Wednesday, December 13, 2017

Stan Lee Told You To Get this

Tuesday Comic Strip Day.

This week Roy Thomas published Alter Ego #150, a tribute to Stan Lee at his 95th birthday later this month. As the cover piece he used my 32 page article about Stan Lee's efforts to get out of comics between 1956 and 1962. Using the correspondence with his agent Toni Mendez, I managed to track down all of his projects in that period - from the slightly unknown (like his newspaper strips Mrs. Lyons' Cubs and Willie Lumpkin) to the almost unknow (like his selfpublished books Blushing Blurbs and Golfer's Anonymous to some that were downtight unknown (like his two efforts with Vince Colletta and a third selfpublished book from 1962. Every project has some new facts and often some new and rarely seen illustrations. But since roy had to cram everything into an already crowded issue, he could only show bits and pieces of everything. Like these three samples of Barney's Beat, a precursor to Willie Lumpkin he did with Dan DeCarlo. I knew Bill Morisson had already shown two of these gags in his book on Dan DeCarlo (still available on Ebay) so I asked him if he had any more and he send me these three, complete with commentary by DeCarlo on the third one. This is the first time they are shown to the world. Come back in the next few days to see more of the unused goodies. The issue of Alter Ego can be bought on the website of publisher Twomorrows. They also do digital single issues and subscriptions, so there is no excuse not to get it.

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