Insect Asides, Part Five ~~ A "Comical Wednesday" Post

If you've been wondering where I've been going with all this, well, so am I. I'll probably just stop somewhere in the middle of things. I actually started out intending to tell only the story I relate in today's chapter and my previous one, but thought I should give just a little background on how I came to write for Insect Man's Weird Tales to begin with, and -- surprise, surprise -- got carried away. So here I am with chapter five, of six, or seven... or more!

Before I follow up Part Four's revelations, let me tell you what was going on in my mind during that time. (As if you could stop me, right?)

Everybody wanted to jump on the Insect Man bandwagon, it seemed. Even as I was plotting and scripting IMWT, other That's Entertainment customers were writing, drawing, and submitting their own Insect Man stories. These were stand-alone tales that had nothing to do with the continuity I was trying to establish. Not only that, but there was at least one writer/artist who wanted to contribute a three-parter featuring his own character, a character that had nothing to do with Insect Man.

I have to admit, all of these submissions bothered me, just a bit. You see, although Insect Man was definitely not "mine" -- he was and is Paul Howley's -- I was already becoming a bit... territorial... with the character. Not that I had any real right to be territorial, I hasten to add! But I was having fun, and didn't want to relinquish the plotting reins, as it were. I was also aware that issue #100 was fast approaching. Some time earlier, Paul had received a gorgeous Insect Man cover illustration by professional comic artist Will Blyberg. (More on that later.) This cover drawing was perfect for issue #100. I wanted to write a story suitable for this landmark issue, and I only had issues #98 and #99 to set everybody up for it.

I was lucky enough to get all of those other submissions postponed until some vague time after #100.

One of those "postponed" stories had been written and drawn by W.W. Bird -- "Bill" to me -- and for one reason or another, he ended up penciling, inking, and lettering my script for Insect Man's Weird Tales #98.

I've made a lot of jokes on this blog about my having the "kiss of death." All I have to do is think about someone I haven't thought about in ages, and he or she f***ing DIES.

Well, as I told you in Part Four of "Insect Asides," at the end of the story I'd written for IMWT #97, I blew up a space shuttle... and this was plotted, written, drawn, and published in 1985. The Space Shuttle Challenger exploded on January 28th of the following year!

The beginning of #98 dealt with the immediate aftermath of the explosion which I caused, sorta.

Now, I want to call your attention to the word "villain" on page two. I'll even give you a close-up:

Looks almost like the A and the I were lettered by a different person, dunnit? Well, they were. They were lettered by me. Regardless of having my freakin' script right in front of him, Bill misspelled "villain" as "villian," like so damned many people do! And I had to fix it so nobody would think it was my goof.

And no, I wasn't being paranoid. A couple of years later, when I co-wrote the script for my first "real" comic book, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., the artist of the book also lettered it. Although every use of the term "compact disc" was spelled just that way (D-I-S-C) in the script, artist Ken Penders wrote "disc" sometimes, and "disk" other times! And a magazine review of U.N.C.L.E. #1 made a wisecrack about how the scripter couldn't decide on the spelling of the word.

For that matter, the script and the scripted dialog in that very same issue referred to a man wearing a fedora. But when Ken Penders drew the man, he drew him wearing a derby.

*sigh*

Back to Insect Man...

You're probably wondering how Rex "Insect Man" Mason and Greg "Mr. Secret" Nile survived, right? Well, to make a long story relatively short, this multi-billion-dollar advanced prototype of the space shuttle had a flight recorder (a/k/a "black box") on board. And since I'd read all of Paul Howley's original Insect Man stories, I knew that during his career, IM had acquired the ability to shrink, like Marvel's Ant-Man or DC's Atom, years ago.

So! When the shuttle was attacked, a quick-thinking Insect Man removed his power ring, and handed it to Mr. Secret so Greg could turn into a tiny bug. Simultaneously, Rex shrank down to a similar size, and both heroes got into the black box! (I know, I know, kind of a cheat, time-wise, but hey...)

Issue 98's "Mummy Dearest," by the way, was as deadly serious and gruesome as the previous issue had been silly! I came up with the never-before-revealed origin of Insect Man's foe (and long-time leader of SKULL), the Mummy. Paul Howley himself told customers that it was one of the best six comic book stories he'd read that month. And since the rest were "real" comics, I considered that to be quite a compliment.

Finally (for this chapter, anyway) let's jump ahead a few months to when the real-life space shuttle disaster occurred, okay?

By the time of that real-life shocker, IMWT #97 and #98 were "old news." A few more issues had come out in the interim, and That's Entertainment had the last five or six on its new comic rack, along with all the "real" comic books.

Paul's cousin Steve also owned a comic shop, called The Outer Limits. Paul and Cousin Steve would telephone each other constantly during the day just to share goofy jokes, questions, stories... Whatever crossed their minds was fair game. After all, if you "sell funnybooks for a living," as Paul often said, you have no right being totally serious.

As you'll no doubt recall, I wasn't just the sometime-scribe of Insect Man's adventures, I was also an employee of That's Entertainment. So Paul and I were both in the store on January 28th, along with several customers.

Suddenly, the phone rang. (Well, how else could it ring?) Paul answered it. It was Cousin Steve. Steve told Paul that the Space Shuttle Challenger had just blown up after liftoff. Typical Cousin Steve phone call. Naturally, Paul thought it was a joke... but only for a second.

Paul shared the awful news with the rest of us, and a few minutes later, I looked at Paul and said "Do you know what I just thought of?"

His eyes got a bit wider. "Your Insect Man story?" I nodded.

That was eerie.

One day soon after January 28th, I was all alone in the store, behind the counter. One of TE's regular customers -- we'll call him "Conrad" -- walked in, strode purposefully up to the shelf holding the recent IMWT issues, grabbed a copy of either #97 or #98, and waved it in the air, yelling "The FBI is going to be looking for this David Lynch guy!" or words to that effect.

Obviously, he didn't know me by name.

I had to explain to him that:

1. I was David Lynch. (Still am, last time I checked.)
2. I'd merely written a fictional story. I didn't really blow up the Challenger.
3. The FBI couldn't give a rat's ass about me.

A lengthy aside here: In 1988, Marvel Comics was publishing several titles as part of what they called their "New Universe." The New Universe titles took place outside the Marvel Universe, home to Spider-Man, Thor, Captain America, etc.  One of the New Universe's storylines had the entire city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, destroyed by an otherworldly force. Well, right around that time, that same "Conrad" found some sort of weather chart on some computer somewhere, which had a huge dark spot in the area of Pittsburgh. He thought the city had really been wiped off the face of the Earth! (Let's just ignore the fact that no TV or radio news mentioned this supposed tragedy.) "Conrad" brought a print-out of the weather chart (or whatever it was exactly) into That's Entertainment, declaring (IIRC) that all comic book fans were going to hell, because their hobby had obliterated Pittsburgh.

*sigh*

And back in 1985, I was developing the story that came to be called "Fractured SKULL!"

To Be Continued...

And next time? The issue that non-artist David M. Lynch drew 90% of!

Thanks for your time.

Insect Man, Insect Man's Weird Tales, and all related characters and titles are copyright © Paul B. Howley.

Insect Asides, Part Four ~~ A "Comical Wednesday" Post

Dan Courtney's cover is signed "Dan 'C.C.' Courtney," so I'm assuming that's a reference to artist

C.C. Beck... but I couldn't locate a cover that this illustration was based on... if indeed there was one!

Here's another chapter in my seemingly-endless look behind the scenes of my first attempts at scripting comic books!

Insect Man's Weird Tales #96, my second issue -- drawn by artist Dan Courtney -- was what I call a "transition" issue. Basically, it dealt with issue #95's cliff-hanger ending, and set things up for issue #97. In fact, I didn't even give this story a distinctive title. I just labelled it as the conclusion to issue #95's "You're Not a Kid Anymore!"

It had been established by writer Chris Coleman that since his revival (Insect Man's revival, that is, not Chris Coleman's!), Rex experienced pain whenever changing back from his insect form(s). One of my earliest decisions as new writer was to get rid of that particular plot point.

After a fistfight in which Rex "Insect Man" Mason and Greg "Kid Secret" Nile (sans any superhero uniforms) dispatched their three SKULL antagonists, I had Rex and Greg discuss the problem of the aforementioned pains.

That's right, he said "The blasted thing came from Mars!" Y'see, young Paul Howley's Insect Man origin story from 1965 had established that Rex Mason had gotten the ring that gave him his shape-changing abilities from a Martian who had been visiting Earth. Well, twenty years later, we all knew that this alien could not actually be from Mars. Or could he?

It was early in my tenure as writer that I decided that each Insect Man story could be different. An issue could be dead serious. Or it could be totally goofy and humorous. A story could be set in outer space, in another dimension, or on the streets of Worcester, Massachusetts, in the so-called "real world."

Writers are God, don'tcha know?

I had decided that issue #97 was to be a real "bozo" issue. Plenty of silly jokes, and references that would mostly be appreciated by the comic book & entertainment fans who bought the IMWT title.

And yes, I had actually decided to send Insect Man and Kid Secret to Mars! But 1985 readers knew that such a trip could take a couple of years. I had to work around that, which, luckily, would be fairly easy in a goofy issue, right?

I started out by giving them transportation for their space journey.

The "Ben Grimm" reference, by the way, was a comic book insider's joke. Ben Grimm,
better known as The Thing of The Fantastic Four, had been a test pilot in his youth.

As a tiny sub-plot, I included a short segment where Greg was complaining about the name "Kid Secret" as being inappropriate for a now-adult superhero. Rex jokingly asked "What do you expect us to call you? Mister Secret?" To Rex's surprise, Greg actually liked the new name (although the superhero uniform(s) he wore during the next few issues still bore a "KS" logo)! Admittedly, I liked the name, too, because it reminded me of such Golden Age comic book heroes as Mister Terrific and Mister Scarlet (among others)!

The 1978 Superman movie (starring Christopher Reeve) had used "You Will Believe a Man Can Fly!"
as its slogan. I don't remember if the "You Will Believe a Man Can Fly (to Mars)" re-working
was my idea, or someone else's... but I definitely liked it, as it set up the tone of the following issue!

Insect Man's Weird Tales #97, the so-called "Special 'Off-the-Wall' Issue," was originally going to be called "Insect Man Conquers the Martians," a titular take-off of the 1964 piece-o-crap film, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. Returning artist Ken Carson (already drawing better than he had two scant issues earlier) based a great cover on the Dell comic book adaptation of the movie!

There was a slight problem. Paul Howley said that nobody would understand the reference to the 1964 movie. He suggested we change the title to "My Favorite Martian," a title taken from the 1963-1966 TV show of the same name which Paul (and I) had watched as a youngster. Ken and I very briefly argued that one sixties reference was as obscure as the other, but quickly figured that we didn't really care either way. And after all -- heh -- it was Paul's book.

The young boy is Greg's son Rex (shown very briefly in IMWT #96), obviously named after Greg's
childhood friend/mentor, Rex "Insect Man" Mason. This scene never actually appeared in the book.

The issue was penciled by Holly Basiner and inked by Ken Carson.

Early in the story, I got to use the following purposely-silly method to "work around" that pesky one-to-two-year travel time to and from Mars! 

Here's my "cheat," folks!

Every single time I made a comment in the dialog or captions about the cost of the mission, I'd have the dollar amount crossed out and I'd write a caption blaming "national security." In retrospect... That cutesy little routine got tired pretty quickly.

My original caption was written as "If we don't get sued for something this issue, it'll be a miracle!" As shown above, Ken Carson (who inked and lettered the book) added yet another comic book in-reference, changing my caption to "it'll be a miracle, man!" referring to Eclipse Comics' Miracleman title of the 1980s.

After four hours of waiting, Rex and Greg were transported to a planet called Menro-6, the true home of the "Martian." There, they encountered Insect Man's ol' buddy, whom I named Hur-Bi (pronounced "Her-BEE," not "HER-bee," if it freakin' matters). Hur-Bi was an alien who used a lot of Earth slang in his speech.

The "Guardians of the Universe" crack refers to DC Comics' blue-skinned race of interstellar immortals, who give
the Green Lantern Corps their power rings... not to be confused with Marvel Comics' Guardians of the Galaxy.

To make a long story short... well, not short, perhaps, just not quite as long... Hur-Bi found and fixed an imperfection in the Insect Man ring. All Rex and Greg had to do now was travel home.

As it happened, however, no sooner had the multi-billion-dollar advanced prototype of the space shuttle re-entered Earth's atmosphere before it was spotted by the head of SKULL itself, the Mummy! And at this point, the light-hearted story approach of this issue came to a halt!

That's right. I wrote a story in which a space shuttle exploded. Maybe you think that's in bad taste, considering that it was right around that time that the real-life Space Shuttle Challenger disaster occurred.

Only thing is.. The Challenger disaster happened on January 28th, 1986.

My story was written, drawn, and published before the end of 1985.

To Be Continued...

Thanks for your time.

Insect Man, Insect Man's Weird Tales, and all related characters and titles are copyright © Paul B. Howley.

Insect Asides, Part Three ~~ A "Comical Wednesday" Post

My first issue of Insect Man's Weird Tales, #95, seemed to have been relatively well-received by its readers. I personally was very pleased with the artwork of Ken Carson, whom I soon got to meet. Don't forget, this was the first time I'd ever written a full comic script -- albeit for an eight-page amateur press book -- and I've always loved seeing how an artist interprets my script.

(I'd almost written a complete comic book script a few years earlier, when I first encountered my eventual writing partner, Skip Simpson. The full story of that stillborn project is here and here.)

In this, my first Insect Man script, I tried to begin plot threads of my own, make a few references to issues only half a dozen or so people would recall after ten to twenty years, and deal with recent plot elements that either had occurred or just been implied. And all of that in seven pages!

I began by having Rex (Insect Man) Mason approached by a thirtyish man who claimed to be IM's former kid sidekick, Greg (Kid Secret) Nile. Rex, a teetotaler, was evidently a regular patron of a local bar, although he only drank ginger ale.

I must admit that I cheated somewhat, by having Rex not recognize Greg at first. After all, a man of approximately twenty years old wouldn't really change very much in appearance after only ten or eleven years. But I didn't allow doubt to stay in Rex's mind for long. Once he was convinced as to who Greg was, I gave the two old friends a short sequence of playing catch-up.

When I was six, seven, eight... I "borrowed" character names/powers/origins from "real" comics to populate the comics that I "wrote." I had a character named Red Raven whose powers and origin were a complete steal from Superman, right down to his being born on the planet Krypton! Soon after, when I discovered the X-Men, I added a power beam exactly like Cyclops' to Red Raven's abilities!

Well, when Paul Howley was a boy, he sometimes did the same thing in his stories. I made a wisecrack about a couple of them, Giant Man and Plastic Man. Paul had also created a time-traveling hero, whom he had named the Green Hornet... another "borrowed" name. I wanted to use (or at least talk about) this particular character here and there, so I merely referred to him as "The Hornet," and had Greg Nile make a throwaway remark about "that wild green outfit" of the Hornet's.

I segued from long-worded reminiscences to the untold story of Insect Man's last mission for Counter-SKULL approximately ten years earlier. Writer/artist Larry Young, who wrote the first modern Insect Man story in Insect Man's Weird Tales #88, had never given any details, so it was up to me.

I even did some research at the library to see what I could learn about "Jüngstadt," like, for instance, where the hell was it? I assumed it was European. Maybe Germany? Austria? By the time I gave up, one or two hours later, I had found nothing. Discouraging.

Months later, I got to ask Larry Young where the city was. Turns out, "Jüngstadt" translates to "Young City!" The little smartass had made up a city and named it after himself.

I also had Rex throw in a brief comment about "my brand new Insect Man outfit, the one I wear today," just to satisfy why this costume was hanging in Rex's closet in 1985, although Paul Howley's comics of years before never showed this suit (since Larry Young didn't create it until years after Paul stopped his Insect Man series).

Yeah, this is the kind of stuff only I worry about. But you regular readers here knew that anyway, right?

And immediately after Greg made that little admission, three SKULL agents (two flunkies in uniform, plus their leader, dressed in street clothes) entered the bar and boldly approached Rex and Greg. Greg is the first to react, but he's laid low by a blow from behind.

This time, I was the smartass, not Larry Young. I wrote the ending caption that way because, let's face it, we all knew Rex would get out of this pickle. (As we all saw in the following issue, he ended up changing to an insect to avoid being shot. No surprise there.)

As I've already said, this was the first script I'd ever completed, and had had illustrated. I enjoyed having someone else interpret my words and bring them to life, but as much as I liked Ken Carson's artwork, I must admit that I never expected he would get a bit better with every issue, as he did!

By the way, Ken made a minor change to the insect emblem on Insect Man's uniform jacket. Take a close look at the bottom of that page above. Ken redesigned the "body" of the non-specified type of insect. The white area that he added effectively turned the bug's body into the letters "I" and "M." I thought it was a great touch. However, I'm pretty sure that nobody else ever drew it that way, probably because nobody else ever noticed what Ken had done.

It just so happened that the next issue, #96, was fated not to be drawn by Ken, but by Dan Courtney, who had drawn characters such as Psyclone and SilverLion in past issues of  Insect Man's Weird Tales. Also on hand to letter issue #96 was writer/artist Chris Coleman, who had written and drawn a three-part Insect Man story shortly before I started writing IM.

(And as far as creator credits for Psyclone and SilverLion, I'm not quite sure what Chris Coleman contributed to either feature. Was he the co-creator of either or both? Did he ink Dan Courtney's pencils on any of the stories? Was he "just" the writer? Unfortunately, I don't have access to that info.)

But I'm saving the rest of my reminiscences about #96 -- and #97 -- for next time. And next time gets weird, I promise!

Thanks for your time.

Insect Man, Insect Man's Weird Tales, and all related characters and titles are copyright © Paul B. Howley.

Insect Asides, Part Two ~~ A "Comical Wednesday" Post (UPDATED)

A 1985 photo of Paul Howley, with an Insect Man
action figure that somebody customized  on his shoulder!

If you missed Part One of this series about That's Entertainment and its very own superhero, Insect Man, you can read it here!

When Paul Howley and I agreed that I would write the Insect Man story in Insect Man's Weird Tales #95, I vowed to research the hell out of Insect Man, plus his friends, enemies, and other affiliated superheroes... You name it!

Before I continue, I want to briefly clarify a section of this story. At the time of IMWT #95's publication, I don't think I was yet a full-time employee at That's Entertainment. But that's not really important to this multi-part "Comical Wednesday" post.

Paul hadn't drawn an issue of Insect Man since the mid-1970s, but he was going to tackle my script. I was excited. Since the very early 1980s, I'd done various commercial writing jobs, and been published, too, but this would be my first comic book script. I'd played around with writing comic stories in the past, but never completed one, never submitted one, and (obviously) never published one.

I mentioned "research[ing] the hell out of Insect Man" above. Luckily for me, Paul had saved every single issue of every single title produced by his "Blue Lock" comic company, starting in 1965. I sat down at a table in Paul's store -- I'm pretty sure he wouldn't take the chance of having me bring these one-of-a-kind items home to read them, nor did I blame him! -- and read them all, taking copious notes as I did so!

I wrote down first appearances of various characters, listed various plot points, and began thinking of how I was going to carry on this twenty year legacy. As far as I was concerned, most of the stories Paul had written had "really" happened, and could potentially be referred to in my upcoming storylines. Some were predictably outlandish, having been written by a young adolescent, and I decided that I could alter or otherwise explain them sufficiently to satisfy an audience of teenagers and adults. Only rarely did I decide a story was apocryphal, like, for instance, the story where Insect Man defeated a giant monster who was terrorizing the city by dropping an atomic bomb on him. Yep, right in the middle of "Cirrus City," Insect Man's stomping grounds during the '60s and '70s. (In my own Insect Man stories, I always assumed that IM had made the move from Cirrus City to Worcester during his years of inactivity.)

My celebrated memory failed me this time. I wanted to use a panel I remembered from the mid-1960s that referred to dropping an atomic bomb on a super-villain  in the middle of a city, but after days of wracking my brain for the title and issue number in question, I came up with nothing! I knew it was a Marvel comic, and I was pretty darned sure it was a Stan Lee quote, but I had to call upon the Silver Age knowledge of Shar, author of the Panelocity blog which I've touted before. Thanks, Shar!

From Amazing Spider-Man #43, script by Stan Lee, art by John Romita, Sr.

I already had a handful of recent stories from others, picking up where the 1970s stories left off. For years, Insect Man had fought a worldwide terrorist organization called SKULL, lead by a villain called The Mummy. And yes, this nutcase actually dressed as a mummy, presumably at all hours of the day and night. In answer to SKULL, the U.S. government had created a huge organization called -- what else? -- Counter-SKULL.

It was the realization that SKULL still existed in 1985 that led the "gub'mint" to reactivate Counter-SKULL. Counter-SKULL convinced Insect Man to come out of retirement. Little had been done about using old members of Insect Man's supporting cast, so my options were pretty much open. I did inherit a plotline which had Insect Man feeling pain whenever he changed from human to insect, or vice versa. I began working on why this would happen, and how I could "fix" it.

My first order of business was to bring back Insect Man's kid sidekick from the 1960s. (One of the primary reasons kid sidekicks -- like Robin, Bucky, and scores of others -- were created in the first place was so the main hero wouldn't have to be talking to himself all the time. I wanted Insect Man's former partner back in action for the same reason.) His name was Greg Nile, who operated in the superheroic guise of Kid Secret. Back then he was an adolescent. After a handful of years, he had quit the costumed hero game to devote more time to high school Insect Man hadn't seen him for fifteen years... and don't forget, in the "Insect Man Universe," characters actually aged. That meant that now, Greg Nile was around thirty years old.

I plotted and began scripting the story. I planned a cover blurb using a handful of cliched, overused comic book descriptions, like "senses-shattering," "pulse-pounding," "awe-inspiring," and "gut-wrenching," but had the words partially obscured by Insect Man himself. He was covering almost all of the name "Kid Secret," too. I'm funny like that. And just for the hell of it, I chose a line from the Marcie Blane song "Bobby's Girl" as my title.

I proudly gave the script, entitled "You're Not a Kid Anymore," to Paul.

I don't recall exactly when Paul told me that he wouldn't be drawing my script, after all. He'd decided that his artwork wasn't good enough. Instead, he'd given my story to another customer at That's Entertainment, some guy I'd never met before named Ken Carson.

I didn't see Ken's artwork until the book was already printed. That meant that I'd be "stuck" with the result.

I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw this:

That cover was a very good omen, I thought, and as it turned out, I was right!

More next week.

Thanks for your time.

Insect Man, Insect Man's Weird Tales, and all related characters and titles are copyright © Paul B. Howley.

Insect Asides, Part One ~~ A "Comical Wednesday" Post

Chandler Street was the location of Worcester's That's Entertainment until 1992.

My initial attempts at writing scripts for comic books were unpaid efforts, and this was before the internet. Nowadays, it seems like almost everyone is expected to do creative work for free.

But I digress.

In 1985, I was working for That's Entertainment, self-described as "New England's Pop Culture Emporium." Many people would probably describe T.E. as "a comic shop," and leave it at that, but in truth, it is so much more.

The owner of That's Entertainment was (and is) Paul Howley, who'd been selling old comic books since the early 1970s. (Paul has been telling his very interesting life story on a blog called My Life With Comic Books: A History of a Comic Store since 2009.) He opened T.E. in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1980.

It wasn't long before I discovered That's Entertainment (while on my way to Worcester's only other comic shop, as it happens), when I spotted a sign saying "We Buy Comic Books, Records, and Baseball Cards" or words to that effect. That's Entertainment was then selling mainly new and old comic books, LPs and 45s, sports and non-sports trading cards, and role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons. I wasn't at all interested in role-playing games or sports cards, but I was a big fan of both comics and music, so this new store was perfect for me. I journeyed for half an hour (each way) to and from Worcester roughly once a week to buy the new comic titles and "fill holes" in my back issue collection.

Eventually, I started working part-time for Paul. T.E. had a full-time employee named Steve, who eventually left to open a store of his own. At that point, I became a full-time employee, which placed me in charge whenever Paul himself wasn't there.

One of T.E.'s little projects at the time was a "fanzine" (an amateur comic book) called Insect Man's Weird Tales. It was an eight-page, photocopied, 5" x 8" comic book printed in black & white.

The IMWT title had actually begun (under the simpler title of Insect Man) back in 1965. Insect Man (real name Rex Mason) wore a ring that enabled him to change to whatever insect he chose. Actually, he could also change to arachnids (such as spiders), as well as other "lower life forms."

Paul created the character when he was about ten years old, and "became" the character when he and his friends played superhero. Paul also drew each issue (as well as several spin-off titles!) of an Insect Man comic book (on what we then called "math paper") for several years, until finally abandoning it in the mid-1970s.

Yep, this is the cover to Paul Howley's Insect Man #1, from 1965! The
"Blue Lock" credited as publisher was young Paul's variation of the Gold Key
comic company of that era. And that chin has kind of a Jay Leno look, dunnit?

Insect Man's Weird Tales had resumed "publication" before I began working for Paul, and its numbering began at #82, since Paul's last issue had been #81. But at first, there was no "Insect Man" in sight in the revived title. Instead there was a trilogy of stories featuring a super-team called The Defensors, followed by a three-parter featuring a character named Psyclone.

With issue #88, however, writer/artist Larry Young decided to bring Insect Man back to his old stomping grounds. Young designed a rather impressive new costume for the revived superhero. The story established that Insect Man had been retired for ten or eleven years, and I believe it was Paul Howley's idea to age Insect Man in "real time," meaning that Rex Mason was now about forty years old.

Check out the upper left-hand corner of this issue. I have no idea what the expression "White Knight" refers to.
I can only assume it was a Larry Young "thing." And please note that the price tag, issue number, and date
are contained in an "H" (for Howley), spoofing the "M" that Marvel Comics was using during that period.

You may notice that Insect Man's outfit resembles Green Lantern Guy Gardner's costume (shown below). Well, Insect Man's came first!

Larry only did one issue before other writers and artists, such as Chris Coleman, Dan Courtney, Holly Basiner, and others worked on the book. Their efforts brought Insect Man's Weird Tales up to issue #94.

I don't recall the exact conversation Paul and I had which established that I would write #95, and Paul himself would draw it, but that's exactly what happened.

Well... almost.

See you next week, fellow babies, and thanks for your time.

Insect Man, Insect Man's Weird Tales, and all related characters and titles are copyright © Paul B. Howley.

Garfield(s)

As I said in a recent post, "I've always had a particular affinity for [Abraham] Lincoln, perhaps linked to the fact that the last successful assassination attempt on a US president -- John F. Kennedy -- occurred during my own youth." This "affinity" extends to the other three assassinated US presidents -- Kennedy, McKinley, and Garfield -- as well as Lincoln. Kennedy, of course, because he was shot when I was an impressionable seven-year-old; Garfield, primarily because of a great Robert Klein routine which I heard when I was in high school; McKinley... not so much.

But it's President James Abram Garfield whom I wish to discuss today.

I actually own one of these memorial plates, issued shortly after

Garfield's tragic death in 1881 and valued between $75 and $85 today!

I believe the first time I made the connection between the slain president and the comic strip Garfield (the famous cat) was in 1986, when a two-issue comic book mini-series called The Phony Pages was released. It was a collection of reprints (from Alan Light's Buyer's Guide for Comics Fandom) by artist Terry Beatty which parodied many famous comic strips and comic books. The first issue contained this little gem:

Since then, others have latched onto this idea as well, notably a website called Garfield As Garfield, which replaces the feline Garfield with images of the president. All of the strips published on the site since its beginning in July of last year have been similar to this:

However, it seems like no one has acted on my idea... and by "my idea," I must confess that after more than twenty years, I honestly don't recall whether said idea was actually mine, or that of my then-employer Paul Howley, owner of the "pop culture emporium" known as That's Entertainment as well as the author of his own blog, My Life With Comics.

Artist's conception of Paul Howley... well, sorta!

My idea -- or Paul's! -- was to manufacture stuffed toys in the image of President Garfield, complete with suction cups on their hands and feet so you could stick them to your car window.

And for that "special touch," I'd even include a bullet hole in their backs.

Sure, it's sick... but it's well after midnight, and I'm so loopy-tired that even my own cat won't talk to me!

(And Paul? If you want to go ahead and manufacture these things, can I at least get a royalty?)

Thanks for your time.

Something Appealing, Nothing Ap-PAUL-ing...

As I have mentioned constantly on this blog -- so constantly that it's become a running joke -- I used to work at a comic shop and "pop culture emporium" called That's Entertainment in Worcester, Massachusetts. Simply put, the three years I spent there (1985-1988) as a full-time employee and de facto albeit untitled assistant manager provided my first opportunities for amateur and professional comic book publication, and more importantly, acquainted me with a few people who -- in varying degrees -- remain friends to this day.

One of those friends is Paul Howley, the owner of That's Entertainment.

Paul has been serializing his life story on a few internet locations, but unfortunately, these locations have dwindled over time. Therefore, Paul has started his own blog, My Life With Comic Books, which is re-telling his story from the beginning.

Don't let the title "fool" you, however. It is indeed a history of Paul's involvement with comic book collecting and selling, and is crammed with fascinating information about the growth of comic books as a real collectibles business, but as you read each successive chapter, you happily realize that you've been "tricked" into reading an intriguing story about a man and his family, and their friends, etc. That's why I highly recommend it, as I said above, but not only to comic book fans. The blog should provide interesting -- sometimes captivating -- reading for anyone interested in the so-called "human experience."

That may sound like I'm over-stating it, but I have the advantage of having seen over 150 chapters so far. For most of you, the ride is just beginning.

(By the way, in order to read it from the very beginning instead of whatever chapter Paul has most recently posted, you may want to click here instead. This will bring you to Part One.)

Paul Howley... kinda

Thanks for your time.