John A. Wilcox is more famous than you!

I know John A. Wilcox, In fact, I know him quite well, some 40 years plus-or-minus he’s a multi-talented guy, and I count myself lucky to number him as one of my oldest friends.

Among other things, John is a cartoonist, and knows other cartoonists. One of these cartoonists that he knows is a guy named Bob Weber, Sr. Bob is the creator of Moose and Molly, a syndicated cartoon, and every once in a while for years now, Bob, (because he is a funny guy), likes to randomly insert John’s name into the Moose and Molly cartoon.

Personally, I think this is hilarious, and, well, so does John.

Here are just a few times that Bob has inserted John’s name into the strip (for reference, John himself has never appeared in the strip, just his name.

Right about now don’t you wish you were John?

Saturday in the Bronx

Today I'm spending the day attending my buddy, Ray Felix's third annual Bronx Hero Con (held at the Bronx Museum).

While here, I donated a pint of blood (yes, MY blood) to NY Blood Center (I have previously given some 16 gallons to the Red Cross).

We're having a good time so you should come on down and have a good time with us. Right now I'm sitting next to my old buddy John A. Wilcox.

The place is hopping with all sorts of funnybook celebrities, and folks of interest, from Jim Salcrup (Papercutz) to J.M DeSantis, and Mark Mazz (Atlas Unleashed).

the place is packed, and there are great panels, workshops and much, much more. So stop what you are doing and come on by to help us celebrate the arts here at the Bronx Museum.

Meet, Mr. Wilcox!

So you say that you want to be famous, well my good pal, John Wilcox is. Over the years he has achieved this fame by appearing (over and over again) by appearing (if in name only) as a character in Bob Webber’s syndicated comic strip, Moose and Molly.

Here is a email I just received from John:

Once again, my good pal & colleague Bob Weber, Sr. used my name in his comic strip. This one is from yesterday, Feb 11. Over the years, in the strip I’ve been a bill collector, an employer, Moose's daughter’s boyfriend, a guy being booted from an office and; I forget what else! Pardon the lousiness of the scan, as it's directly from a newspaper!

John did the scan. Fun stuff, eh?

Bring out yer dead!

Yet another comicbook character bites the dust! According to a CNN story we can soon expect a founding member of the Fantastic Four to die in the near future. (ho-humm) Yeah, like we haven’t heard that one before. Sure Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Bucky Barnes, The Green Goblin, Harry Osborn, The Flash, Captain America, and a myriad of other characters have “died” (including one or two of the fabled FF itself already) only to come back to life, so why are we to believe this pap has any more staying power than any of those deaths?

Well, because Marvel tells us so.

Marvel executive editor Tom Brevoort made it crystal clear: “A core character from the series, whom you've seen in the [2005 and 2007] films, will be no more,” he told CNN.

Yeah, right. If it lasts a year I’ll be totally surprised, but you are hearing it here, if not first, and least first from me, it wont last. Let me make this prediction, whoever it is that dies, will be back sometime before the next Movie or TV appearance of the FF, because we all know that Marvel allows the tail to wag the dog.

My pal, sometimes writing partner, and huge FF fan John Wilcox likes to remark that Stan Lee has been the only writer that has been able to consistently keep the team together (100+ issues, as I recall). Now that's what I consider to be an interesting story.

And now, for something completely different...

Today Is Free Comic Book Day

Go out and support your neighborhood comicbook shop.

I’m going to be at A Timeless Journey (Stamford CT) in the morning, then I’m heading over to Sarge’s in New London CT. I’ll be traveling with my good friends John A. Wilcox and Rusty Haller, as well as my nephew Tony-o.

See you in the funnypapers!

Wave the Flag part duce

Hey,anyone out there remember when I got up on my high horse about how the U.S. flag was hung wrong back in The Ultimates 2 #13? Well, it looks like they’ve done it again. That is to say, hung the flag backwards!

To recap, in the first instance, the two wrongly-hung flags were strung up on the White House during a Russian invasion of the U.S. — so an argument can be made that it was done by the invading forces as a sign of disrespect. However in this new instance (Avengers, the Initiative #6) there is no excuse.

This time, the “flag” is actually an apron worn by the wife of Sgt. Joseph (“Gauntlet”) Green. (Needless to say, why the wife of a military man would wear a flag apron, that ostensibly is going to get food and stains on it while cooking is the subject for another discussion.) Gauntlet, as we all know is the drill Sergeant over at Camp Hammond, in Stamford, CT where the new Initiative recruits are being trained. As you can see by the image, the flag is being hung backwards (vertically with the blue field in the upper right — rather than in the upper left position).

Now again, you could (possibly) argue that the Sarge’s wife knows the proper way to hang a flag, and that’s why she is wearing this flag replica as an apron. I’m telling you that while I’m not in the military, I am a Boy Scout leader (and I’ve watched a couple seasons of The Unit) so I’m telling you that the Sarge simply wouldn’t allow that wrongly-hung flag replica in his house.

What I’m saying is that the artists (Steve Uy in this case and Bryan Hitch and inked by Paul Neary — a couple of Brits in the case of The Ultimates), as well as their editors (Tom Bervoort and Ralph Macchio) are simply unaware that there are rules for hanging flags, and never bothered to check out to see if the flags were hung correctly.

By contrast, a buddy of mine, John Wilcox, spent quite a bit of his time working as a colorist for numerous comicbook publishers over the years. Once, when a specific restaurant in NYC was cited in a comic he was coloring, he called up the restaurant to find out what color the awning outside the resturant was, simply because he wanted to get it right. But then again, not everyone is as professional as John.

The Return of Video Victor

Back in the Mid ‘80s, I was the managing editor of a magazine called Videogaming Illustrated. I wrote some game reviews, articles, news items, and (for a couple of installments) I actually got to write an actual comicstrip. Sure, sure, the strip was only a one-page gag strip entitled Video Victor which combined bee jokes, videogaming, and pop culture references. (Commodore Computer used to produce a small computer named the Vic-20, hence the name “Video Victor” like a joke, only smaller).

Anyways, while I was writing it, the strip was drawn by John Constanza. It was my first published fiction work. It was fun, and I finally found a place to post the only two strips I ever got to write. Check ’em out, it might be kinda fun.

The reason I only wrote two installments is that the mag (VI) was canceled at that point. It would take me almost another three years to get my second work of fiction (Agent Unknown) into print, and then six more years for my third (a brief article in Marvel Year in Review 1993 that told the “Previous Untold” real origin of the Avengers. Now that I think of it, perhaps I should post that little bit of nonsense I penned with my writing partner John A. Wilcox as well.