FantaCo Archives - Page 7 of 8 - Ramblin' with Roger

Why A Duck?

When I did my Simpsons avatar a little while ago, the T-shirt had a duck on it. As a kid, and even now, I like to make sounds like various fowl. One sound is like an even more incoherent Donald Duck. I suspect that I was doing this back in my FantaCo days, because when Raoul Vezina drew me into a Smilin’ Ed Smiley story, I was portrayed as a duck.

But it wasn’t a story in one of the four issues of Smilin’ Ed comics that FantaCo published; it was the story in X-Men Chronicles entitled “If Smilin’ Ed Smiley bought a Case of X-Men #94 When It Was Brand New, What Then?” “What Then” was our way of saying “What If” without actually being in violation of Marvel’s copyright or trademark.

Now, I should acknowledge why FantaCo put out the X-Men Chronicles when it did. It was to beat to market the X-Men version of a series of Marvel Indexes compiled by someone named George Olshevsky. The X-Men Index would be No. 9A (for some reason) and was scheduled to come out later in 1981.

I had forgotten this: FantaCo, probably Tom, had asked Wendy Pini to do the X-Men Chronicles cover. Wendy and Richard Pini were known for doing the Elfquest comic book, and had done a number of in-store signings. She called back on May 21, 1981, to decline, but she gave us Paty Cockrum’s number at Marvel so that we could contact her husband Dave, who had drawn the X-Men. From my journal: “Dave agreed to do the cover for $200-250. I told Tom, but I was less than enthused because Fantagraphics’ book [the Marvel Indexes were distributed by them, I guess] is also going to have a Cockrum cover. My attitude was incomprehensible to Tom.” (The actual cover I did really like, and was a lot more interesting than the Index cover.)

So we got our Dave Cockrum cover, got some local, and not so local people, to draw and write some pieces. I commissioned Arro Verti to put together our own index, short on graphics, but long on text. Oh, who am I kidding? *I* was Arro Verti; Arro=R.O.; and Verti for Green.

While we had published previously (Smilin’ Ed, Hembeck 1980, John Caldwell’s Mug Shots), we had never done a commentary book before. While I now know that we almost certainly didn’t need Marvel’s permission to do what we were doing, we sought it then. And Marvel was…cagey.

On the day I went down to pick up the Dave Cockrum cover, July 15, I met with Paty, then briefly with Marvel editor Jim Shooter, who said that there was no need to license the X-Men Chronicles if we were doing a journalistic piece. Then he said: “If you violate our copyright, we’ll just sue.” He was so matter-of-fact about it. I wrote later that I really liked Paty; Jim, not so much.

Another heretofore lost detail: Dave’s cover wasn’t ready on the 15th; in fact, I think he had just started it. So I took train to Philadelphia, visited friends, took a train back to NYC on the 17th, got the cover from Dave, a bearded fellow with what I described as a “soft Southern accent”, THEN took the still-wet painting home on a bus to Albany. The first copies of the magazine came out July 31.

As the editor of the X-Men Chronicles, one of my great disappointments about the book was the type size, which was 6-point type (don’t remember the font), which I thought was too small, but who our typesetter thought was fine. He was the professional, so I yielded to his judgment, which was, as it turns out, WRONG.

This had created another problem: we were five pages short for our 32-page publication. Enter Raoul Vezina, who, in a remarkably short time, cooked up with Tom Skulan a story about greed and hubris. Raoul’s story ended up to be six pages, and we had to bump something, as I recall, but this tale was my favorite part of the book.

When Tom came back from vacation sometime afterwards, he brought back these polished stone animal figurines from Mexico. Mine, of course, was the duck.

Which brings us to the picture above, which Raoul drew for my friend Lynne late in 1981. It’d been hanging on her wall for a quarter century when I e-mailed her and her husband Dan for a copy. Dan scanned it, Lynne made it into a PDF, and I made it into a .jpeg. ADD had something to do with the process, too.

Seeing it again just makes me smile, and sad, too, for Raoul died in 1983. At least I have his art to remember him by.
***
Hi, Eric and Joelle! By coincidence, I ran into a guy named Eric who used to work at FantaCo doing mail order yesterday. He kindly said I was “a little grayer”; it was good to see him. His sister Joelle, I believe, was the first female to be on the FantaCo payroll, and, according to him, is the more computer-savvy of the two.
***
This story says there were only a “handful” of FantaCo Publications; not true, as this roster will attest. Many were published after my tenure there, but FantaCo, in its time, and, especially in its later horror comics niche, was quite prolific.

ROG

Daredevil Omnibus

ADD wrote to me a couple weeks ago:
Hey Roger,
I have a question for you that I just posted to my blog
Let me know if you have any info at all.
Hope all is well!

As I may have mentioned, it was rather strange to see in the pages of the Daredevil Omnibus the pages from FantaCo’s Daredevil Chronicles, a magazine I worked on, though Mitch Cohn was the editor. The intrepid Alan David Doane asked me if Marvel had asked permission to appropriate pages directly from the FantaCo publication, and whether they paid the contributors.

The short answer, as far as I know, is no. The long answer is a little more complicated.

When FantaCo put together the X-Men Chronicles, a fanzine about the uncanny mutants edited by me, Marvel was very pleased. SO pleased that they gave us permission to use the Marvel Comics Group strip on the top of the page of the Fantastic Four Chronicles (cover by John Byrne, edited by me) and the Daredevil Chronicles (cover by Miller/Janson, edited by Mitch). In other words, they were licensed products of Marvel. Therefore, my guess is that Marvel believed they had a right to appropriate the DDC for the DD Omnibus, as it was their product, so there was no need to give permission.

Fred Hembeck tells me that Peter Sanderson, whose FantaCo interview of Frank Miller and Klaus Janson, appears in the book, was given a copy of the book, according to Sanderson’s Quick Stop column. Fred, whose illustration accompanies that interview, is still waiting for his copy. You’d have to ask John Byrne and George Perez whether their Daredevil drawings earned them a copy, or something more.

Incidentally, at least one “independent comics” publisher loathed the DDC, because of the emphasis on Miller and Janson, to the exclusion of the rest of the canon (Wally Wood, e g.). I won’t tell you who he is, but you know when the sun or moon temporarily disappears?

I asked Mitch about all of this. He wondered about the copyright issue too when I first mentioned the project to him. I agree with him that would depend on how the copyright was done, which he recalls was all FantaCo except for trademarks owned by Marvel. While he notes that Tom Skulan (the FantaCo owner) might have a case against Marvel, we both would think Marvel would have run it past their legal department before committing to do it. “It’s not like they needed that stuff in there,” Mitch opined.

You should know that the subsequent Avengers Chronicles, which Mitch edited, and the Spider-Man Chronicles, which was my baby, no longer had the Marvel Comic Group strip. That’s because of something that happened, a decision I made, that caused Marvel editor Jim Shooter to call with a profanity-laden tirade that poor Mitch got to hear. But that’s a story for another day.

ROG

Fred G. Hembeck – the G stands for Great

The second annual summer meeting with my family and Fred’s led to all sorts of cool things: our Rashamon take on an obscure 1960s song by Tom Clay, which somehow segued into me writing about Snoopy vs. Osama, and getting a response from the Royal Guardsmen.

But even when we don’t see each other, we’re in contact. He’s turned me on to Nellie McKay and SpongeBob.

I now realize that I’ve known Fred half of our lives. I met him in February 1980, when he was doing a signing for the FantaCo publication Hembeck 1980, when he was 27, and today he turns…lessee 27 times 2 is..this higher math is tough… Of course, there was a big gap in there, but I’m glad he started doing his blog, and that our mutual friend Rocco told me about said blog. (Peculiar that I find out more about Rocco, who lives in Albany from Fred, who lives over an hour from here, than I do from Rocco.)

Another thing you should know about Fred: he’s a proud NGSD supporter.

Last point: this is my favorite time in my relationship with Fred Hembeck, where (for five weeks) he’s older than I am. Utterly petty, but I enjoy it anyway.

Happy birthday, effendi!
***
And speaking of FantaCo and long time ago, check out this link about something called the Daredevil Omnibus that Fred sent me. There are five pages taken from the Daredevil Chronicles, originally published by FantaCo, three pages of an interview, featuring a nifty Hembeck illo, and the two page Miller/Janson spread . I didn’t edit that particular issue, Mitch Cohn did; I was working on as similar ‘zine about the Fantastic Four at the time. But I’m sure I proofread that issue, as Mitch proofed the FF. Really took me back.

Memories of Pop

So I went up to my attic, trying to find some memorabilia for a project I’m working on, about which I will tell you about soon. I didn’t find the memorabilia, but I DID find 10 notebooks I used as diaries between 1979 and 1987, which will also be helpful for that aforementioned mysterious project. But it IS rather painful to read about your immature, self-absorbed thoughts from 25 years ago. (As opposed to my current MATURE, self-absorbed thoughts.)

One of the things I re-discovered was the death of my grandfather a quarter-century ago this week. I knew he had died sometime in the late 1970s or early 1980s, but the precise date had fled my memory.

Pop is what we (my parents, my sisters, and I) called my father’s father, McKinley Green. Everyone else called him Mac. My nuclear family lived downstairs in a very small two-family house in Binghamton. Pop and his wife, my Grandma Green, Agatha (and it was A gath’ a, not Ag’ ath a) lived upstairs. This was one of two houses owned my mother’s mother, Grandma (Gertrude) Williams, who lived about six blocks away. (HER death I remember quite well: Super Bowl Sunday, 1982.)

Pop was a janitor at WNBF-TV and radio; eventually, the TV station was sold, but he maintained his job at the radio station. I’m not quite sure just how old was, but he was well past the age of retirement, yet the station kept him on to work as long as he wanted, and as much as he wanted. He was such an amiable man that people liked him to be around.

Bonus

He used to bring home albums (LPs) that had been discarded by the station. Most were “beautiful music” with no artist even listed, or in later years, obscure rock bands that I had never even heard of, but three discs stand out in my mind.

“50 Stars, 50 Hits on two great country albums!” That’s the way it was advertised on TV, and I was thrilled when Pop brought a copy home. It featured Buck Owens, George Jones, Minnie Pearl, T. Texas Ruby and many more -46 more, to be precise. In Binghamton in the 1960s, you could get these clear channels (not to be confused with the conglomerate Clear Channel) at night, and I could get stations in New York and Cleveland. I could also reach WWVA in Wheeling, WV, a country station, and I probably listened to a couple of nights a week for four or five years.
Gary Lewis and the Playboys Greatest Hits- Jerry’s son’s band doing The Loser (with a Broken Heart), Where Will the Words Come From, (You Don’t Have to) Paint Me a Picture, My Heart’s Symphony, and my favorite, Jill.
The soundtrack to the movie The Night They Raided Minsky’s (1968). I saw this movie with my high school friend Carol and HER friend Judy, on whom I had a tremendous crush (though nothing ever came of it.) The film, starring Britt Eklund and Jason Robards, was the film debut of Elliot Gould and served as the final film for Bert Lahr. It started with Rudy Vallee saying: “In 1925, there was this real religious girl. And, quite by accident, she invented the striptease. This real religious girl. In 1925. Thank you.” It also featured songs like “Take 10 Terrific Girls, But Only 9 Costumes.” For a 15-year-old, this was really hot stuff, even though the “striptease” in the movie lasted a nanosecond, so getting the album was quite fine.

Going upstairs

Pop was an avid hunter. He provided the vast majority of the venison I’ve ever eaten in my life. The only time I ever used a firearm was with Pop. We went out to the woods somewhere, and he gave me his rifle. I fired. Naturally, the recoil left me sitting on my butt. Pop also liked to bowl, work on cars, and especially go to the track, particularly in Monticello.
I used to go upstairs and play gin rummy with him while we watched Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. In the later years, I’d beat him about 50% of the time. On a bulletin board, he had a faded newspaper clipping of Ed Marinaro, the Cornell running back, who was the son or nephew of a friend of his; Marinaro eventually played Officer Joe Coffey on Hill Street Blues.
From my 6/26/1980 diary: “Pop was a very dark-skinned man with grey hair, thinning, but more prevalent than mine, combed straight backâ€¦ I recall a certain twinkle in his eye, though I hadn’t seen him in a year and a half or longer; he was never home when I dropped by. I probably should have written more often, but he never wrote back…I would have called if had [had] a telephone, but he refused! The phone company would have required a deposit in switching service from Grandma Green’s name [she died in the mid-1960s] to his, even though he had been paying the bills, [so he had the phone taken out.] He was stubborn that way.”

I was going to write about Pop’s death, and I will soon. But it was nice to write a little about Pop’s life.

Poor Lynn Moss

When I worked at FantaCo back in the 1980s, I would see Lynn Moss occasionally. She was very patient with this guy she was married to. I really appreciated how she tolerated the comic fandom/geekdom she found herself was surrounded with. Also, her husband can be PRETTY obsessive, and he would (probably) agree with the assessment.

And, since her husband’s website has now become the mecca for all things comic book (and Beatles and “24” and their daughter Julie), it can only be worse now. Of course, in this case, she has only herself to blame, since she is the webmistress of said website. Though she has taught him some stuff, like how to do the daily postings, she’s still there to troubleshoot.

I tried to call her husband a couple of weeks ago when his webserver was (as it turned out) temporarily down, but he was out taking Julie horseback riding. So Lynn and I got to talk for the first time in at least 17 years, I believe. It was great. We talked about humor (something for a future blog, I think), FantaCo, blogging (she had read my then most recent post), and her technologically impaired spouse.

Connection

I’ve subsequently discovered that Lynn and I have a mutual acquaintance who was living on State Street in Albany at the same time Lynn and her hubby were first visiting FantaCo, a mere two blocks away, but never ran into each other. This is a fact that I gleaned because she saw mention of an old high school chum of hers in one of my blog posts, which pleased me greatly.

So happy 26th anniversary, Lynn Moss and Fred Hembeck. Maybe Carol, Lydia, and I will actually SEE youse guys and Julie one of these days. If you haven’t already, read the LOVELY story about the photographer at their wedding here, and see some of those pictures here (June 23).