Old Photo of the Week #2

  Another picture from the DC retreat thirty years ago.
  The powers-that-were decided that bringing in some new editorial staff who had experience in the "real" publishing world -- in other words, the book industry -- might instill a new level of professionalism in the department. Among those recruited were Tom Condon (seated, left), who came in as Managing Editor; Brenda Pope (seated, second from right), proofreader; and Janice Race (seated, right) as an editor. All three eventually returned to that "real" world. In Janice's case, she decided she'd had enough when she was told that an issue of J'emm, Son of Saturn that she'd edited had been the worst-selling comic book in DC's history. (That record has since been eclipsed a number of times.)
  Also in the photo are Andy Helfer (seated between Tom and Brenda), who came in as a member of Joe Orlando's Special Projects department; Arthur Gutowitz, the head of DC's accounting department; and Angelina Genduso, who was Joe Orlando's assistant. (That's a waiter growing out of Angelina's shoulder, not a DC staff member.)

Old Photo of the Week

[My cleaning frenzy of the past two weeks unearthed a cache of photos from events during my days at DC Comics. Above is the first of many I plan to share over the next few months.]

Thirty years ago, the entire staff of DC Comics traveled to a resort in Great Gorge, New Jersey, for the first "retreat" in the company's history. The three days and two nights included a number of meetings about the future plans for the company, but there were also a variety of social events, including the "DC Olympics," which I will discuss in more detail in a future post.

On the left above is Bob Greenberger, whose current exploits you can read about by clicking here; Bob was a relatively new member of the editorial staff at the time. Next to Bob is Super-editor Julie Schwartz, who was on the verge of celebrating his 41st anniversary with the company. Barbara Randall was another new addition to the editorial department; her penchant for playing practical jokes on me resulted in my referring to her as "the kid sister I never wanted." On the right is Robyn McBryde, a member of the marketing department; Robyn and I were the unofficial morale officers at DC and were responsible for a number of crazy events, including some of what went on at the retreat. 

Shatner's World

  Laurie and I went to see William Shatner's one-man show "Shatner's World, We Just Live in It..." this evening. Though there are some pictures and video clips on the projection screen behind him, the majority of the show is Shatner bouncing back and forth across the stage telling stories and anecdotes about his life and career.

  The stories ranged from his first acting role at age six through his days playing Denny Crane on Boston Legal. I particularly enjoyed his story about starring on Broadway in The World of Suzie Wong with actress France Nuyen. On the other hand, his story about a race horse he owned seemed to go on forever. And while he makes some comments about his years as Captain Kirk, Trekkies expecting most of the show to be about it will be disappointed.

  All in all, though, it was an entertaining two hours and it is always nice to see someone live who I've watched on TV for many years.

Cleaning Up

My library / office has been crowded with books for years. Added to those are the couple of bookcases-full in Laurie's office. Sorting and culling has been on my to-do list for quite awhile now, but I knew it would not be an easy task.

With the holidays providing a pair of four-day weekends and Laurie on a trip to Thailand with Sammi, I finally had the opportunity to tackle the job the way I wanted and needed to.

I pulled books from every shelf, every cabinet, every closet and every nook and cranny that I had them stored in. There were stacks everywhere as I matched up books by series, by author, by whatever esoteric connections I gave them. Then I went through them to decide what I wanted to keep and what I was willing to part with.

As it turned out, I had dozens (and dozens) of books that I knew I would never read again and, therefore, had no good reason to keep. So I loaded a batch into bags and brought them to the library, where they have a spinner rack for giveaways. I managed to fill the rack with what I brought.

Two days later, I was back at the library with another batch of bags. Almost everything I had brought the first time was gone. Again, I loaded the rack.. Three days of work between the two holiday weekends slowed down my sorting a bit, but I welcomed in the New Year by loading up another dozen bags.

I was not really surprised, when I went to the library last Saturday, to discover that virtually everything I'd already brought was gone. This time I had more books than would fit into the rack, so I left a large pile on the window sill next to it. Even as I was loading the books, a woman was pulling some from the rack and asked if I had any more by specific authors. She walked out with a stack of books.

As the second long weekend wound down, I had all the remaining books sorted into logical order and got them to fit onto shelves. No more stacks in front of the bookcases, no more piles on top of cabinets, no more "I need to find a place for this."

And there's even a bit of room for some new ones.

On the Radio

  For the first time in awhile, I joined Howard Margolin on his radio program, "Destinies - The Voice of Science Fiction" for the annual year-end review of the best, worst, and most disappointing books and events in comics. While there isn't much in the way of new comics being published that I am reading, I was able to hold my own and talk about The Walking Dead, new material coming from Charlton Neo,  and the various collections of vintage comic books and comic strips that are being published, You can listen to the broadcast here by scrolling down to the December 26, 2014 entry.

  Howard has been doing his weekly radio for for nigh on forever -- I've been a guest nineteen times over the years -- and he gave me a recording on a 1997 broadcast that featured an interview he had done with me way back in 1991. Much of that interview involved my efforts as Production Director at DC Comics, particularly relating to the various types of paper we were experimenting with and using on the books at the time. (You can find that program here by scrolling down to the March 7, 1997 broadcast. And yes, that is a very young Laurie and me in front of the DC Comicmobile in the accompanying photograph.)
  Towards the end of the interview, Howard asked me what I had in the works as a writer and I talked about a project called Dinosaur Island. I invite you to listen as I talked about a few of the elements that were part of my proposal -- which was ultimately rejected by DC because "there's no market for a dinosaur book (in 1991)" -- and remind you that Jurassic Park came out in 1993.