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.
