George Alec Effinger

Sword of Sorcery #4 (Sep.-Oct., 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Last December, we looked at the first issue of Sword of Sorcery — DC Comics’ new (as of December, 1972, that is) bi-monthly series featuring author Fritz Leiber’s fantasy fiction duo, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.  The debut of the two roguish heroes in their own title came five months after their introduction to DC readers in Wonder Woman #202, courtesy of writer Samuel R. Delany, artist Dick Giordano, and editor Denny O’Neil — the latter of whom, not so coincidentally, would be not only editing DC’s new sword-and-sorcery title (the company’s first ongoing effort in that genre), but scripting it, as well.  SoS #1’s art, meantime, was contributed by a young penciller named Howard Chaykin, with inks by the mysterious “Crusty Bunkers” (whom, as we’d soon learn, consisted of various talents working out of the Continuity Associates studio run by Neal Adams and Giordano.)  Read More

Daredevil #84 (February, 1972)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In his 2013 book Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, Sean Howe tells of how young writer Gerry Conway first came to work for the publisher, circa 1970:

Born in Brooklyn, Conway was eight years old when Fantastic Four #1 hit the stands. By the time he was sixteen, he was writing scripts for DC Comics; soon after, he met [associate editor] Roy Thomas, who assigned him a Marvel writers’ test. But [editor Stan] Lee was, as usual, less than impressed with the way another writer handled the characters he shepherded.

 

“He writes really well for a seventeen-year-old kid,” Thomas reasoned.

 

Lee, who himself had first walked into Marvel’s offices at that age, paused. “Well, can’t we get someone who writes really well for a twenty-five-year-old kid?”

The point of the anecdote (at least for Howe) seems to be the irony of Lee’s doubting that someone could be ready to start writing for Marvel at age seventeen, when that’s exactly how old he’d been himself when he’d begun working for his cousin’s husband, Martin Goodman, circa 1940.  But, after some consideration, your humble blogger is of the opinion that Stan the Man may have been on to something.

Maybe Gerry Conway wasn’t quite ready to handle the monthly adventures of Daredevil, Iron Man, Sub-Mariner, et al, fresh out of high school.  Read More