Did I Ever Write a Marvel Thor story? Come to Think of It ...

So I was chatting with son Stephen on Mother's Day, and I'd just come from seeing the Thor movie. Stephen asked if Don and I hadn't written a story for Marvel Comics' Thor series, and I realized I'd forgotten all about it. Why, yes, we had - and I went into a discussion about Editor Roy Thomas' talking with us about wanting to do a Marvel take on the fact that there was a Superman movie and involving long-time Superman artist Wayne Boring with the project. Etc. The next morning, I looked it up - and discovered Don and I had plotted, not one, but two Marvel stories about the thunder god. (How do you forget this sort of thing? I didn't even have duplicate copies on the shelf - though I may have them somewhere else ...) [Note: While I'm tending to use the words "written" and "plotted" as synonyms, of course, they're not. Except that, in writing comics "Marvel method," what happens is that the artist is handed the plot and then creates the story - which is then scripted. We didn't script the stories - and Roy replotted what we'd plotted. Just so's we're clear on this.]

Here's what appeared in the letters column of the issue about the movie (Thor #280, February 1979): Wayne [Boring] himself has returned to his real-estate chores for the nonce – but we think the story he drew, as plotted by Roy [Thomas]'s old friends Don and Maggie Thompson, is just what we called it on our splash page: "Perhaps the most awesomely offbeat Thor epic of all" 'Nuff said?

What I had forgotten in my conversation with Stephen was that our first Thor plot had probably been for Thor Annual #8 (1979). As Roy wrote in his editorial on the issue: So, I decided that even putting a northern deity like Thor into the story of the Trojan War wouldn't do any more violence to Homer than had already been done – and besides, it'd be fun. Thus, I began to mull over in my mind how best to do it, but the pressure of comics and other work kept me from getting to it.

Enter Don and Maggie Thompson, longtime friends and comics fans now turned more or less pro with articles and comics stories in various Marvel mags. They were looking for assignments, and I mentioned to Maggie that I was bogged down and could use some research help on bringing Thor into the Trojan War without changing the details of the actual story in any major way. … Why couldn't it just as easily have been Thor, on a jaunt down from the north, who was merely MISTAKEN for this or that Olympian.

Answer: It could have been! Maggie and Don took the idea, and ran with it. A few weeks later, I received two or three pages of notes which placed the action of the proposed Thor story in a very particular part of THE ILIAD, starting with the Third Book (we’d call it the Third CHAPTER) in which Paris and King Menelaus fight a duel to decide the fate of Troy and beauteous Helen. I rewrote their notes into an eight-page plot which I then sent to John Buscema, who rendered it beautifully amid complaints that there were "too many characters."

As I recall, we even had notes on a third adventure (which Roy teased about in that annual): one that would involve Thor with events in either The Aeneid or The Odyssey or maybe both. But, as it turned out, Roy didn't write another Thor annual, so that tale remains to be told. In any case: Why, yes, Stephen, we did write for Marvel's Thor, now that you mention it.

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Even the TARDIS Came to Free Comic Book Day!

TARDIS, Brian Bull

As always seems to happen in the fun that fills Free Comic Book Day, I came away with notes and photos and comics and books too numerous to deal with quickly. In fact, my current goal is to limit myself to one or two comments per day over the next few days, if only to get myself back to some sort of schedule on this blog! But the most time-sensitive note would seem to be that concerning "Wisconsin's ice-fishing TARDIS entry" in the "Where's the TARDIS?" contest. Though a conversation with the TARDIS' host, Brian Bull, elicited the information that he works for Wisconsin Public Radio, I confess that the name hadn't clicked as one I should recognize until just now - "Oh, wait! That Brian Bull? The one whose reports I hear on WPR?" Well, yes. That's just how full my brain was by that point May 7. (You know how it is: You connect a person with their surroundings, and this guy was most clearly identified with a blue Police Box and ... Never mind.) This TARDIS had landed in front of the East Side branch of Westfield Comics just in time for Free Comic Book Day - and many people were taking the opportunity of being photographed emerging from it.

The point is that Brian was in the midst of a campaign that ends soon! So do not delay: Go here and click "Like." I gather that's all it takes. (I don't understand the ins and outs of all this, I confess. But time is of the essence; I do know that.) After that, you can follow his links to see photos of the work it took for him to put together his special entry. And, hey, can you go ice-fishing out of the bottom of The Doctor's TARDIS? That's something we haven't seen - but the season isn't over yet.

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And I Quote: Matthew Murphy Discusses the Dell-Gold Key Split in 1962

Now and then, comics buffs have questioned the split that turned what they had thought of as "Dell Comics" into "Dell Comics" and "Gold Key Comics." (For example, the licensed Tarzan title ran through #131 [Jul-Aug 62] under the Dell imprint and then picked up with #132 [Nov 62] with a Gold Key logo.) So Don and I asked what was going on - and printed the following response from Western Printing & Lithographing's Matthew H. Murphy in our fanzine Comic Art #4. Oh, and we asked him about the weird coding that appeared in place of earlier years' simple cover numbering. And, for that matter, about the company's lack of Comics Code oversight:

"With regard to a Western-Dell separation, this was by mutual agreement so that each company would be free to explore the potential business in the comics market without the self-imposed restrictions which formerly required Western and Dell to work exclusively with one another. In our previous relationship, Western Publishing Co. secured the rights, created the comics, printed them and shipped them out for Dell. Dell acted as the publisher and distributor and did the billing and paid Western for its creatively manufactured products. As far as the code number on the cover is concerned, this is an IBM system used to identify the comic and guide the dealer with respect to the off-sale date. The number in the indicia refers to the issue of the comic.

"We are not members of the Comics Code Authority nor was Dell. Our censorship is one which includes the approval of the licensors involved, and a series of inter-company readings guided by our policy of creating only wholesome entertainment. We are the largest producer of children's publications in the world and as such feel qualified to make competent judgment with respect to what is suitable for children and what is not."

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And I Quote: Stephan Pastis Says Dante Couldn't Have Imagined Comic-Con

Newspaper cartoonist Stephan Pastis produces an oddball strip "peopled" by zebra-hungry (but dim) crocodiles, a passive-aggressive rat, a sort-of-pig-on-the-street pig … and Pearls before Swine is laugh-out-loud funny an impressive percentage of the time. The most recent collection from Andrews McMeel is Pearls Blows Up reprinting Feb. 17, 2008-Aug. 22, 2009, and it's well worth your investment. Among its other charms are Pastis' annotations of many installments. ("That's supposed to be Osama bin Laden in the last panel. Sadly, he's about as recognizable as Saddam Hussein was a few days earlier. That brings up an important rule of cartooning: If the joke is dependent on the reader recognizing someone in the last panel, it's a good idea to make that person recognizable.")

But I was struck by his commentary in the introduction to the volume: a discussion of his appearance at Comic-Con International: San Diego in 2009. As in:

"I was in a land not even Dante could have envisioned.
"People dressed like animals. People dressed like superheroes. People dressed like Star Wars characters.
"And they don't just dress like them, they act like them.
"Take my word on this. There is nothing more disturbing in all of human existence than watching a forty-five-year-old man dressed like a Stormtrooper battle a fifty-two-year-old man dressed like Luke Skywalker.
"It is the kind of debauchery that made God flood the earth in the time of Noah and surely must tempt him to do it again."

But Pastis also says he had a great time - and it was not so much the convention, as it was the wonders of the convention combined with those of San Diego itself. Which is something to consider, while we agonize over finding a San Diego hotel and begin to schedule what we're going to be doing each day of our annual adventure. Pastis wasn't quite ready for it when he first arrived; are you? And have you figured out yet what you will be doing there this year?

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And I Quote: Leslie Charteris Defends Comics

From time to time, I'm going to dig through my files in order to see to it that quotations that appeal to me are not absent from the Internet. Others may have already posted such things; in that case, this will simply add my endorsement of those quotations' appeal. So here's the first, courtesy of Leslie Charteris (May 12, 1907-April 15, 1993), creator of The Saint, who provided this in The Saint Mystery Magazine for December 1961:

"To any busybody who is looking for a suit of tinplate crusader's armor to strut in, crime fiction seems to offer an irresistible target. Whether he takes his valiant whack at it in the form of comic strips, television, books, or magazines, he has the comforting assurance that he runs little risk of being hit back. These are entertainment media which cannot interrupt their performance to argue with hecklers. I have read with indignation an article in which the comics were called 'blueprints for delinquency'; but even if I wanted to devote a panel in my own comic strip to give my opinion of the author of that statement, no newspaper editor would print it. He would take the attitude that it is not my place to argue, and anyhow we are on shaky enough ground already, and must be careful not to offend any more pressure groups than are gunning for us right now, lest we end up behind a full official censorship.

"It is therefore a rare privilege to have this page of my own on which to be able to state my own dogma, which is that all these charges are nothing but abysmal tripe. … When I was a boy, the accepted classics and common fare for youthful reading were much gorier and exquisitely nightmare-breeding than anything I find around these days. And in those days there was no problem of juvenile delinquency."

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