Working at Marvel Comics has been a job dreamed of by so many young people, every since the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man and the original Avengers made it the cool, connected, offbeat place it was in the Marvel Age. Virtually every one who came to work there, from the late 60's onward, was a massive fan of some (or nearly all) Marvel character. So here's the story about one of those young people. (And here is Glam rocker Marc Bolan- who once interviewed Stan Lee for a BBC show-holding the first comic scripted by DAK! Yeah!) Stream or download, and happy 2019! DAK: Everyone likes to use the phrase, “break into comics”- but I like to say, I was invited. Not that I wouldn’t have broken in! Lue: You already had taken on work, in high school, as a literary agent for the work of pulp writer Otis Adelbert Kline. You simply wrote, expressed some knowledge and interest- boom, you got it. DAK: I put an inquiry to see if I could work for Marvel. One day, I went ...

IMMORTAL HULK #8: Victory in his cold, dissected hands! The Hulk's survival crosses a line that dissolves any feel-good simplicity of the gamma giant-as-superhero. I recommend you see for yourself how his vengeance comes together, just as his predicament- one I never saw before, for any character!-verges on becoming insurmountable. For this Hulk and his dizzying powers, what seems like ultimate defeat, physically, just plays into his cold, dissected hands! I don’t keep up with every very good comic series or individual work in the genre. The day I bought my wonderful What If? Comic, I also realized the sun was setting on our local store- What If? Comics and Collectibles. Here I am, reliable vehicle secured, savings, best job yet and freelance articles- I’m ready to get some comics! Are you ready to get some comics, too? Well, when the sun goes down, if you want at least one monthly comic that touches upon rich Marvel history, superhero suspense in a horror-fix atmosphe...

Flash Fiction: What IF? Flash Thompson Became Spider-Man One-Shot The opening narration’s the first feint. Longtime-fans familiar with military vet Flash Thompson will think they’re reading captions describing how his time in the service taught him the difference between heroes and “a thug with a gun.” But the chaos unleashed towards our perspective by Diego Olortegui’s art stems from ‘the good guy.’ For this is not the mature Flash cultivated by this very writer on his original groundbreaking Spider-Man run. This is no friend of Peter Parker, who walks up to our intrepid shutterbug spitting menace. The narrator? Our new version of Colonel Nick Fury, standing in for The Watcher after the events of Secret Sins as The Unseen, with a very different formula for seeing Infinity. His words are the weigh station to a parallel Earth, and the times have picked up in the heart of Spidey’s roots, where our writer discovered Spider-Man, himself. It’s Midtown High’s football hero, with...

We save the movies for our favorite larger-than-life heroes- that's Freddie Mercury! Rockin' time, sweet date. The story of Bohemian Rhapsody from Fox jibes closely with biographical Queen lore. Freddie was a sweet guy, prone to life in huge, dramatic, colorful strokes, and it's fair to say, this was because he wrestled with the tedium and unrest of life off stage. I've long thought the adoration and adrenaline and bombast of a fist-pumping live show is surely such an addiction, it's really little wonder those who attain its heights find life away from the spotlight nearly unbearable. The gifts wrapped up in the making of a song are an internalized transporting feeling that rivals, and for some, surpasses the stage. But for rock's super-talented full-blast front man, the stage was also a place where he could be loved, seemingly unconditionally, and his shared creative prowess with Queen, known and loved. But there are things about a person that are terri...

Larry Lieber started working for Marvel when they were still, technically, Atlas Comics, on June 26th, 1958. Do you know him as the writer and scripter of stories like: the origin of Thor? Iron Man? Writer of Ant-Man, or the Rawhide Kid? Larry gives his story, from the earliest days mentored by his famous brother, Stan Lee, through his Western comics writing, the monsters, the early Marvel superheroes, to the shortly-lived Atlas Comics of 1975, and back to Marvel, where he worked on The Hulk newspaper strip. He finally landed the daily Spider-Man newpaper strip, which he wrote for thirty years! I love Epic Marvel Podcast- they still have a Steve Englehart series about Dr. Strange I've just remembered I want to hear! They inspired some of my writing last summer about the Heroes For Hire, just as they hit Netflix together. I began supporting Epic Marvel on Patreon. They're well-produced and land so many terrific interviews with classic creators. Take a listen! http...

The kid from Huntington Woods grew up with a real passion for reading DC Comics. He was creating his own stories by the time he pulled up at the drug store that carried the first appearances of two characters with whom he'd spend many working hours one day: Spider-Man and Mighty Thor. Sometime after graduating the University of Michigan in 1972, Jim Starlin's old Berkeley High school chum Allen Milgrom would embark on his own comics career. They both began with late 1960s fanzines. Allen then did some writing over at Warren Publishing. Carmine Infantino put him with Murphy Anderson, a very professional-looking fellow who was rather quiet about working in comics. Murphy worked in the office avoid his wife's errands from the home, so he was on the scene when Al joined DC and did backgrounds for Anderson. He did this for about a year before freelancing at Marvel, where Jim Starlin had already served briefly as Art Director. Al would later revisit Thor and a new gener...

Patrick Broderick was 17 when he answered a cattle call for DC’s new Junior Bullpen project. How lucky was he to step out of the long line and run into Carmine Infantino? Pat drew early appearances of Iron Fist in Marvel Premiere, and later, Captain Marvel, a flame-headed guy called Ghost Rider in a Marvel Team-Up fill-up, and a good run on Micronauts (succeeding Mike Golden, ending with #34, cover date, Oct. 1981) before he started Firestorm back-ups at DC. He later co-created the Nathaniel Adam iteration of Captain Atom, also drawing Batman: Year Three, a terrific revival of Green Lantern, and the inventive Doom 2099. He’s also been an adjunct instructor at the Tampa Bay Art Institute. Pat returned to draw more Green Lantern and various covers for Marvel, also. We had an amazing time, talking. (Well, we certainly weren't doing the polka!) Here's part one. We've focusing on his time on Firestorm, but we also talk about why he left Micronauts, how he got started,...

Hey! Love high adventure? You're here because you love Tarzan. You just might feel they don't make'em like that anymore! And I'm not the guy to argue THAT! Tarzan's books began a century ago, with Edgar Rice Burroughs- at a whopping dime per word- captivating imaginations the world over. Saturday afternoons brought us black and white Tarzan thrills with Johnny Weismuller and Buster Crabbe. (My pal Ron Frenz- who cut his teeth in the Savage Land drawing Ka-Zar- actually shared a theater with Crabbe one night!) (I love elephants. I want to tell you about the elephant orphanage in Sri Lanka...look it up and I will tell you, later.) That's the first Tarzan y'boy C Lue remembers. Even to the present day, the legendary Lord Greystroke has entered the Hollywood jungle, with a 2015 entry atarring Alexander Skarsgard that took on modern sensibilities head-on. I feel LEGEND will only grow in cult stature. Frazetta's ACE Tarzan covers, like all things...

For kicks, I played along with a status suggesting you type in your first name plus Marvel Comics. That's how I discovered Cecil the Hacker. He's a character from The Unbelievable Gwen Pool, which means he is from a set of stories so far outside the Marvel I grew up with, I may have never gotten around to discovering him in this decade. There's an entire other Marvel world where Gwen got the spider bite that made Peter Parker, Spider-Man. That's fine with me. I understand they've had a lot of fun with the character. Cecil looks like he's a pretty fun guy, too. I can't judge how inspired he really is without reading the comics. I tend to put a lot more effort into these posts, which makes them much more rare than if I would update them with a paragraph and a couple of downloaded pictures every day or so. Right now, all my comics-related energies are devoted to Firestorm. I have been editing a Creating Marvels audio file where I talk with Patrick...

Gerry Conway- famed writer for Marvel, DC Comics, and many television shows (Law & Order, Matlock, Father Dowling Mysteries) in the late 80's and throughout the 90s- sat down with me one recent afternoon. Well, our story begins with CRAP. We could start with the Kirby-flavored cover- that’s no surprise, when you consider the artist, Allen Milgrom, has been inking the King’s covers for Marvel. But it wouldn’t be Conway-era Firestorm without a few laughs, right? The Coalition to Resist Atomic Power (Conway's little joke, with the un-addressed acronym, CRAP- thanks, Fire & Water podcast- if you love this character or Aquaman, or just DC Comic-crazy) recruits the new kid in town, an athletically-gifted teenager who’s been bouncing from town to town with his father, named Ronnie Raymond. All Ronnie really wants is to impress this cute girl he’s met named Doreen Day. He’s not really a dumb jock, but his rival for the girl, Cliff Carmichael, is both a brain and a bully...

Along with its pop culture phenomenon theme song, the original ABC run of Spider-Man , and its many reincarnations in syndication around the world (but especially in native-content-loving Canada!), gave the superhero a platform which I think launched his popularity ever skyward! Already a surprise smash hit for Marvel Comics from his 1962 inception by writer/editor Stan Lee and designer/plotter Steve Ditko, the wallcrawler's exposure through the Grantray/ Lawence animated series took him into homes for Saturday mornings- and then, afternoons ever after- to fascinated children of all ages everywhere. The series debuted on September 9th, 1967, which prompted me to share a bit of my re-discovery of the hero's famous, jazzy, funky and sometimes hilarious adventures. The second regular series writer on Amazing Spider-Man in 1972, a teen named Gerry Conway, told me he was eager to consume any iteration of his favorite Marvel characters. He watched Spider-Man every week, followi...

ONe of a series of talks with Firestorm creators- like Gerry Conway, Al Milgrom, Pat Broderick, Rafael Kayanan, Tom Mandrake, even early editor Jack C. Harris, we have a philosophical afternoon with John Ostrander. Writer of the modern Suicide Squad, Star Wars: Legacy, The Spectre, and his own creation, Grimjack at First Comics (a very philosophical, satirical space adventure), John began his career as a stage actor in Chicago, providing his connection with Mike Gold. Brought aboard to craft the Legends line-wide crossover, John's fill-ins on Firestorm won him the job when it was vacated by Firestorm's talented parent, Gerry Conway. At one point, I posited to John, this: Firestorm was not generally considered frightening in his earlier incarnation. I think of your Firestorm as a Scary Outlaw-like you said, the danger. There were some questions inside Firestorm himself. Don’t take for granted that he’s going to do the right thing...he’s got to come to it. When you ha...

A conversation with writer John Ostrander and your host, C Lue Lyron! We chat about breaking in at DC during the Legends crossover; the influence of socially conscious writing by --and vegetarian dinner with-- Denny O'Neil. We discuss how John's always been inspired to mix real life, philosophy and imagination. Here's the episode link, too: https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-wmdxb-98ab40 Feel free to copy and share! Our talk began like so: C Lue: What did Mike Gold ask you to accomplish when you came aboard to do Legends? John: He sort of laid it out for me. Now, Legends was the first mini-series after Crisis On Infinite Earths, which was a twelve issue run. He said he wanted to do this one in six. Crisis sort of blew up the DC Universe, took things apart. Our goal was to bring it back more together, and to launch some new books, as well. So Legends would show how the new, single DC Universe worked together. C Lue: What were you thinking as...