Aw, Shucks

Okay, so I e-mailed the legendary Stan Lee to inform him about the bizarre coincidence of my previous post, and within mere minutes, the living legend replied thusly...

Just goes to show -- great talents tend to congregate at the same place.

Positively makes one blush, it does. Yes indeed.

Oh, and for those of you wondering the next most obvious question regarding Stan and myself having lived in the same building, albeit a decade or so apart, namely did we live in the same apartment, sadly I have to say no. Stan makes mention of having an apartment that faced the rear of the building, while I have vivid memories of standing on the sidewalk in front of the building, shouting up to my mother, who was leaning out our apartment window, asking her for ice cream money, which she would then usually toss down to me, a dime tied carefully inside a handkerchief so it wouldn't get lost.

Wow, I haven't thought about that in decades. The memories this is all bringing back: running around on the Grand Concourse with my now-departed grandparents sitting on a bench nearby, keeping a watchful eye on me; my late, lamented Dad buying me one of the last issues of the original Plastic Man comics at the small candy shop across the street; all of us carefully staying out of the path of the great dinosaurs that still roamed the earth in those prehistoric days. God, was I ever really that young?

Okay, Wein, that's just about enough of that. Any second now, and I'm gonna start hearing Maurice Chevalier and Hermione Gingold singing softly in the background.

Believe it or Not

This is one of those things which, if it wasn't true, nobody would believe it. I was just browsing through Mark Evanier's always-entertaining News From ME blog, which you can link to at the right side of this very page. Today, Mark linked to an interesting article from the Sunday New York Times Key Magazine, which includes a slide show photo gallery of all the places comic book legend Stan Lee, former Editor-in-Chief of Marvel Comics and the co-creator of the Fantastic Four, the Amazing Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk, the Mighty Thor, the Uncanny X-Men, and, just to balance the scales, the Astonishing Ant-Man, has lived in his long and prolific life. Out of idle curiosity, I decided to check out the gallery and what I saw there absolutely floored me.

It's no secret that I spent my formative years growing up in Levittown, New York, or, as I like to call it, "The Cliche´City of the East". Remarkably, I'm not the only comics professional to hail from that illustrious post-war Long Island village. That lovely little suburb also gave us former Dark Horse and Batman editor Bob Shreck, Zippy the Pinhead creator Bill Griffith, and Mr. Monster writer/artist Michael T. Gilbert, among several others. But, love Levittown though I might, it wasn't my first home.

No, from birth until I was seven-and-a-half and casually wandered out into the middle of the street one day, where only my father's quick reflexes saved me from being run over by a passing truck, thus deciding my family to move immediately to the suburbs, I lived in an apartment building in the New York City borough of The Bronx. The address was 1720 University Avenue, and, as I remember it, the place looked almost exactly like this.

The astonishing coincidence in all this? According to today's Times piece which can be linked to in its entirety by clicking here, Stan Lee lived in this exact same building just a decade or so before I did. Now what are the odds of that?

Sort of makes one wonder what future former Editor-in-Chief of Marvel Comics is living there now, don't it?

Blast From The Past - Pt. 1

This being the first of what may well become a series of reminiscences of my early days in the comics biz.

Okay, so it's 1973 and I'm the Editor-in-Chief of Marvel Comics, not bad for a kid in his mid-20s. The Marvel offices are on 575 Madison Avenue, I can't remember which floor. Head Honcho Stan Lee has the corner office, and what has lovingly come to be known as the Marvel Bullpen fills most of the rest of the same side of the hall. The Editor-in-Chief's office is a glass-walled room inside the much larger Bullpen area, so the E-i-C is available as needed to his staff. The Marvel editorial staff in those days, as best I can remember it now, includes Chris Claremont, Scott Edelman, Roger Slifer, Roger Stern, Irene Vartanoff, and almost certainly several others who will e-mail me immediately after this is published to chastise me for forgetting them.

Anyway, on this particular day, I had just returned from my annual pilgrimage to the West Coast to attend the now-omnipresent San Diego Comic-Con and spend some vacation time visiting with friends. During the course of my trip, I'd paid a visit to the self-proclaimed "Happiest Place on Earth", Disneyland. Now, being a responsible person and knowing I can't return home to the "kids" empty-handed, while at Disneyland, I've bought my entire staff those classic Mickey Mouse ears with their names embroidered on the back. Got it so far? Good.

So here it is, the end of the day, and the entire Marvel Bullpen is sitting at their desks, diligently doing their jobs, copy editing, color correcting, making bad puns, all of them to a man and woman wearing their mouse ears, and Stan strides by the Bullpen, heading for the lobby and the subway home. He glances into the Bullpen distractedly as he strides by, wishing us all a good evening, and then he's gone from sight.

A beat. Two beats.

Then Stan's hands come into view, grasping the side of the Bullpen door frame, followed a moment later by the top half of Stan's head, peering into the room sideways as if to verify he did indeed see what he just thought he saw. He looked a bit like the famous Kilroy drawing that was so popular during the Second World War. Seeing Stan's confusion, I raise a finger and open my mouth to explain why his entire staff is sitting there, wearing mouse ears. But, with a gesture, Stan stops me before I can utter a word.

"No, don't tell me," he mutters, sadly shaking his head, as he picks up his attache case and heads for the door, "I don't think I want to know."