West and Woody At the 1980 Comic-Con I met Adam West. I was a judge for the costume contest. Judges sat in a marked-off section of the front row. I arrived early. I’m almost always early for everything. As the audience was streaming into the auditorium, a little girl came wandering down the aisle. I’m […]
Cold War While I was associate editor of Marvel, during 1976, I think, Marvel was rife with little fiefdoms in conflict. Vicious backbiting. Daily rants and rages. Petty office politics. Favoritism. Cronyism. Vendettas and vengeances. Hunter S. Thompson’s Vegas had less fear and loathing. It was almost as bad as the average middle-America amateur theater […]
And Then Things Got Ugly Dick Giordano asked me to meet him for lunch on May 26th, I believe. He picked an Italian place on Madison Avenue near 42nd Street, about halfway between DC and Marvel’s offices. He had this news: Gerry Conway had quit the project. Okay. Apparently Roy Thomas, however, had expressed interest […]
Batman/Hulk, Titans/Mutants and Are You Kidding? Superman and Spider-Man succeeded beyond expectations, launching the Marvel/DC crossover series in spectacular fashion. Next up, published in late 1981, I think, was Batman vs. the Incredible Hulk. Len Wein, DC’s top writer, who, of course, had written both characters, was the natural choice to write the book. Brilliant […]
The Urge to Kill. Twice. The penciling on Superman and Spider-Man went pretty fast. John Buscema was amazing. I drove out to John’s house in Port Jefferson on Long Island a couple of times for business reasons. I don’t remember what the business was but I clearly remember spending time with John, meeting his lovely […]
Plan “B” Once the contracts were buttoned up and signed we started work on Superman and Spider-Man. I picked Marv Wolfman to write the book for a number of reasons: he was a marquee name and deservedly so, he was in New York, conveniently, he was absolutely reliable, and most of all because he really, […]
One morning in mid-1980, Jenette Kahn called and asked me to lunch to discuss an idea she had. In those days, I usually came to work wearing a sport coat with an open-collar shirt. When I knew I was going to have civilian visitors (“civilian” means non-comics people, in case any of you civilians out […]
It was Stan’s fault. Once upon a time, while I was associate editor at Marvel, a bunch of us were hanging around the office after work. This often happened during that brain-dead hour or so when the words you were trying to edit started swimming around on the pages. Often, DC guys showed up to […]
HAPPY BASTILLE DAY! Len Wein Teaches Me a Lesson (and, oh, by the way, Roger Stern, too) Roger Stern started working at Marvel in December of 1975, two weeks before I did on the first working day of January 1976. Rog came from Indiana. He had previously published or co-published a slick fanzine called CPL […]
Superman My first year as Marvel Editor in Chief was a tough one in many ways for everybody on staff. We all worked our butts off to get caught up, make things better and keep Marvel alive. I suppose I could look up the date, but I’m pretty sure it was late in the year, […]