Back in 1981 I was writing the Avengers. Hank Pym aka Yellowjacket was married to Janet Van Dyne aka The Wasp and things had not been going well for him for a long time.Before I embarked on the storyline that led to the end of Hank Pym and Janet van Dyne’s marriage, I reread every […]
When I showed up at Marvel in January 1976, it was a mess. It was chaos on every level. I showed up at 10:00 AM to be interviewed by Marv Wolfman (as per his request) for an associate editor job, and Marv strolls in at around 11:30. Then he says, “Oh, I forgot; I’ve got […]
The winter of 1975-76 were grim times for comics, for Marvel and especially for comics creators. Sales were falling industrywide, and even Marvel’s were weakening. The major companies all had been forced into cutbacks of their lines, layoffs and belt-tightening. Pay for creative people was abysmal, benefits were few and morale was poor. Marv and […]
Four years after leaving my career in comics in (I thought) ruins I was making my living writing ad copy freelance and working part-time in a department store. I got a call from Duffy Vohland, an editor at Marvel. He’d gotten my number from a fan, Harry Broertjes, who’d found it somehow. Duffy invited me […]
From blog facilitator JayJay: Deadline pressure has gotten to Jim and he’s started in with the funny late night emails to me.See what I have to put up with? He’s mad as a loon. Jim wrote this to me in the middle of the night, making me laugh, while I’m trying to paint the fires […]
I worked at Marvel for a short time back in late 1969. Stan hired me as a “staff writer,” but I never actually got to write anything. There weren’t very many staff people, there was a lot of work and most of it needed to be done in a hurry — all hands on deck! […]
In 1969 on my first day of work at Marvel Comics they found me a small table and chair in a corner. Literally. Marvel in those days had only two real offices, Stan’s and Sol Brodsky’s. Sol was the production manager, which meant he handled anything Stan didn’t want to, which meant anything technical, administrative […]
Some time around the summer of 1969, I was taken off of Adventure Comics, my one regular title, because the Legion of Super Heroes, my regular feature, was reduced to a second feature in Action Comics. That move made no sense to me. While other National titles had fallen precipitously, Adventure had remained fairly constant […]
I became established as a regular writer for National Comics, working through the mail and over the phone with Mort Weisinger on virtually all of his titles–Superman, Action Comics, Adventure Comics, World’s Finest Comics, Jimmy Olsen, Superboy and Captain Action. As the “kid who wrote Superman,” I became a mini-celebrity. This Week magazine ran a […]
My rather young debut as Legion scripter created a unique situation: I was about the same age as my characters. I was also about the same age as my audience. Better still, my friends, who were also my audience, were the same age as my characters, so my friends became my characters who were my […]