Four (no, wait, five) new books of mine

I’ve been a writer all my life. It was in 1978 that I went pro. I started working at a local radio station as a copywriter. Over the next few years, I worked at a couple of different stations in Conn. Then, in 1981 I got my first print article published (Ditko Days, Amazing Heroes #5). From there I went on to spend the next nearly 20 or so years writing for virtually every comic magazine being published. In addition to all that I was also penning marketing and PR material for most of the major (and several mid-level) comicbook companies (Marvel, DC, Valient, Dark Horse, Extreme, others).

In ’85 I took over the writing the writing of a comic strip (Video Victor) in Videogaming Illustrated, the magazine for which I was then the managing editor. In ‘86 I was able to convince Deni Lobert (Renegade Press) to publish a comic concept of mine (Agent Unknown). In 2011 I began writing short, illustrated stories for several of Jim Main’s Main Enterprises publications. Between 2011 and 2021 I wrote 17 stories. Recently I gathered those stories together and compiled them into a massive omnibus, which is now available on Amazon. The book is called Funnybook City Omnibus: Jump the Shark Issue. The cover was done by my friend Scott Barnett. 

Also available on Amazon is Writers Unite! Dimensions of Superheroes, a prose superhero anthology that I not only designed and assembled, but where I had three short stories and wrote the forward. The book has 14 writers (including me, but more importantly, Gary Cohn, Paul Kupperberg (both of whom worked for DC and other comic companies) and William Patrick Murray, who not only writes amazing prose novels, but created Squirrel Girl for Marvel) telling 20 stories about a myriad number of superheroes, not all of them the kind you read in those funnybooks, wrapped in colorful spandex, and looking all pretty for the masses. These heroes come from all walks of life, and all have strange and unusual powers. It’s well worth the read, if you know what I mean.

Another book I recently assembled is Wings of Man, a comic that combines a number of stories I wrote about flying. Those stories include one about Gustave Whitehead, a German immigrant who flew two years before the Wright brothers, and lived in my hometown of Fairfield CT. I was originally told Gustave’s story by my high school science teacher. At the time, I was in high school and said that Gustave’s story would make a good comicbook. Then it took me 35 years to make it happen. This story was followed by me penning more stories about flight (some of them peripherally involving references to Gustave).

Earlier this year I learned about Ditko Con, which takes place in Johnstown, PA. I’ve been a fan of Steve’s work since I first saw it in Amazing Fantasy #15. Will was already attending the con, and I asked him to introduce me to the showrunner, whereupon I got myself invited. To prepare for the event, I took the first two articles I wrote for publication and combined them into a Spidey-mag. Those articles (from way back in ’81 & ’82) were about Steve Ditko’s and John Romita, Sr.’s runs on Amazing Spider-Man. (John’s article appeared in The FantaCo Chronicles, and it included a checklist to the first 120 issues of the comic, as well as all of the related Spidey titles being published at the time. Then for good measure I tossed in a review I wrote about a Ditko Kickstarter that he did with Robin Snyder. I’m hoping to sell a few copies of this mag at the con.

All of those books were produced over the past couple of months. Oh, and not to leave anything out, I also wrote a 500-word flash fiction story for Weird Fiction Quarterly. The writing prompt for this issue was The King in Yellow an H.P. Lovecraft-adjacent story. So I now have five new books to sell at shows.

Welcome to my funnybook column.

 

Stories That Were Never Told That We Wish We Had Read

Gary Cohn and his longtime friend and writing partner, Dan Mishkin, entered the comicbook industry together in 1980 following correspondence with Jack C. Harris, an editor over at DC Comics. That first work—drawn by Steve Ditko—was the three-page short story On the Day of His Return" which appeared in Time Warp #3 (Feb.–March). This initial sale was soon followed by the team creating Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld with artist Ernie Colón then going on (with Paris Cullins) to create Blue Devil. Cohn and artist Ron Randall co-created the Barren Earth.

From there Cohn has gone on to write for several other comicbook companies, including Archie, Crusade, Marvel, Mattel, and Renegade Press. He also wrote several stories for William Tucci's Crusade Comics including an intercompany crossover between Crusade's Shi and Marvel Comics' Daredevil. Cohn also wrote three Hardy Boys and two Nancy Drew novels. After a while, Cohn left comics and became a teacher at the Information Technology High School in Long Island City, retiring in 2017.

Needless to say, just knowing what Gary did over the years as a comicbook writer, isn’t to know all of it, just recently he published a comicbook-sized “memoir” of work he pitch, but for one reason or another never wound up in publication. The book, The Will-Be’s that Weren’t is nothing short of an amazing look back into things that Gary had pitched to various publishers but were never published, even though (now that we’ve read this book) we wish that they had been.

This book is a collection of at least three projects that Gary pitched that got through various stages of production, from proposal, to outline, to script, to pencils, to inks, to lettered pages. Behind each and every project, Gary provides a backstory the names of his collaborators, as well as sketchy details about what company and editor passed on the project (all names have been altered to protect those that were involved). The three projects are referred to as El Demon, Hellrazers, and Bete Noire.

First up is El Demon. As Gary tells the talk, back when he was writing for Big Corporate Comics (which he refers to as BC—draw your own conclusions as to whom it really was). Gary pointed out that during those days there were essentially two games in town, BC and Phenomenal Comics about which he pitched story ideas. From there, Gary went on to obliquely describe a couple of BC characters before launching into his description of El Demon, whom he described as a Zorro copy with a supernatural gimmick.

To Phenomenal, he pitched an idea about their ghostly western character, “Weird Rider”, (again not the real name), that had been updated from riding a horse to a motorcycle. Unfortunately, his take on “Weird Rider” didn’t fly, so he revamped it into his El Demon concept and took it back to BC. This is one story that went from a pitch to a proposal, to an illustrated story, but that’s where it unfortunately ended, as the story was never published. Fortunately for us, Gry still had all of the various stages of this process which he reprinted in this tome with truly amazing art by Ron Randall.

Next up is Hellrazers, which was a pitch to add to Phenomenal’s futuristic 2222universe. According to Gary, the Hellrazers was based off a concept he had a decade earlier called The Others. Calling once again upon Randall, Gary pitched his revised concept to a Phenomenal editor (Bobby M). Once again, it unfortunately went nowhere (Gary doesn’t remember if the title was canceled, or the entire 2222 universe was scrapped), but a 20-page story was mostly fully illustrated, which he reprints without the dialogue which was apparently lost somewhere along the way.

Gary did include his proposal for The Others, which was about a group of children who were taken from their homes in 1916 by aliens and taken off planet, only to be returned some 70 years later each child (who were handicapped when taken) have become enhanced by the aliens, and this group of kids were to be turned into a superteam.

Finally, we come to The Dark Man, A.K.A. Blackheart, A.K.A. Blackheart in Nightown, A.K.A. Bete Noire (The Dark Beast). Here Gary suggested to Dan Mishkin that they develop a Batman-like character called The Dark Man. Unfortunately, it went nowhere, but a decade later, Gary developed a new wrinkle to the character, where he lived in an alternate 1890, where vampires had come over on the Mayflower, and now the New World was populated by a hoard of vampires.

Gary cast Bete Noire as a mysterious creature of the night, very much in the mold of Batman who is pursuing a serial killer with a vampire modus operandi, leaving his victims bloodless. While pursuing the killer, somehow Bete Noire finds himself transported to an alternate dimension where “his” city is now a Victorian nightmare that is controlled by vampires. With no way back Bete Noire must now do what he can to rid the city of its nightmarish curse. This pitch also comes with art by Ron Randall.

Each of the above pitches are wonderfully entertaining not just from the concept of the pitch themselves, but in the way that we get to see the entire process, from idea, to pitch, to plot, to script, to art. Very rarely do we get to see the entire process of how an idea comes about, and being ale to see these older ideas of Gary’s is a real thrill. We know that Gary produces a small batch of these comics, hopefully, when he runs out he will either reprint them, or create another book, with other concepts of his. We can only hope.