[bminor]

Does anyone have any personal stories about anyone who was involved in the Golden Age of Comics? There must be somebody out there who has a personal connection to those people who created the golden age!!! It would good to have them posted for posterity...

[Yoc]

My only brush with the GA was meeting Al Williamson in the late 80s at a comic con.
He seemed younger than I expected and a very nice man.

[darkmark]

I did interviews with a number of pros from the Golden and Silver Ages, but they've been published.

[DOC]

I've met Williamson and Marty Nordell (he signed a Green Lantern long sleeve shirt for me), Jack Kirby saw my sketch Pad and said he was impressed.

[narfstar]

Met Irwin Hasen at Heroes Con. Very nice guy took a picture with him and Bob Bailey and bought a signed print. Besides many features for DC, Irwin wrote/co-wrote and drew the newspaper strip Dondi. One of my favorites as being very well written. Irwin said that when writing he tried to think like a ten year old boy and would make sure that Dondi acted appropriately. I also met Don Sherman and Gary Friedrich from the SA. Got an original Fred Flintsone drawing from Don who did the newspaper strip.

[rez]

Jack Kirby saw my sketch Pad and said he was impressed.

dang Doc, that says a mouth full there!

[bminor]

I did interviews with a number of pros from the Golden and Silver Ages, but they've been published.

Well, as a new member of the group here (about a month and a half). Where are these interviews? Is there any possibility of you posting them here?

[darkmark]

Don't feel like revealing my real name here, thanks.

[paw broon]

As my memory is not great for details, some of this is a bit vague.  I met Marty Nodell at a con. in London, although someone who was around at the time suggests it may have been in Glasgow.  One of my erstwhile partners has a sketch of Green Lantern done for him by Mr. Nodell, but as he is not responding to my emails, I can't check this.  I met Will Eisner in Glasgow when we were still running cons and a few of us had dinner with him in the Cafe Gandolfi in the Merchant City. An excellent evening as Archie goodwin was there as well.  Mr Eisner was a real gentleman and impressed us greatly.  He was funny, told some great stories and next day at his hotel, over coffee, he was happy to chat about his experiences in comics.
My other encounters with comics pros have all been with folk from later eras or British pros.

[darkmark]

I've had a lot of encounters with pros at cons (kind of an antithesis there, ain't it?) and even got to make Jack Kirby's birthday bash at San Diego, which was a hoot.  Interviewed Eisner and sent him a pubbed story and a proposal for a thing called Plain Vanilla.  He liked both and told me.  The rest?  Dropping names here...interviews with Sprang, Englehart, Fox, Goodwin, Gaiman, Moore, Anderson, Evanier (my best pal in the industry), Thomas, Heck, Williamson, Gilbert, Steranko (for whom I almost went to work), Wildey, and a batch of others.  Loved 'em all.

[bminor]

I've had a lot of encounters with pros at cons (kind of an antithesis there, ain't it?) and even got to make Jack Kirby's birthday bash at San Diego, which was a hoot.  Interviewed Eisner and sent him a pubbed story and a proposal for a thing called Plain Vanilla.  He liked both and told me.  The rest?  Dropping names here...interviews with Sprang, Englehart, Fox, Goodwin, Gaiman, Moore, Anderson, Evanier (my best pal in the industry), Thomas, Heck, Williamson, Gilbert, Steranko (for whom I almost went to work), Wildey, and a batch of others.  Loved 'em all.

I would love to hear more details of each one of these encounters. It would make for very interesting reading. I have been locked away here in the upper midwest my entire life and have never and most likely never will encounter any of these personages. I would think that there are many of us who would enjoy reading all we possibly can about these creators of the comics we all love so dearly.

b

[rez]

I too.

[JVJ]

I would love to hear more details of each one of these encounters. It would make for very interesting reading. I have been locked away here in the upper midwest my entire life and have never and most likely never will encounter any of these personages. I would think that there are many of us who would enjoy reading all we possibly can about these creators of the comics we all love so dearly.

b

b, my experience has been that most encounters with pros, especially at cons (good one, dm) are pretty well "scripted". They're pleasant enough, but you don't get much in the way of a shared personal experience. They've "been there, done that" too many times for much of anything to be fresh. Last year (or the year before, who keeps track?) at Wondercon I sat next to Nick Cardy at his table in artists' alley. I mean that literally. I just sat down on the chair behind his table next to him, introduced myself, and started talking. I must have been there for three hours, and anytime we even STARTED to have a conversation, someone came up to get things signed, get a sketch, and talk to Nick. I must have heard the same "conversation" fifty times while I sat there. Nick kept up his end of them, but you could tell he wasn't really engaged. He did his best, as most pros do, but he really didn't want to draw another sketch of Wonder Girl or sign another copy of Bat Lash as much as he wanted to talk to me about Fiction House and old illustrators. We tried, but he was just too popular to do what HE wanted to do. Not in any way to imply that he didn't really enjoy the fans. He did. It's just that there are only so many times and ways you can say the same thing fifty times - and eventually it's going to get pretty stale - for him. For each fan it was the FIRST TIME, and Nick made them all happy. That was his job.

IF you can get some time to actually do an interview with a comic pro, your first task is to break through the canned responses. I've found that most pros who've been around fandom have honed their responses to a consistency that is eerie. I find that you have to do a LOT of homework and be persistent and devote some time to it (like Jim Amash) to elicit anything new from them. Of course, this method has it's drawbacks as I've had two interviewees quit on me (Ray Osrin got tired of looking at old funny books that he may or may not have done work in and Lou Cameron got angry with me for telling him that Matt Baker didn't work at Ace).

I've always looked at these people as individuals first and "icons" second. Some individuals are interesting and some not so much. With some artists, it's simply better to admire their work. Personally, I'd rather find the anonymous guy that no one's ever heard of and be the first one to talk to him about the comics he drew. The time for that is quickly passing us all by, alas. Thank goodness people like Jim Amash are making the effort to track the few remaining guys down.

Peace, Jim (|:{>

[OtherEric]

I met Gil Kane once, briefly, at a small show in Seattle.  I think he was somewhat gratified that the books I was getting signed were clearly well loved rather than high grade.  One item in the pile was Strange Adventures 184, the second Animal Man story.  Rather than sign it, he started flipping through it quite slowly.  I finally asked him if anything was wrong, and he said something along the lines of "No, I just haven't seen this story in years."  I wish I had been smart enough to say something better but I was a dumb kid in utter awe at the time.

But I still have that book and memory to treasure.

One thing I like about the internet is that it allows some people to talk with the fans and deal with them as people; I've had at least brief online discussions with Peter David, Christopher Priest, Mark Evanier, Kurt Busiek, Marv Wolfman, Ty Templeton, and Tony Isabella just off the top of my head.  (The one with Ty Templeton stands out as a very funny discussion of an off-color subject in an on-color manner back in the days of usenet.)  Which helps during personal encounters; unlike my early encounters with people like Gil Kane or Roy Thomas my brain can now accept that the other person is human and not an icon.

[JVJ]

Actually, Eric,
my most "memorable" encounter was with Denny O'Neill at my first and only New York Con in 1971 (or 72, who CAN remember?). I had no idea what any of the comic creators looked like, and the convention was small enough and informal enough that groups would have spontaneous get-togethers in the halls. I was getting off of an elevator when I encountered one such group of fans sitting around a "pro" who was discussing the current Green Lantern/Green Arrow series. I did a quick double take and interrupted by asking, "Are you Neal Adams?" Seeing how "green" I was, he said yes and offered to do me a sketch. I still have a VERY bad drawing by Denny O'Neill that's signed "Neal Adams". I had a good laugh with everyone else, but I think my face was pretty red.

Oh, yeah, that was the same con where I had a beer in the hotel bar with Al Williamson and Russ Jones. My Al Williamson: His Work checklist had at least made my name semi-familiar to Mr. Williamson and he had agreed to meet me. I didn't know Russ Jones from Adam. For the record, he was the first editor of Creepy for Jim Warren. I can't recall a single thing I said to either of them - and the beer was pretty bad (and NOT cheap).

Peace, Jim (|:{>

[John C]

IF you can get some time to actually do an interview with a comic pro, your first task is to break through the canned responses. I've found that most pros who've been around fandom have honed their responses to a consistency that is eerie. I find that you have to do a LOT of homework and be persistent and devote some time to it (like Jim Amash) to elicit anything new from them. Of course, this method has it's drawbacks as I've had two interviewees quit on me (Ray Osrin got tired of looking at old funny books that he may or may not have done work in and Lou Cameron got angry with me for telling him that Matt Baker didn't work at Ace).

That's definitely good advice.  The (few) times I've dealt with famous people, I've had much more success asking them about current (especially upcoming or where they have creative control) projects and THEIR favorite work, and not what they're most famous for.  I imagine that it's the equivalent of typecasting, a reminder that a lot of people only see them for that same old project.

My only relevant encounter, though (and not remotely Golden Age, at that), was getting to spend most of an afternoon talking to Fred Hembeck.  I had asked him about a then-recent "serious" story he had done, and from there, we were off to the races.  Great guy, and might actually be the one artist I've known who isn't embarrassed or bored with any of his work.  Once you wind him up, he'll bounce through the old Daily Planet strips, the Fantastic Four Roast, and all the projects that didn't come out as planned or at all.

Peter David bored me to tears.  He was, I think, too wrapped up at the time in his feud with certain folks at Paramount (no matter what the question, he ended up talking about edited-out gags in Star Trek novels), and basically came off as pretentious and petty.  But I might also be biased, since I've never been a fan of his work.

(And I love the O'Neill story.  That's the funniest thing I've heard in a long time.  Any chance we could see the sketch?)