three-hour time difference, and told me to head back to my room.

If you'd like to see photos of any of this, all of yesterday's Comic-Con pics are now online, captioned as well as I'm likely to get them before I return home Sunday night.

After waking up at 4:15 a.m. East Coast time, driving 100 miles to Dulles Airport, flying to San Diego, wandering the never-ending exhibit hall of Comic-Con International for hours, and then hitting the Random House and IGN parties in the evening, I'm wiped out, much too exhausted to fully caption the many photos I took today.

But I figure I should make some noise to prove that I was actually at the con today. So here's a photo of me with Larry Lieber, co-winner of this year's Bill Finger Award (which he shares this year with the late Archie Goodwin, a former boss of mine). He was the first scripter of stories about Iron Man and Thor, and wrote many of Marvel's beloved pre-superhero monster tales, such as "Fing Fang Foom."

And, oh, by the way, he also happens to be the younger brother of Stan Lee, yet another former boss of mine.



One of my fondest memories of Larry is being in attendance with him at a party at Tony Isabella's penthouse apartment on top of the Hotel Edison in (I think) 1975), at which he and Tony and I ran back and forth across the rooftop bellowing "New York, New York," from the musical On the Town. I call it bellowing because I dare not call it singing.

Anyone who wishes more con reportage right now can click on the link above, but you'll have to forgive me for the lack of captioning ... I blame the fact that body time, it is now past 2:00 a.m. Friday. If it's coherency you want, you'd better check back tomorrow.

For those of you still looking ahead to the 1970 New York Comic Art Convention rather than the 2008 San Diego Comic-Con International, here's a sample spread from that earlier con's 8-page progress report to help you with your travel plans.

Better make that ... time-travel plans.

(Click on the scan once, and then again, to see the image at its largest size.)

Check out the upcoming panels, as well as some of the pros who attended the 1969 incarnation of the con. That's Gil Kane and Phil Seuling in the photo at the upper right, and Frank Frazetta and Neal Adams below.

And now I really must finish packing for tomorrow morning's flight! (To San Diego, that is.)

I'll be heading off early tomorrow morning (far too early) for this year's San Diego Comic-Con International, which will run through Sunday. I've heard that there will be anywhere from 150,000 to 175,000 people in attendance, a far cry from my first few conventions, at which the membership never even hit four figures.

As far as I know, no pictures exist of me from my first convention, which was the 1970 installment of Phil Seuling's famed July 4th New York Comic Art Convention, back when I was only 15. But since I was tall even then, and always sat front-row center so as not to miss a single word at any panel, multiple shots of me at Phil's 1971 convention ended up being published.

Click here to see the one I already shared with you, which ended up getting published in the con's 1972 program book. But above right is a second image from that same weekend, possibly from the con's opening ceremonies, which was originally published in the February 1972 issue of Fantastic Fanzine Special #2, an early Gary Groth magazine. If you compare this image with that first one I shared, you'll see that I was probably in the same seat for both pictures. I doubt I got up from that chair the entire day. Once you nab the best seat in the house at a con, you don't give it up!

But that's not the only image from that period of time. Here's yet another picture of me with Phil Seuling, this one originally published in the September 1971 issue of Comic Fandom Monthly, edited by Joe Brancatelli. That's Phil in the far left, and I'm dead center. As you can see, I've still got the long hair and headband!

This photo was taken at the Nathan's Famous on Times Square sometime in 1971. The event was basically a small dealer's room tucked away in the back corner of the restaurant 's basement.

If I'm remembering correctly, this was a precursor to the Second Sundays that Phil used to run monthly at the Statler-Hilton Hotel. I wrote and published a con report on the first Second Sunday in my own fanzine, Call It Fate, and if I can ever dig out a copy, I should be able to pin down an exact date. But I seem to recall that Phil was testing the waters with this event, attempting to learn whether those Second Sundays would be economically feasible.

I remember picking up sketches and autographs at Nathan's from Marv Wolfman, Len Wein, Alan Weiss, Gerry Conway, and others. I still have them all. Maybe you'll get to see them someday. (Bizarrely, I would end up working under three of those four people years later at Marvel Comics.)

Both of the photos above show me 37 years ago at the age of 16. Somehow, I don't think that any photo taken at the coming convention over the next four days will carry as much psychic weight when looked back on 37 years from now, when I'm 90.

But you never know—I could be wrong. Make sure to check back with me then!

While digging out the drawing by Garry Trudeau that I scanned and uploaded for yesterday's entry, I came across this caricature of me done by Joe Papin, famed courtroom sketch artist for the New York Daily News. (Click on the image to view a larger version.) And since I've mentioned in the past that I'd share other caricatures of me, in addition to the Jack Davis image which I sometimes use as my icon, it seems like the right time to post this.

I was visiting Bill Kresse at the paper's 42nd Street offices just before heading off to begin as a freshman at SUNY Buffalo in January of 1973. (That odd starting date is due to my graduating high school early, in January instead of June.) I had become friendly with Bill thanks to a school tour several years earlier.

A number of Daily News cartoonists drew me going-away cards, including George Ward, whose artwork I've already shared with you. At the time, I wanted to be a newspaper columnist in the Pete Hamill/Jimmy Breslin mode, walking the streets and writing about whatever I happened to find there.

Joe's scribbled comment at the bottom of his caricature advises me to stay strong:

Always remember: You are entering a field in which the working ethic has sadly become, "Better a living dog, than a dead lion!" With hard work, perseverance, and a great deal of luck, you can help change this! Excelsior!!

I guess I never fulfilled whatever journalistic promise Joe saw in me, but at least I got a neat portrait out of it. Sorry about that, Joe, wherever you are!

Garry Trudeau, creator of Doonesbury, turned 60 today.

Do you think he remembers having drawn the sketch at right (click to view at a larger size) at a Reuben Awards banquet in 1973 when he was but 25 and I was just a snotty kid with a sketchbook and a pleading voice?

Nah.

I, on the other hand, remember it very well. (There should be a word for that, the encounter which one party regards as meaningful and the other finds either meaningless or completely unmemorable.)

In any case, as I type these words, it suddenly leaps out at me—he was only freakin' 25? And already helping to topple a president, with a Pulitzer only two years away? It makes me feel as if I haven't done enough to justify my existence today.

Happy birthday, Garry!

Editor and Publisher reported today on the bizarre correspondence which supposedly took place in 1952 and 1953 between Samuel Beckett, the existentialist author of Waiting for Godot, and Ernie Bushmiller, the cartoonist responsible for the newspaper strip Nancy.

This sounds much too weird to be true, but then again, stranger things have happened. After all, J.D. Salinger was supposedly a big fan of Gilligan's Island. And this was Beckett, so you never know.

One letter from Bushmiller, provided by trusted comics historian R.C. Harvey, is quoted as rejecting Beckett's ideas as follows:

Your gag and strip ideas for Nancy are much appreciated, and I have to say interesting, too. Many readers send me ideas for the strip, but I don't think I've ever seen any quite like yours. ...

I don't know how well they're going to work. I think the problem you're having, Sam, is the same problem any literary man might have. You're not setting up the gags visually and you're rushing to the snapper. It seems to me you've got the zingers right there at the beginning, in panel No. 1, and although I have to admit you got Nancy and Sluggo in some crackerjack predicaments, I don't see how they got there.

For instance, putting Nancy and Sluggo in the garbage cans is a good gag, but in my opinion, you can't have them in there for all three panels. How did they get there? Same thing when you had them buried in the sand. I like to do beach gags, but I don't think that having Nancy buried up to her waist in the first two panels and then up to her neck in the third one is adequately explained, and I've been at this game for a while now. Also, why would Sluggo be facing in the opposite direction when he's talking to her?

The more I reread the news story, the more I thought—this has got to be a joke! It was just something written in jest that someone else made the mistake of taking seriously, like all those times respected newspapers pick up Onion stories and run with them as gospel, right?

I guess what it comes down to is that I'd rather be judged cynical for discounting it if it turns out to be true than gullible for believing it if it turns out to be false.

I suppose I could contact R.C. Harvey to ask him directly, but—where would be the fun in that?

Several weeks ago, after Bill Shunn posted photos from his Clarion class of 1985 in the wake of Algis Budrys' death, I bemoaned the fact that—as far as I know—no photos exist from my own Clarion year.

Then I remembered that I do have one image that reflects how I looked as a member of the Clarion class of 1979, but it isn't a photograph—it's a portrait done of me by my classmate Barb Rausch. [Click on the image at right to view it at a larger size.]

After Clarion, Barb went on to become a well-known comic-book artist, drawing Katy Keene for Archie and Barbie for Marvel. Unfortunately, Barb passed away in 2001. She's the only member of my class to have died ... I think.

Not only did she draw me at Clarion, Barb also drew on me, as she painted the fake tattoos I sported when I dressed as a Hell's Angel for our '60s party.

So—the class of 1985 has photographs, while the class of 1979 has pencil drawings. I guess this means that if we query the class of 1968, we'll discover that all they have to remember their year are carvings on stone tablets!

A writer recently contacted me because he's in the midst of researching a book on comic-book stories which have been adapted for movies and television. He wanted information on an episode of the series Tales from the Darkside titled "My Ghost Writer the Vampire," which had been adapted from one of the many short horror stories I'd written for DC Comics back in the 1980s.

That story appeared in the April 1980 issue of The Unexpected, and was featured on the cover, which you can see at right. (Click to view a larger version.) As a fan of The Twilight Zone and EC Comics, I loved getting the chance to turn out some short horror stories of my own for various comics, such as House of Mystery, House of Secrets, Secrets of Haunted House, and others.

When it came time to tell the writer the history of the story and the events surrounding the adaptation, I decided (as usual) to give my memory a jump start. Searched online, I was surprised to find not only the information I needed, but also that someone had put the entire Tales from the Darkside episode based on my story up on YouTube in three parts.

So—here they are! You'll see my name flit by at 0:40 during the first installment.

The schedule for the upcoming San Diego Comic-Con International will be the size of a phone book, with thousands of program items and dozens of tracks. On the other hand, the agendas for the first comic-book conventions I attended barely filled a single sheet.

I don't think I saved the schedule from my first con in 1970, but I still have the program from Phil Seuling's 1971 July 4th Comic Art Convention, which I attended when I was 16. It consisted of one 8 1/2" by 11" sheet of paper, and was folded in half to form a slim four-page pamplet.

You already know what I looked like in the audience at that convention, but this is what I was watching up on the stage. There was a single track of programming, and looking at the listed items (which you can see, too, if you click through once, and then again to view it at a more readable size), I realize that I attended every one.

(Well, every one except for the Saturday evening cocktail party for comic-book professionals, as I was but a crazed fanboy then ... though I'm not even sure whether the term fanboy had been invented yet.) You'll note—if you can read my handwriting—that I scrawled in an additional last-minute panel.

Even though that weekend was just a few weeks shy of 37 years ago, I can still (now that my memory has been jump-started by seeing this schedule) remember heckling Jim Warren (publisher of Creepy and Eerie) on Friday afternoon and getting hectored from the stage, hearing Harvey Kurtzman tell stories about that crazy Will Elder on Saturday night, getting an autograph from Kirk Alyn (the screen's first Superman) on Sunday morning, listening to Gerard Geary defend Fredric Wertham on Monday morning, and so much more.

These few program items on that one printed sheet will be dwarfed by what awaits us all in San Diego, but still, I wasn't bored for even a moment. And I don't think you would have been either.

I made my plane reservations for San Diego this week to attend Comic-Con International, which inevitably set me to thinking about my first comic-book convention, back when I was 15. It was the 1970 July 4th weekend Comic Art Convention, organized by Phil Seuling and held in Manhattan at the Statler Hilton Hotel. That was when I was just a fan, years before I got a staff job at Marvel Comics or freelanced for DC Comics, and decades before I edited Science Fiction Age magazine or went to work for the SCI FI Channel. I still have the convention program book, which you can see at right with its cover drawing of the Sub-Mariner by his creator, Bill Everett. (Click through to view a larger image.)

Conventions were a heck of a lot smaller back then. As you can see from the two-page spread below, at the time the program book was printed, the con had only 146 attending members and 52 supporting members. (Click on the image to view the lists at a more readable size.) Even if there were a few hundred more memberships sold at the door, that's still a far cry from the approximately 150,000 members of last year's con in San Diego. But though this list is small, it's remarkable how big an affect members of this group ended up having on my life. Even though I don't think I met any of them face to face that weekend and wouldn't until years later in some cases, many of these people intersected with my life in important ways.

For example (and I'll be brief as I move numerically down the list, even though many of these people are deserving of lengthy individual essays):

Twelve years later, Gordon Linzer (#5) would publish a short story of mine in the magazine Space and Time, for which he was both editor and publisher, and the following year he would print a second tale, which was later adapted into an episode of the TV series Tales From the Darkside. And 20 years later, in 1990, he would publish my novel, The Gift, which ended up as a finalist for the Lambda Award.

After my six-year stint working for both Marvel and DC Comics, when I was completely burned out and dealing with what had turned into a love/hate relationship with the field, I would write an essay titled "Stan Lee Was My Co-Pilot" in my efforts to try to understand the experience. Fourteen years after that first convention, Gary Groth (#9) would publish it in June 1984 in The Comics Journal #99. It became the first of half-a-dozen Ethics columns I would write for him, inspired by a similar series then running in Esquire magazine.

When I was 12 or 13, several years before that first convention, and my mother thought I had too many comic books, I inventoried them and sent a list to Howard Rogofsky (#24), who advertised back then in TV Guide. He was the best-known comic-book dealer of the time. Rogofsky bought a collection that would have included Amazing Fantasy #15, Spider-Man #1, X-Men #1, Avengers #1, and so on, for prices which would now make you weep. Considering that in the early '70s, we all made fun of someone willing to pay $20.00 for Fantastic Four #1, and that at the 1970 convention, a pristine copy of Action #1 was unable to get an opening bid of $325 at auction, you can just imagine how low the total price had to have been. And you know what I did with my profits? Why, buy more comics, of course!

If not for Mark Hanerfeld (#25), I'd never have attended a convention, worked in comics, or met my wife. He wrote a column that appeared in DC Comics in the late '60s which reported on fan activity, including his own fanzine On the Drawing Board (the title of which was later changed to The Comic Reader, after which it was sold to Paul Levitz, currently the president of DC Comics). I mailed him what must have been a quarter for a sample copy, which opened me to a whole new world. I'd hoped to attend the 1969 Phil Seuling convention, but at 14, couldn't figure out a way to pull it off.

Twenty-six years after that first convention, I would take over from Robert Martin (#37) as the editor-in-chief of Sci-Fi Entertainment, which was then the name of the official SCI FI Channel magazine.

When I lived in Brooklyn, an out-of-towner moved to my neighborhood (in 1973, I think), and when the local kids saw him unloading many boxes of comics, they told him about the other strange collector in the neighborhood, me. And so although we'd never encountered each other at that 1970 convention or any other, I would finally meet Duffy Vohland (#55), who encouraged me to apply for a job as Associate Editor of Marvel's British reprint books.

Marvin Wolfman (#64) would eventually be one of the many editors-in-chief I worked for during my years on staff at Marvel Comics. But Len Wein (#65) would be the first editor-in-chief I worked under when I moved from working in Marvel's British department to take a position as an Assistant Editor on the American titles. He would let me write the Bullpen Bulletins pages and eventually gave me my first chance to write comics.

Four years after the con, I would meet the sister of Ellen Vartanoff (#93)—Irene Vartanoff—on my first day of work at Marvel Comics. I never bumped into Ellen at that con, but she's now been my sister-in-law for 32 years.

Martin Greim (#108) edited and published the fanzine Comic Crusader, the second fan publication I learned about through Hanerfeld's columns in DC Comics. Not only did I subscribe, but Greim eventually published some of my letters, and I was encouraged to publish a fanzine of my own.

Sixteen years after that convention, Mary Skrenes (#128) , along with Steve Gerber, would go on to co-create Omega the Unknown. Eventually, I would script a fill-in issue.

Many more names would come to have meaning—Alan Light (#60), Joe Brancatelli (#82), Mark Evanier (#145), and others—but of course, I knew none of this in 1970. All I knew was, man, did I love comic books. And to find myself in a room with others who felt the same way—whether there were 150 or 150,000 of them—all that mattered was that I was suddenly not alone.

Two relevant dreams to relate this morning.

In the first, I was in the world of Boston Legal. I was Denny Crane (William Shatner) and I was hanging out with Alan Shore (James Spader). We were in a montage of the two of us acting wacky in different costumes, i.e. naval uniforms, cheerleader outfits, etc. In the last scene, the only one of any length, I was hunched over, snapping my fingers, and moving through an office hallway while wearing a black leather jacket and singing "When You're a Jet" from West Side Story. Alan Shore was watching me suspiciously, only to finally join in halfheartedly. After he did so, I berated him for not committing himself to it. "Don't ham it up, play it for real," I growled at him. At least that's what I scribbled down on my notepad that I'd said, when I woke immediately after that, humming the song.

In the second dream, I was being visited by the late John Buscema, the Marvel Comics artist probably best known for his work on Silver Surfer and Conan the Barbarian. He and his wife were staying overnight with us, though not in my current real-life house, one more like my previous house in Maryland, since we were chatting in a wood-paneled finished basement. And yet, when I was coming up with things we could all do that day, I suggested a trip to the Charles Town Racetrack, which is near where I live now. John said that he wasn't into horse racing, so I kept tossing out other possibilities. (Whether he was or wasn't in real life, I have no idea, though there were plenty of OTB fanatics in the Marvel Bullpen, Mike Esposito among them.) As we talked, I was very conscious of not pulling out my collection of original artwork to show him, because I didn't want him thinking that I was indirectly trying to get him to give me artwork. I woke with us still trying to figure out how to spend the afternoon.

No idea where either of these dreams came from, though I do watch Boston Legal and did know John Buscema (though not well enough that he ever visited my home).

Presented for your consideration ...

The oil painting at right of the Green Lantern by pop artist Mel Ramos, just one of his many superhero images, was sold at auction on May 13, 2008 for $600,000.

You can find further details of the transaction here.

Meanwhile, the drawing at left, by Martin Nodell, the man who actually created the Green Lantern in 1940 and who died two years ago at age 91, was sold at auction on September 16, 2007 for ... (pause for dramatic effect) ...$77.68.

Which means the world would have us believe that the Ramos has a value 7,723 times that of the Nodell.

Don't believe the world.

I don't know about you, but as for me—

I know which one of these two is the better drawing, which has more inherent meaning, and which one, given the chance, I'd rather own, even if price were no object.

And, as you might guess, I've never been a fan of the comic-book swipes of Roy Lichtenstein either.

Will Elder, one of the founding artists of MAD magazine, passed away this morning. Though I attended the 1972 EC Comics Convention, as far as I recall, Elder did not, and so I never met the man and have no personal anecdotes to share. (I did, however, meet much of the rest of the EC crew, managed to get Bill Gaines, Joe Orlando, George Evans, Al Williamson, and Wally Wood to sign my program book, and even got sketches from the last three of those names, plus a caricature of me by Jack Davis that you see as the icon at left.)

But I've long admired his artwork, not just in those early issues of MAD, but also in the pages of Trump, Humbug, and Playboy. That last publication was where, with Harvey Kurtzman, Elder co-created the strip Little Annie Fanny at Hugh Hefner's request.

I would have liked to have met him, because he was reported to be a wild and crazy guy, legendary in his zaniness. The caricature above right, taken from that con's program book, and drawn by Marie Severin back when she and Elder worked together at EC in the '50s, gives a clue as to how he was seen by his coworkers.

Here's the official press release from DC Comics, currently the publishers of MAD:

William "Willie" Elder, the successful cartoonist and commercial illustrator whose work helped launch MAD Magazine, died Thursday morning, May 15th, 2008. He was 86.

Born Wolf William Eisenberg in the Bronx, New York, Elder changed his name after returning in World War II. During his time of service, Elder was part of the map-making team that was instrumental in the invasion of Normandy.

When Harvey Kurtzman launched MAD Magazine in 1952, he hired Elder along with Wally Wood, Jim Severin, and Jack Davis to produce content for the first issues.

"Willie Elder was one of the funniest artists to ever work for MAD. He created visual feasts with dozens of background gags layered into every MAD story he illustrated," says John Ficarra, Editor of MAD Magazine, "He called these gags 'chicken fat.' Willie's 'anything goes' art style set the tone for the entire magazine and created a look that endures to this day."

"Willie's passing saddens all of us here at MAD," says Sam Viviano, MAD Magazine Art Director, "Everyone who has attempted to draw a funny picture over the course of the last fifty or sixty years owes an enormous debt to Willie, who taught us all how to do it—and no one has ever done it better than he did."

If you want to learn more about the madcap Will Elder, click here to see a larger version of the image above, and then click "next picture" to read a two-page feature from the program book in which Gaines, Al Feldstein, Marie Severin, Davis, Wood, Kurtzman, and Evans praised their friend in 1972.

As good wishes for Gene Colan light up the blogosphere, I'm reminded of the fact that when I first became aware of his work, that work wasn't appearing under his own name, due to the comic-book traditions of the day. Back then, it was taboo for artists and writers to openly accept assignments from multiple companies, and so if they wanted to work for other than a single outlet, they had to do so under a pseudonym, creating a different house name wherever they went.

For example, when DC inker Mike Esposito first started working for Marvel Comics, he appeared under the name Mickey Demeo. Frank Giacoia became Frank Ray, Gil Kane was reborn as Al Stak, and so on.

From this vantage point, it all seems a polite fiction, because who could read the works of any of these creators and not know who really wrote or drew them, whatever the pen names? Surely the editors and publishers of the day could see right through the ruse. But I guess they were primarily concerned that the readers think that all of their favorite artists and writers were exclusive, and in those days when comic-book fandom was just being born, the powers that be probably felt that no one would be able to tell what was really going on.

Which meant that it was a much different world when Gene Colan first started working for Marvel Comics in 1965. Here's how his Sub-mariner assignment was announced in the first newsletter I ever received after sending in my pennies, nickels, and dimes to join the Merry Marvel Marching Society in 1965. Based on the other upcoming comic-book content mentioned, I'm guessing that I received this in the spring of that year.

As you'll see once you click to enlarge, back then, there was no Gene Colan. There was only ... Adam Austin.



Once Adam Austin's work began appearing to great acclaim, the following nugget ran in all of the Bullpen Bulletins pages which were printed in Marvel's November 1965 issues.



Finally, in the May 1966 Bullpen Bulletins pages, Stan ripped off Adam Austin's mask, and we all finally learned whose work we had been admiring.



Some of you might ask—why was I fooled by a pseudonym in the first place? Whatever name it appeared under, shouldn't I have been able to identify Gene Colan's unmistakable style?

To which I can only respond—hey man, cut me a break! When Adam Austin first appeared in the pages of Marvel Comics, I was only 10 years old!

I may be a little late to report this unfortunate news, but better late than not at all. Gene Colan, an amazing comic-book artist who is perhaps best known for his 81 consecutive issues of Dardevil, the entire 70-issue run of Tomb of Dracula, and most issues of Howard the Duck, is reportedly suffering from liver failure, which has led to perilous complications, among them fluid retention and encephalitis. Gene's wife, Adrienne, shared some of the details here.

Gene has been drawing comics for more than 50 years. If you're not familiar with his work, check out one of my favorite sites, the Silver Age Marvel Comics Cover Index, which features a gallery of some of Gene's greatest covers. Personally, I've always had a nostalgic soft spot for the cover of Marvel Super-Heroes #12, shown to the right. I can still remember encountering it in a Brooklyn candy store when I was 12 and being blown away by the first appearance of Marvel Comics' Captain Marvel. (My fondness for that memory has nothing to do with the fact that I'd end up writing his adventures a decade later.) I recall staring at the cover and desperately wanting to know, who is this guy? Gene's distinctive artwork, which displayed human emotions through facial expressions and body language in a way few could, certainly contributed to that.

If you're one of Gene's many fans, you can help in two ways. First, by simply dropping Gene a note if you wish, telling him how much his work has meant to you all these years. Supportive cards and letters may be sent to him at this address:

Gene Colan
2 Sea Cliff Avenue
Sea Cliff, NY 11579
USA

Additionally, various fundraising efforts are currently being organized to help pay for Gene's mounting medical costs. Clifford Meth is currently spearheading an effort to collect donations of books and artwork from professionals to be auctioned off, while the family is also auctioning artwork on eBay. Keep checking out both of those links for further updates.

Meanwhile, please keep both Gene and Adrienne in your thoughts.

I had two comics-related dreams this morning. I'm not sure why, as those dreams are usually sparked by something that happened in real life, such as a conversation with someone I used to know in the old days, or discovering the news of the death of a friend. (As opposed to my SF-related dreams, which seem to pop up unbidden, as anyone who follows this blog already knows). Whatever the reason, they seemed interesting to me, which means that now you're going to have to suffer.

In the first dream, I was on a panel about mainstream coverage of the history of comics. I was with others behind a table up on a stage looking down at the audience. Also in the dream were Jim Warren (former publisher of Creepy, Eerie, and Famous Monsters of Filmland), Jim Steranko (the groundbreaking artist of Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. in the late '60s and early '70s), and John Verpoorten (Production Manager of Marvel Comics when I was on staff there from the mid- to late '70s). Oddly, we were not the ages any of us could have possibly been at the same time in reality. Warren was the age he would have attained in real life now, Steranko was the age he had been in the mid-'70s, and Verpoorten was the age he would have been in the late '60s, a look I only know from photographs of him.

I spoke on the reasons why stories about comics in the mass media are so often flawed. This is what I'd said, which I scribbled down immediately upon waking: "The person who can get it done can only get it done wrong; the person who could get it done right can't get it done at all." Usually, the statements I make in dreams that seem to make sense in sleep make no sense in the light of day, but this one seems to have some truth to it. What I meant by this was that most writers either have the connections to get the assignment or the background knowledge, but not both.

As the panel broke up, I looked down and found a wallet. It turned out to be Steranko's. After I returned it, I looked down again and found another wallet. This time, it was Verpoorten's. I returned that one as well. Then I looked down to find yet another wallet, but before I could return it, I woke up.

In the second comics-related dream this morning, I was hanging out with Paul Levitz (currently the president and publisher of DC Comics) in a Brooklyn apartment I'd lived in during the late '60s, a place Paul had never visited in real life. We were poring over old comics that featured the Legion of Superheroes in their first appearances. Paul looked the way he had when I'd first met him at comic conventions in the early '70s. I told him that I figured the Legion was his favorite series. (He did end up writing it, after all.) I also said that even though as a kid I'd been a Marvel fan rather than a DC fan, I always had a soft spot for the Legion.

Then the dream jumped to now. I was paging through a Flash comic, one consisting entirely of many consecutive full-page splashes and double-page spreads, showing him accelerating and and continuing to get faster and faster and faster. The book (which looked nothing like any real-world issue of the Flash) had been drawn by Ross Andru and Mike Esposito. I called over Irene (my wife, remember?) to show her the book, but I woke before I could share it with her.

Such is my dream life. (Or at least the part you get to hear about.)

Comic-book writer Jim Ottaviani, creator of science-related comics such as Two-Fisted Science: Stories About Scientists, posted this flow chart yesterday to shed some light on his working methods.

I'm out of the comic-book loop for the most part these days, so I've got to sheepishly admit that until discovering his post, I'd never heard of Ottaviani. But since I'm a major fan of Richard Feynman—I long ago took up the title of Feynman's autobiography What Do You Care What Other People Think? as a mantra—I'll have to keep an eye out for Ottaviani's upcoming graphic novel about the physicist.

It seems to me, though, that the road map laid out in these squiggles, arrows, and boxes speaks to the journey of non-comics writers as well, and so I decided that it was worth sharing here. (Click on the image and then click again to see it full size.)

The only thing missing from the chart seems to be the part where we spend time blogging about what we should have been doing instead of actually doing it!

While looking through the March 1977 issue of Omega the Unknown yesterday in order to write about Jim Mooney, I came upon this blurb in the Bullpen Bulletins page that issue. It would have run in all Marvel Comics published that month, which meant you would have been reading this in December 1976 or January 1977, depending on the lead time off the cover date back then.

(And depending on whether you were born yet, as well. And if you'd been born, whether you were old enough to read. Yes, I've been married a long time.)

Considering the fact that I was the one who wrote the Bullpen Bulletins pages at the time (well, except for the Stan's Soapbox section), I guess there was no way that announcement wouldn't have been there!

And I also guess that considering Irene's recent behavior (as I reported earlier), there's no arguing with the fact that I seem to have made the right choice over 31 years ago!

Prolific comic-book artist Jim Mooney, who as far as I and many other people are concerned was the greatest Supergirl artist who ever lived, passed away on Sunday.

He and I only worked together once, in 1976. We only met face to face once, in 2006. And strangely, without realizing he had passed, I was talking about him on the day of his death.

The panel at right, from the March 1977 of Omega the Unknown, in which the character Gramps grieves for Mamie while Omega watches, captures a little bit of my mood today.

When the Dreaded Deadline Doom meant that fill-in issues were required on Omega, then editor-in-chief Jim Shooter took me and Roger Stern out to a restaurant at which he told us that we were to plot issues of the magazine overnight. Whether or not we should have messed with the grand plan begun by creators Steve Gerber and Mary Skrenes isn't something either of us really thought about. When you're 21, and want to write comics, those thoughts just don't pop into your head.

We were each assigned an artist. My story was to be drawn by Jim Mooney, who was the regular artist for the series, while Sterno got Lee Elias, who by doing a fill-in issue would help get the book a couple of months ahead.

I had loved Mooney's artwork since I was a kid, first from the adventures of Supergirl, which he had drawn in Action Comics, and later in Dial H for Hero. Since Jim lived in Florida then, we had no interaction other than through my written plot. The story appeared early the next year in issue #7. It wasn't until three decades later at the 2006 San Diego ComicCon International, where he sat behind a table in Artists' Alley, that I was able to chat with him and tell him how much it had meant to me at the time to see him bring my story alive.

But as I mentioned above, that's not the end of this. Because two days ago, I was talking about that issue the same day Jim Mooney died, completely unaware of his passing. On Sunday morning at the World Horror Convention, I was on a panel about censorship along with Rocky Wood and Michael Shea. Even though I'd had no plans to mention it, since the focus was meant to be more contemporary, near the end of the panel I suddenly remembered the only two moment of censorship with which I'd ever been involved. One of them took place in that issue of Omega the Unknown, and it had to do with Jim Mooney's artwork.

The panel at left isn't as Jim had originally drawn it. It had to be altered in order to pass muster with the Comics Code Authority. (Click on either of these two panels to see them larger.) In the third panel from the end of the issue, the villain of the story escapes from Omega, punching a policeman as he runs off. Since one of the rules of the Code was that no villainy was allowed to go unpunished—with, I seem to recall, a specific taboo against getting away with abusing authority figures in that way—we had to remove the policeman from the image. As you can see, it looks weird, as the villain is now swinging at empty air.

It didn't matter that punishment would come in a future issue—Blockbuster couldn't be seen as escaping unpunished even for an instant. And so Wite-Out was applied, and the morals of America's children were once again safe.

Monday afternoon, leaving Salt Lake City, I surfed the Web on my BlackBerry while sitting on the tarmac waiting for the plane to push back from the gate. I was over at my Friends page, and in that moment, as far as I was concerned, Jim Mooney was alive. But then I refreshed the page, and I discovered the sad news through a posting of Jim's death in an entry over at kradical's blog. It was eerie to find out about it in that way, and even spookier that I had been speaking of Jim just 24 hours or so earlier, not knowing that, depending on the time, he was either dying or had already died that day.

I wish I could have known him better, but my path took me away from comics. If you want to find out more details about Jim's life and work, check out Mark Evanier's blog.