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Marvel Comics was still sorting out its payment procedures, which went through several changes during the first year I was Editor in Chief. You can read about it here and here.

The deal was supposed to be if your voucher was received by the cutoff day one week, your check would be mailed Monday of the next week. By Wednesday, surely, you’d have your check.

But, no.

Dave lived in Newark, Delaware. He called me at the office that Wednesday to…umm…gently express his…umm…disappointment? What’s the politest way to say murderous rage?

Most of us lived hand to mouth in those days. The business was struggling. Most of us were struggling.  Dave was more responsible than most. A solid citizen. He owned a home. He managed pretty well, compared to some of us.

But he needed that check. It was the day before Thanksgiving. He had no cash and hadn’t been to the grocery store lately. What was he supposed to do, eat cat food for Turkey Day?

I looked into it. Somehow his voucher hadn’t made it into last week’s batch. Bookkeeping had put it aside because of some question about it.

Great.

I went upstairs and calmly, rationally, at the top of my lungs convinced the money tweezers to cut that check. Right now would be lovely.

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First This

This is the post that I meant to have up Saturday. Tomorrow’s will be today’s. You know what I mean. Sorry.

Stellar Horoscope 

Early on during my time at Marvel, at a convention in New York City, I met a comics fan who was a part-time astrologer. He had a regular day job, some bookkeeping or accounting-type thing, but on the side, he did horoscopes. He liked what I had to say at some panel I was on, thought I seemed like an interesting subject and volunteered to do my chart. Free. Okay. I gave him my date and time of birth and the city where I was born.

A couple of weeks later, he stopped by the Marvel offices to deliver his work, a hand-drawn astrological chart and his analysis of same.

The chart was beautiful. Framable. I still have it, packed away somewhere in the storage space.

The analysis?

What he came up with was startling. His analysis detailed things about me that nobody knew but people very close to me, and a few things that only I knew. Things that, I assure you, would have been nigh impossible to find out.

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You probably noticed the Contributions request in the sidebar. I was reluctant to ask you for money, but economic reality has a way of asserting itself. To those of you who have already generously donated to help us keep going, thank you. To all who participate in this wonderfully collaborative blog, thank you. Together, I think we’re building something really special here, a tapestry of views and opinions from different perspectives. To everyone who stops by, thank you. All of you make a difference.

Who Can Explain It, Who Can Tell You Why…?

This is the introductory paragraph of the series overview I wrote for Dark Horse’s prospective re-launch of the Gold Key title Spektor (formerly Doctor Spektor) that, sadly, never made it to print.

“Have you ever met anyone who, at some time in his or her life, hasn’t experienced something inexplicable? Knowing the phone was going to ring a second before it did? A premonition that proved true? A horoscope that was uncannily accurate? Next time you’re at a party, ask if anyone has a “ghost story,” a tale of something spooky that happened to them. Almost everyone does.

“I have several “ghost stories,” and I’m the second most skeptical man on Earth.”

If you’re wondering, the most skeptical man on Earth, at the beginning, at least, was going to be Spektor.

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