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Steranko at the stroke of midnight6/3/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() Her writing on comics and pop culture has been published in Public Books, Bitch Planet, Pretty Deadly, American Book Review, as well as many scholarly collections on comics and comics history. from The Ohio State University, where she was a Presidential Fellow and served as the Assistant Editor of Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society. § And speaking of TCJ.Com, I missed that they’ve added Dr, Rachel Miller as co-managing editor. The halfhearted benefit comic Marvel did as a gesture to him just deflected responsibility to the fans. Gene at the end of his life was afflicted with glaucoma and cancer with no health insurance. All ended up suffering greatly from the lack of job assurance, benefits and recompense. But Gene, Dick Ayers, Herb Trimpe and more didn’t see themselves as having other options, and so they stuck with it for many years as work for hire freelancers at Marvel. Kirby, Ditko and Wallace Wood likewise eventually all left in disgust. Steranko could leave, because he always had other options. “It was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Jim told me. Steranko had threatened that he would leave if this was done, and did. His actions were only about establishing who is boss. ![]() Nothing that Lee did needed doing, especially not at the risk of losing a major talent and I doubt that his alterations contributed to the Alley Award the story won. He messed with captions, added silly lines of dialogue and retitled it “At the Stroke of Midnight”–and he rejected the unique cover Steranko designed, opting instead for competent but derivative John Romita art. § Speaking of Stan Lee, James Romberger delivered a forceful takedown of the Abraham Riesman biography and Stan at The Comics Journal: “…Into Some Loathsome Pit!”īut Steranko also told me that he left Marvel at the apex of his tenure precisely because after he asked Lee not to alter his exactingly orchestrated short horror masterpiece, “The Lurking Fear at Shadow House,” Lee changed it anyway–hard. And this time I was struck by a third thing: 3) everyone is wearing a turtleneck. Looking at these photos from mostly the ’60s and ’70s, I’m struck by the same two things as always: 1) how skinny everyone was before fast food, better food distribution and HFCS 2) how much everyone is smoking. There are lots of photos of Stan Lee, because, let’s face it, he was photogenic and much photographed, but I like this one of Jack Kirby from a Toys for Tots campaign in 1969. § Nice Photos: Marvel editor Tom Brevoort is running selections from his collection of photos of cartoonists on his website, many are often seen, but some were new to me. ![]()
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