Part 40-49

Part Forty

By the mid 1980’s my comic book and collectable store in Worcester, Massachusetts had developed a large and loyal customer base. It was primarily male, mostly between the ages of eight and thirty. We had lots of teenagers. We did have some customers who were as old as sixty-five to seventy, but there weren’t too many. Our store was located in a “tough” section of the city so most women were afraid to come to shop there. Mothers with young children would also be concerned for the safety of the kids. It always bothered me that I was unable to attract fifty percent of the area population (the females) because of the store location but I thought I couldn’t afford the higher rent in a safer neighborhood. I wanted my store to be a place for whole families to shop in. We attempted to keep the atmosphere in my store as pleasant and “family-friendly” as possible.

In the theme song from the TV show “Cheers” it says that everyone needs a place where someone knows their name. I wanted my store to be that kind of place. I wanted my customers to know that I cared about them as people, not just as customers.

I enjoyed almost all of my customers for a variety of reasons. I certainly appreciated the money that they spent! I knew that they had other places to spend their hobby money and I was honored that they would choose my store. I also enjoyed getting to know my customers on a personal level. There were a lot of interesting “characters”. Many of them were “gamers”. Gamers are people who usually play role-playing adventure games or war games. Most of them are nice, normal folks, but there are some who are unusual. One such customer was Conrad. (I’ve changed his name so he won’t be too embarrassed)

Conrad collected comic books and he was a very vocal fan. He had strong opinions about every comic book he would read and he even had opinions about the comic books he didn’t read! We would spend hours discussing comic books. (I always encouraged my customers to discuss comics and collectables with me. The only stipulation was that they had to let me continue to work at the same time. Most of my customers understood.) Conrad also had an annoying habit of paying for every purchase with two-dollar bills. He did it because he knew that it drove retailers crazy because there is no place to put a two-dollar bill in a standard cash register drawer. He loved to be irritating and odd and he really loved to be contrary. But for some reason I enjoyed his wackiness. One day Conrad was more agitated than usual and he asked if he could talk to me in private. I brought him into the backroom of the store. He quietly asked if I could somehow find him a gun. I laughed at him. He suddenly looked very serious so I knew that something was wrong. He was actually trembling as he explained that one of the guys that he plays Dungeons and Dragons with had just “killed” his favorite character. Conrad had been role-playing as this character for many years and he had developed him over time into a powerful character. Now this favorite character could no longer be part of the game and Conrad was angry. Conrad now wanted to get revenge on his fellow gamer by actually buying a gun and killing his friend! I tried explaining to him that this was only a game and not real life, but he wasn’t accepting this information. I finally had to grab him by his shirt and shake him to “snap” him out this delusion. We talked for about an hour until he realized that he needed to get professional help from a doctor. A few weeks later he thanked me for bringing him back to reality and preventing him from making the biggest mistake of his life.

On “Cheers” there was a regular customer named Norm. As he entered the bar each day, the other regulars would greet him by cheering out his name, “Norm!” He was known and loved by the other regular customers. In my store we had our own “Norm”. He was actually Darryl Hunt.

Darryl was a young man in his early twenties. He collected comic books and was a serious gamer. Darryl knew a lot about all of the major sports and he was quite knowledgeable about popular music. He had strong opinions about almost everything, but he was usually right. Darryl also had a great, sarcastic sense of humor that usually cracked me up. He was also one of the kinds of guys who would be willing to help out whenever he was needed. He came into my store almost every weekday from two-thirty until near closing, just to hang-out with us. Over the years he has become a true friend.

Next Chapter: The “Talking Toilet Guy”.

Part Forty One

My store was located across the street from City Hospital and the Worcester Area Mental Health Center. We would often get people wandering into the store from the Mental Health Center after they had their doctor appointment. We realized that many of these people had serious problems so we tried very hard to be kind and patient to them. One such man came to be known to us as “The Talking Toilet Guy”. He would come into the store twice each week and politely ask us if we had any half-dollar coins. We didn’t get them in normal change but we knew that he’d like it if we had some for him. We made a special effort to get some for him each week when we went to the bank. He’d come in and ask, and we’d exchange his dollar bill for two half-dollar coins. He would get quite excited, he’d giggle, he’d thank us and he’d leave. It seemed like a simple way to give this guy a little happiness in his life. Unfortunately, this only encouraged him to stop in more often. He began visiting the store four days each week. He continued asking for the half-dollars coins but now he added a new request. He would say (with slurred speech), “ Sir, do you have the 1974 Good Housekeeping magazine with the Talking Toilet on the back cover, sir?” We tried to explain to him that we didn’t have any Good Housekeeping magazines in stock but we’d watch for one for him. As the weeks went by he got more and more frantic in his desire for this magazine. He would ask us multiple times on each visit. After a few months of this it became annoying to all of us.

We all thought it would be harmless fun to play a joke on my competition in town. We told “The Talking Toilet Guy” that we had just opened a new store across town. We gave him directions to my competitor’s store. We explained that the Good Housekeeping magazines were in the very back of the store and we told him that the “manager” of this new store would probably claim that he didn’t have any of these magazines in stock. We encouraged him to insist that he wanted to see these magazines. We all had visions of my grumpy competitor trying to convince the Talking Toilet Guy that he really didn’t have the 1974 Good Housekeeping magazine with the talking toilet on the back cover. We thought it was really funny. A few days later, the Talking Toilet Guy came into my store and explained that our “new store” manager was very rude and he wouldn’t let him see the Good Housekeeping magazines. We thought about sending him back again but we didn’t want to upset him again.

He continued coming into my store four or five days a week asking the same question for a couple more months until we couldn’t take it anymore. One day when he came in, I said, “We just got in a collection of Good Housekeeping magazines. Let me see if the issue with the talking toilet is in it.” I bent down in front of him and pretended I was looking through a box of magazines. Keep in mind that there was NOTHING in front of me! He watched intently as I pretended to flip through these non-existent magazines. I finally said, “Sorry, but there are no magazines here from 1974.” The Talking Toilet Guy looked disappointed and asked if he could look through them! He wanted to look through a box of magazines that didn’t exist! I finally had to tell him to leave the store and I asked him not to come back. We never saw him again.

Next chapter: The “Smelly Lady” and the “Candy Man Guy”.

Part Forty Two

Running a comic book and collectable store can be a lot of fun. Most of the customers are nice people and they’re usually in a good mood because they are treating themselves to something special. Thankfully, almost all of my customers are quite pleasant. But occasionally we run into shoppers that just irritate us. This chapter is about two such people.

There was a woman in her twenties who would come into my store about once each week to look around. She never bought anything. She just wandered around touching as much merchandise as she could. She did this for about a year. Normally I wouldn’t mind because we encourage browsing, but this woman had a serious problem. She smelled disgusting! She smelled so bad that my regular customers would actually gag and choke when she came into the store. Many customers couldn’t stand her smell, so they’d quickly leave the store. I had a stronger tolerance but it was still a horrible smell. When she would finally leave I’d have to spray an air-freshener to try to cover up her lingering odor. On one of her visits, when she smelled exceptionally bad, I tried to explain to her that she was upsetting many of my customers and that I didn’t want her to come back into my store unless she got cleaned up. She seemed confused by my request and she refused to leave. I asked her to leave again, but she wouldn’t move. I reached behind my counter and pointed the air-freshener in her direction and gave it a short spray. She jumped back but still refused to leave. I sprayed the air-freshener again and she backed up a little more. As I walked towards her and sprayed she got closer to the door. All of the time I was spraying she remained confused and silent. Finally, with one slightly larger spray, she backed out of the store and she never returned.

There was a young man in his twenties who we believe worked at the local hospital. He would come into my store every weekday at about 4:30 PM and he would stay until about 5:45 PM. We assumed he was just passing the time until someone come to pick him up to bring him home. He would start browsing through our huge stock of record albums beginning with the first box. He would pick out a record and ask us if we would play it for him. We had a policy that we would play any selection that our customers wanted to hear. Every day at 5:45 PM he would suddenly stop looking through the records and he’d leave without saying anything. He never bought anything from us. Ever. The worst thing about this guy is that he had the worst musical taste I’ve ever heard. I know that musical taste is a personal thing but he’d pick out records that just drove us all crazy. One day he handed me a copy of a horrible record compilation by K-Tel Records that started off with Olivia Newton John singing “Have You Ever Been Mellow”. My patience was wearing thin. The next song was Sammy Davis Jr. singing “The Candy Man”. That was more than I could stand. I grabbed the record off of the turntable. I shrieked and snapped the record into tiny pieces that shot all over the store. The guy looked at me but didn’t say anything. He just calmly walked out of the store and he never came back.

I want to explain that I usually try to be a nice guy, especially to my customers. These people just pushed me over the edge.

Next Chapter: Hey, Hey, They’re The Monkees!

Part Forty Three

As a twelve year old, my favorite rock and roll bands were The Beatles and The Monkees. I know that seems strange since these two bands were very different. The Beatles were very creative and wrote their own music. The Monkees were really only actors pretending to be musicians. But there was something special about The Monkees. Perhaps it was just the television show hyping them each and every week or maybe it was the fantastic songs written by many of the most successful songwriters of the 1960’s including Neil Diamond, Carol King, Neil Sedaka, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart. Whatever it was, they were really my favorite band. I had all of their albums and many of the toys and trading cards made with their pictures on them. I bought lots of the teen magazines that featured articles and photos about The Monkees. I didn’t have a chance to see them in concert because we lived so far from any of the cities that they played in from 1966-1967. The Monkees broke up around 1969 so I figured I’d never get to see my favorite band perform live. That all changed in 1986.

A customer from my comic book store told me that three of the original members of The Monkees were reforming to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the television show. Mike Nesmith didn’t need to tour with them because he was still living off of the huge inheritance from his Mom’s creation of “Liquid Paper” but Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork were going to be at The Hampton Beach Casino club about an hour away from Worcester. So my wife, Mal, and my good friend and fellow Monkee fan, Kevin Simpson, joined me to see the concert. The concert also featured other bands from the sixties including Herman’s Hermits, Gary Puckett and The Union Gap, and The Grass Roots. We had great seats, dead center, about fifteen feet from the stage. When The Monkees began their set of songs it was obvious that they were enjoying this new chance of regaining their stardom. They seemed like they were having a fun time and the audience loved them. I was so thrilled to finally get to see the band that gave me so much pleasure when I was a kid.

When the show was over I was disappointed that we didn’t have tickets for the late show that evening. My friend Kevin also wished we could see them again. We went outside and we saw hundreds of people waiting in line for the next show. It didn’t take long for us to buy some tickets from a “scalper”. We didn’t have good seats but it was certainly worth the extra money to see them again.

Now, I’m sure you’re wondering what this has to do with my life with comic books and the history of my comic book store. You’ll have to trust me for a little while longer…it really is all connected!

Next Chapter: Serious illness strikes!

The Monkees in 1986

Part Forty Four

My wife, Mal, and I are both from very large families and we had been fortunate that most of us were quite healthy. Mal had tumors in her left eye that eventually left her blind in that eye but other than that every one seemed healthy. Mal’s father, Richard, had a major heart attack when he was only forty-eight years old but he had recovered and he seemed to be doing okay. Most of our close friends were young and healthy too. That all changed in the mid-1980’s.

Our close friends, Allan and Debbie Traylor, were told that Debbie had cancer. We were all shocked because Debbie seemed to be in such great physical condition. She took good care of herself. She exercised and ate the “right” foods. The way Allan and I ate you’d have assumed that if someone were going to get sick, it would be one of us. But not Debbie. Debbie went in for surgery to remove the cancer tumor in 1986.

Mal’s mother, Madeline, had to find a new doctor because her regular doctor was retiring. So on a Friday she found a new doctor because she needed to refill her blood pressure medication. This new doctor found that Madeline was retaining fluids and her blood work came back abnormal. He wanted to admit her to the hospital on the following Monday for additional testing. The day before she was to go to the hospital Richard suddenly had another heart attack and was admitted to the intensive care unit of Marlboro Hospital. His condition was serious but he was stable. The next day we brought Madeline in for her tests and it was discovered that she was actually quite ill. She began bleeding from her esophagus. The doctors considered her condition very serious. We were all told that she probably wouldn’t live for more than a week. We were advised to not tell Richard that his wife was in serious condition because the doctors were afraid that it could trigger another heart attack. We all felt bad that Richard wasn’t aware of Madeline’s condition. Eventually the doctors decided to tell him. Richard had more heart attacks. Almost miraculously, Madeline responded to some medication and survived. She was released but she was still very sick.

Richard was finally released from the hospital and he came home to begin the long process of taking care of his wife. He still had to work so it was up to his children to care for Madeline as their schedules allowed. Most of their children were grown up with families of their own and they either lived far away or had the responsibility of full time jobs. Madeline’s two youngest children, Carol and Maddy, were still living at home so they were able to take care of her at night but they both worked full time jobs during the day. Madeline’s oldest son, Dick, lived nearby with his wife Diane. Diane and Mal were “stay at home Moms” so they worked together to take care of Madeline.

Madeline’s condition worsened and in January of 1987 her doctor recommended that she should go into a rehabilitation center to regain her strength. He thought that she’d only be in the nursing home for a couple of weeks. We all looked forward to her coming home. We visited her almost every day during her first two weeks. She was very alert and talkative but she was in a lot of pain. Then we got the phone call. She had slipped into a coma. The doctors didn’t know why. She remained in the coma for almost three weeks until one day, when the whole family was at her bedside, she woke up! Even though she was in pain, she spoke with everyone and told all her children that she loved them. A week later she went back into a coma. She died on February 18, 1987.

For the entire fifteen years I had known my in-laws they had been looking forward to retirement together. They had lived a very simple life. All they wanted was to buy a small home in Maine, buy a new Cadillac, and get a dog. Richard had retired from his union truck-driving job three months before Madeline died. This profoundly affected me. Mal and I decided that we wouldn’t “put-off” enjoying life for some future time that may never come. I began to develop a long-range plan at my comic book store so that I could stop working by the age of forty. I loved working at my store but I knew that I wanted to spend more time with my wife and children if it could be arranged.

Next chapter: Our dear friend Debbie has a relapse.

Part Forty Five

It was beginning to be a tradition that once each year I would plan a major auction at my comic book store. These were extremely popular with my customers but I was desperately out of space in my small store so I needed to find someplace else to hold the auction. I found The Yankee Drummer Inn, a local hotel that had a large function room that was available for about $250.00. I booked it for a Friday night and sent out flyers to everyone on my ever-expanding mailing list and I passed out flyers in the store to every customer who came in for a month before the event. I began selecting individual collectables and runs of back issue comics to be auctioned. I had a few very valuable comics left from the complete Marvel Comics collection that I had acquired earlier in the year including an almost perfect copy of The Incredible Hulk #1 that I decided to offer at auction. I invited my cousin Steven to bring some of his store inventory to sell at the auction. As I would finish auctioning off an item, Steven would start auctioning off one of his lots. This kept the auction moving quickly. My wife, Mal, came to take care of recording the results of each auction and to handle the cash-out procedure. My son, Adam, worked as a “runner” to deliver each item to the high bidder. My daughter Cassandra came but she was only two years old so she was just an observer. To complete the “family affair”, my mother and father came to help.

My mother asked if I would auction a group of collectable stamped first day covers that she had bought at a yard sale. I decided that I’d play a joke on dear ol’ Mom. When she left the room for a moment I quickly explained the joke to the audience of over 200 people. I told them to bid like crazy on the stamp lot and I wouldn’t really make them pay for the lot. When Mom came back into the room I started the auction of the stamps. “Do I have any offers on this lot of first day stamp covers?” The audience played their part perfectly. The opening bid was 25 cents. Another customer bid $1.00. Then it went to $2.00. Then it was $10.00. My Mom was perking up. “Do I have $20.00 anywhere?” There was a hesitation. “Yes, I have $20.00.” Suddenly the audience started bidding faster. Within a minute the bidding was up to $200.00! My Mom was giddy with excitement. Then I stopped the bidding and revealed the joke to poor Mom. The audience thought it was pretty funny but I’m sure Mom didn’t. She was already mentally spending all of her proceeds. We did eventually auction the lot off for around $25.00. She was happy with that but not as happy as she would have been if the lot really went for $200.00.

My auction policy was that it would be a real auction. I hate it when auction companies have minimum bids in their auctions. To me, that’s like saying, “I’m willing to sell this item for $10.00 but if you want to pay me more for it, I’ll take it.” All of my items were sold with no minimum bid! Sometimes this would be scary for me but it always made it more fun for my customers. At this auction I would be offering the gorgeous copy of The Incredible Hulk #1 that was worth about $700.00 at the time. The opening bidder offered one dollar. The bidding slowed down around one hundred dollars and seemed like it would end when it finally reached one hundred and fifty dollars. I was saying, “Going…going…gone” when someone new jumped into the bidding and bid two hundred dollars. Within a couple of moments the comic book sold for six hundred and ten dollars to a man I had never met. He certainly got a great deal on that comic book. It’s no worth over $15,000.00.

By not having the auction at my store location I lost the potential of my customers spending any unused money on other product but because everyone had fun, I still considered it a success.

After the death of Mal’s mother, we had decided to begin to seriously plan for a very early retirement from the day-to-day involvement in the comic book and collectable business. It was my intention to make as much money as possible over the next eight years before I turned forty years old. I needed to somehow increase our store’s business very quickly. My employee, David M. Lynch came up with a great idea one day while we were shooting the breeze. (I’ll tell you about his idea soon.)

In 1986, my sister Sharon and her family decided to move to New Hampshire because her husband Greg had a new job opportunity there. Sharon and Mal were very close so it was difficult to think of Sharon not being nearby anymore. Her kids and our kids loved to play together so we were all sad to see them move over one hundred miles away.

Around that time our good friend Debbie was also told that her cancer was back.

Next chapter: The Man From Uncle returns.

Part Forty Six

In 1986 the comic book industry was in the middle of an explosion of “black and white” comic book publishing. After the immediate success of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, many people wanted to release their own comic book. It seemed as if anyone who could scrape up a couple of thousand dollars was drawing and publishing their own black and white comic book. Some of these were good but most were not.

My employee, David M. Lynch, was a talented writer. He was the “regular” writer of our amateur comic book of “Insect Man”. Insect Man was officially recognized in 1986 as “America’s longest running amateur comic book” with over 100 issues published from 1965-1986. For a brief time we considered publishing Insect Man in a full sized professional comic book but we decided that there were already enough superhero comics in the market. One day, as we were talking about our favorite television shows from the 1960’s we discovered that we both enjoyed the “The Man From Uncle”. We both used to pretend we were secret agents when we were kids. David said, “I wonder why no one is publishing a comic book about The Man From Uncle. That show must still have a lot of fans that would get a kick out of new adventures.” David knew he’d have some fun writing the stories and he had a good friend, Skip Simpson, who could draw the comic books. We agreed on the amount of money that I would pay for him to write each issue. After we discussed the possibilities of storylines and some of the difficulties of publishing a professional comic book I told David that I’d put up the money if he could get the rights to publish a comic book about The Man From Uncle. After a week or so, David had made contact with MGM-Turner, the owner of the Man From Uncle. MGM-Turner was willing to sell us a two-year license to publish the comic book series for an initial up-front payment of five thousand dollars plus eight percent of the cover price of every issue we sold. They would also have complete script approval and final art approval for all of the issues. I agreed to all of their terms.

While David began writing the first two-part story his friend Skip Simpson drew a sample page of art to show me what he could do. Although it was very clean and professional, I decided it was a little too “cartoony” for the Man From Uncle comic book series I had envisioned. David and I were disappointed because Skip was a very reliable artist and we didn’t know of any other competent artists.

When we started asking our customers if they knew any artists we were surprised when a man named Ken Penders offered his services. Ken brought in his portfolio and we were impressed by his layouts and use of perspective. He even was a talented inker and letterer. Most importantly, he was willing to work for the lower than professional rates that we were offering.

Next chapter: My son, Adam, goes to the hospital.

Part Forty Seven

I now “owned” the publishing rights for The Man From Uncle comic book for the next two years and it was my intention to publish as many issues as possible during that time. We decided that it would be smart to make the first issue part of a continued story so that the readers would be likely to buy the second issue of the series. One of my employees, David M. Lynch, was writing the stories for the first two issues as fast as he could and Ken Penders began penciling, inking, and lettering the first issue. He was also drawing the front cover. Skip Simpson, one of David’s friends, offered to color the cover for the first issue.

We wanted to have these comic books sold all over the United States and Canada so we contacted as many of the comic book distributors as we could. We contacted Diamond Comic Distributors, Capital City Distribution, Alternate Realities, Heroes World, and about a half-dozen smaller distributors. All of them expressed interest in helping to sell our new comic book series. We had decided to establish the suggested retail (cover price) at $1.50 per issue. The distributor would buy each issue for sixty cents (sixty percent off of the cover price) and they would sell them to the retailers for seventy-five cents. We were able to have the comics printed and shipped for about thirty-five cents each. This would leave me with a gross profit of about twenty-five cents each. We would use a lot of that money to pay the artist and writer and I’d keep whatever was left. Based on our projections of selling 15,000 copies of each issue this would give me a net profit of about two thousand dollars each issue.

Each distributor needed a three month lead-time before each issue was released so they could publish their ordering catalog with a description of our comic book and allow enough time for the individual retailers to decide how many copies they wanted to order. The distributor would then total all of the retailer orders and submit a purchase order for as many copies as they needed. This project was really meant to be mostly fun for me personally so I had a chance to add certain “personal” touches to the series. For example, I wanted to release the first issue on my birthday in January. We’d need to work fast.

Ken drew the cover of the first issue right away so I could send a copy to all of the distributors. As soon as the cover was done he worked hard to finish the twenty-four pages of interior art. He finished it all within the thirty days that he had promised me. Ken was a man of his word and a nice guy. We sent it to MGM-Turner and they gave us their approval. Ken started on the art for the second issue. Ken was also working on a new comic book idea that he wanted to develop with Stan Timmons, a writer, titled “Shadow Blade”. Ken and Stan wanted me to publish this new comic book series for them. Meanwhile, Skip Simpson finished coloring the front cover of The Man From Uncle #1. This was done in the early days of laser scanning and Skip didn’t really understand the process. We thought it would look okay but we would be very disappointed when we saw the final printed product.

We found a company in New York that promised to print the comics and do all of the shipping for us. One of the managers of the company was a fairly famous comic book artist so the promises seemed credible. As we got closer to the actual release date we began to worry that we chose the wrong company to print the comics. Their terms suddenly changed. They wanted more money in advance of the shipping date. Then they decided that they didn’t want to ship the comics to all of the different distributors. I decided to drive to New York and pick up the comic books myself. I had ordered 16,000 copies of this first issue but when I arrived in New York they had printed 21,000 copies and demanded the money for them. I reluctantly paid them and loaded them in my car. I’d certainly never do business with them again!

My son, Adam, had many episodes of Strep throat when he was growing up. His doctor recommended surgery, so while I was trying to coordinate all of the various writers and artists for our Man From Uncle series, my wife and I decided that we should have Adam’s tonsils and adenoids removed. We knew he’d probably be afraid to be left in the hospital overnight, since he was only seven years old, so Mal and I decided that I should sleep in his hospital room in the chair next to his bed. It was scary for me to see him being wheeled into the operating room even though it was a simple operation but everything turned out fine.

Things were not fine for our friend Debbie. Her cancer had returned and it was in multiple parts of her body. Her son, Peter, was only three years old, and Debbie was determined to beat this disease. She began a program of a new chemotherapy and responded well. The tumors seemed to be under control.

Adam goes to the hospital

Part Forty Eight

In early January of 1987, the first issue of my new comic book series of The Man From Uncle was released to retailers in the United States and Canada. I was hoping to sell 15,000 copies but we sold 12,000. Unfortunately the printer had surprised me by printing 21,000 copies so I was now stuck with an extra 9,000 comic books. I planned to be more careful for future issues.

In the first issue of The Man From Uncle, David M. Lynch wrote a column to explain to our readers what we were trying to do with this new series. He wrote:

“How many of you watched the recent A-Team episode, The Say Uncle Affair, just to see the reunion of Robert Vaughn and David McCallum, remembering perhaps, 1983’s “real” reunion of their characters from the 1960’s, Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin? Okay now, how many of you younger readers don’t know what I’m talking about?

Listed as a “spy spoof” by TV Guide, who usually knew what they were talking about, The Man From Uncle premiered in 1964. Inspired primarily by the popularity of the James Bond films, Uncle was designed as a dramatic series about the exciting, glamorous, and often dangerous life of the secret agent. James Bond creator Ian Fleming was peripherally involved in the series’ beginnings, although ultimately, his only contributions were the names Napoleon Solo and April Dancer. Solo pretty much became the “man” in The Man From Uncle (at least at first) and as for April Dancer, lead character in the eventual spin-off, The Girl From Uncle, well…the less said about her, the better. (and I know I’ll get letters about that!)

Uncle ran four seasons on NBC-TV, dying a slow death after being poisoned in its third season by the “camp” craze (inspired by the success of the Batman TV show). It made many of the manufacturers of licensed Uncle toys, books, models, and other products wealthy, or wealthier, anyway. It made a somewhat obscure Scottish actor named David McCallum become firmly entrenched in the public mind-perhaps too firmly, as McCallum himself has lamented-as Illya. It made it much easier for what seemed like dozens of imitative spy shows, some quite fine in their own right, to make their TV debuts. Shows like “I Spy” and “The Wild Wild West” hit the American airwaves even as we received British imports such as “The Avengers” and “Secret Agent”, and that list is far from exhaustive.

It also made me, as a young boy, very happy. When I was eight years old or so, I thought Illya Kuryakin was really cool! (Nowadays, watching old Uncle episodes, I identify more with womanizer Napoleon Solo, but that’s not important right now.) I wore turtleneck sweaters, like Illya did. I even had my hair cut like his, for cryin’ out loud! I was, I’m sure, the biggest Uncle fan in my hometown. And my mother, in her infinite wisdom, bought me all of the James Bond toys she could find. Even as an eight year old, I wondered about that. I still do.

Anyway, it was this nostalgic element that convinced me (as well as my co-writer, Skip Simpson) to write some stories for Entertainment Publishing’s new Man From Uncle comic book. And I can safely say that Paul Howley, the new book’s publisher, is doing it primarily for the same reason. And as for our approach to the book, we’ve decided to “first season” it all the way. We’ve placed the 1964 show in our editorial time machine and moved it to 1987, bypassing (among other things) the aging process real actors go through, indefinitely postponing the 1983 TV reunion movie “The Fifteen Years Later Affair” and avoiding , in a sense, the unfortunate death of Mr. Waverly, actor Leo G. Carroll.

This project is as important to all of us as it is to you, if not more so, because we really care about the material, and we hope that caring comes through in the finished product. I’ve read some issues from the late 60’s Gold Key Man From Uncle series, when they first came out as well as recently, but even as a child, I felt cheated somehow. These comic characters were different; they weren’t my “friends” from the TV show. I, for one, don’t want you to feel the same way now as I did then, as corny as that sounds, so hopefully, whether you read this issue as an old Uncle fan, a new convert (thanks to syndicated television) or even somebody who is unfamiliar with Solo, Waverly, and that “other guy”, you won’t.”

By the time we released the second issue in early February of 1987 we had already received quite a few letters from fans of the Man From Uncle TV show. Some loved the new comic book series but some people complained that the characters in our comics didn’t look like the actors who played them in the television series. Ken Penders agreed to work harder to make the characters look more like the original actors from the television show. Every letter we received commented on how well written the stories were. But for some reason that I couldn’t remember, David M. Lynch only wrote the first two issues and he later wrote issue #10. I recently contacted David to find out what had happened. What follows is David’s reply.

“Okay, I'll try to just keep this to the bare facts (or how I perceived them), and not try to impress or entertain you with my wonderful writing skills.

As I saw it, the publication of the U.N.C.L.E. series presented a problem for you. Not exactly a moral issue, but close. Paul Howley the eternal kid and funny book fan suddenly butted heads with Paul Howley the businessman. According to everything you'd told me while I was writing the amateur comic book, Insect Man, you really liked my stuff. (You'd even told customers that the story titled "Mummy Dearest," in Insect Man #98, was one of the best six comics you'd read that month.) But U.N.C.L.E. wasn't Insect Man. U.N.C.L.E. was going to be an investment, and there was a lot of money -- licensing, printing, advertising, etc. -- involved.

I think you felt awkward. And my feeling was (and I realize I may be wrong) that you were forced to think along the lines of, "Gee, I like David's Insect Man stories, but I'm just one fan. Maybe my judgment is clouded by the fact that he's a friend & employee, and it's kinda cool that someone else cares about Insect Man. But U.N.C.L.E. is a professional assignment. What if the rest of the world doesn't like his stuff?"

Anyway, by then Ken Penders was the chosen artist, and he'd also submitted Shadow Blade to you. The writer of Shadow Blade, Stan Timmons, had a two-part U.N.C.L.E. script under his belt, and my feeling was that you accepted it primarily because you feared that I might submit a script that wasn't good enough to publish. (Skip's co-authorship doesn't count, except possibly in a negative way, because you'd never seen anything written by him!) Quite honestly, I understood that decision from a purely business standpoint. Skip's attitude wasn't so charitable, but then again, he was still smarting from being told his artwork was too cartoony for a serious superhero or adventure comic. (And from a purely marketing standpoint, you were right, of course. You had learned something about what would and wouldn't sell!) Besides, once you'd seen the first few pages of script, you seemed to relax and trust me (and Skip) a bit more.

However, as Skip and I moved from the plotting stage for #s 1 & 2 (both of which we co-plotted pretty much 50% each) to the scripting stage (which technically, I typed 100% of, meaning the script itself -- along with any 11th hour changes -- was more "mine"), I re-learned something I'd forgotten since high school. The closer I get to a deadline, the closer I get to meeting it. (I used to do term papers the night before they were due... but I'd get a B!) This is a nice way of saying that I generally get things accomplished at the very last minute. This drives publishers and editors nuts, understandably. (I also recall that a couple of weeks or so before the deadline, the computer at That’s Entertainment literally ate the floppy disk, destroying my work up until then. At the time, I felt that you didn't believe me, and that you thought that I was stalling. But it really happened.)

Anyway, you may have been worried that I -- or Skip and I -- would miss future deadlines. Coincidentally, everybody in U.N.C.L.E. fandom seemed to want to be part of the legend, and script or art submissions were coming from all over. I remember that one fan in particular wanted my help in re-writing a treatment, and I finally told her she should do it alone. Skip and I each wanted to do an issue on our own. Kevin Burns had submitted an idea. And there were more...

Again, this was business. And you were smart to build up a backlog of submissions. Also, since the pressure was off of me to churn out U.N.C.L.E. ideas, I felt free to work on other projects with Skip, like what ended up as The Bird.

Guess that's it for now. Hope it meshes with your own memories. I also hope you give me credit for the endless phone calls with Lois Sloane at MGM/Turner. As I recall, I handled all the negotiations UNTIL the time came to talk money. Then you took over!”

I’m glad David could help me fill in those memories because I couldn’t for the life of me remember why he didn’t write ALL of the issues we published.

Issue #3 of our Man From Uncle series was written by Stan Timmons and it was drawn by Ken Penders. This was released in April of 1987. At the same time, my sister-in-law, Madeline got married to Armand Paladino and they went on a cruise for their honeymoon. They were the first young couple I knew that went on a cruise. In the 1970’s my wife, Mal, and I were asked to “house-sit” for the parents of Steve Ruth, one of my boyhood friends. His parents were considered to be quite wealthy and cruising was mostly for the rich in those days. When they returned from their trip they told us about the elegance and exciting adventures of their cruise. I never dreamed that we’d ever be able to afford to go on a cruise but after my young sister-in-law went on one and told us how much fun it was, we called our local AAA Travel Agency to see if we could afford to go. The agent was very courteous and “helpful” and she booked us on a Caribbean cruise. (when we got on the cruise ship we felt pretty silly because we paid full “brochure” price for our trip. That’s really stupid. Discounts are easily available) This was our first real vacation without our kids. My parents offered to take the kid for the week. We were really looking forward to spending a week without Adam and Cassandra.

Next chapter: We miss the kids! (Crazy right?)

Part Forty Nine

In 1987 my wife, Mal, and I went on our first real vacation without our two kids. We were on a seven-day Carnival cruise to the Caribbean and we both thought that we'd have a great time without Adam and Cassandra. We were surprised to find that we couldn't stop thinking about them. We kept thinking about how much fun they'd have in the swimming pool and on the water slide. We knew they would love the great food because they both enjoyed trying different things. We watched young kids playing and actually wished that our children were with us! When we got home we immediately booked a cruise for the whole family to go on and six weeks later we were cruising to San Juan, St. Thomas, and Bahamas. We didn't book this trip through AAA because we were unhappy that they charged us "full brochure price" for our first cruise. We found a travel agent who got us a price for all four of us that was cheaper than the first cruise was for just Mal and I. Our kids loved this vacation. They got involved with the supervised kids program that Carnival offers and each morning they were excited to get together with all of their new "friends." They would play all day and we would all get together as a family for lunch and dinner. When the ship would dock at an island we'd tour old forts and historic sites, swim in the ocean, and go shopping together. Cruising is a great family vacation. For years, even though we all loved to go to Disney World, when we'd ask the kids what they'd like to do for a vacation, they'd chose a cruise. (Usually we'd go to Disney World each year too!)

In the last chapter I told about the beginning of my comic book publishing of The Man From Uncle. What I neglected to mention were the other comic books I published. Two customers from my store approached me with an idea for a three issue "mini-series" titled "Forever Now". Chris Coleman and Dan Courtney had previously written and drawn some issues of our "in-store" amateur comic book of "Insect Man" and I liked their style so I agreed to publish this new series.

David M. Lynch and Skip Simpson had an idea for a comedy super-hero series called "The Bird". I loved David's writing and I knew that Skip was a very talented cartoonist so I agreed to publish this comic book.

My cousin, Steven, introduced me to Mark Marderosian. Mark was a writer and artist who had come up with an idea for a new comic book series that would feature a strong female character named "Delta Tenn". She was a big city policewoman whose adventures were set ten years in the future. Mark was very talented and professional and he offered to present me with a new issue all ready to be printed once every two months. It required almost no work on my part so I agreed to be his publisher.

My agreement with each of these creators was a fifty-fifty split on all profits. I would handle all of the marketing, printing, shipping, and billing. They needed to deliver their work on time and they all did. Especially Mark Marderosian. Mark also helped me with my "main" comic book series, "The Man From Uncle" by doing the mechanical layout of many of our front covers. Beginning with issue number seven of The Man From Uncle we started using photographs from the old television series and Mark hand-colored old black and white photos for us. This was before computers made this an easy task! He was a great guy to work with.

We worked with a lot of writers and artists on our Man From Uncle series and most of them were able to meet their deadlines. We would always ask them to set their own schedule. Some artists could draw an entire issue in thirty days but other artists worked a little slower or were doing this while they worked a "real" full-time job so they would agree to finish their issue within sixty days. I was agreeable to the artist's time schedule because I had several writers and artists working on issues all at the same time so I could wait and publish their work when it was finished. Things were going fine until I hired a good friend of mine to draw issue number five.

Kevin Burns was a customer of my comic book store and he was a lot of fun to be around. We'd spend hours laughing together when he'd stop by the store. He was a serious toy collector and had a love of old classic television shows including The Munsters and Lost In Space. He worked full time at Twentieth Century Fox and he was a very busy man but he assured me that he could draw the entire issue within sixty days. He drew the cover first and I was "blown away" by it! It was (and still is) my favorite cover for the entire series. He perfectly captured the look and style of Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin that we wanted for our series. They looked like the original actors but with a slightly updated sense of style. I now knew that Kevin was capable of turning in our best issue yet. With his repeated assurance of completing the project on time I paid Kevin in advance and eagerly waited for the finished artwork. I sent in the information and a picture of Kevin's gorgeous cover artwork to all of the distributors so they could begin the two-month process of getting the orders from the retailers. When the order came in it was for only 10,000 copies but I knew that when the retailers saw the finished comic book they would be encouraged to order more of our future issues because the quality had improved so much. I also knew that the Man From Uncle fans would love Kevin's work. But for some reason, Kevin was unable to deliver the artwork on time. Months went by. Finally the comic book was so late that the distributors required me to cancel their original orders and resolicit new orders. When the new order came in it was for only 8000 copies. After about five months I received the artwork from Kevin and it was great. I was proud to publish this and I thought it was our best-looking issue to date. It was our lowest selling issue so far but the fans loved it and we got quite a few complimentary letters. I learned a lesson with this experience. I would no longer assume that artists could reasonably predict how long it would take them to complete the project so I'd just wait until it was completely done before I would solicit orders from the retailers.

I decided to go to "Spy-Con", the biggest television and movie spy-related convention in the United States. I flew to Chicago and spent three days mingling with friendly Man From Uncle fans and spent some time promoting our comic book series. I wanted this publishing venture to be successful. I even ran advertisements in the major comic book retailing publication offering hundreds of free copies of our publications to try to stir up interest. I hoped that if the retailers gave these free copies to their customers, a portion of the readers would enjoy the series enough to buy the new issues. This publishing idea was part of my plan to accumulate enough money so that I could retire before I was forty years old. Despite my efforts, sales did not increase enough.

Over the two-year period that I published The Man From Uncle comic book series I worked with several writers and artists. Issues #1-2 were written by David M. Lynch and Skip Simpson and drawn by Ken Penders. Issues #3-4 were written by Stan Timmons and drawn by Ken Penders, Larry Juliano, and Tom Cuda. Issue #5 was written by Glenn A. Magee and drawn by Kevin Burns. Issue #6 was written by Glenn A. Magee and drawn by Ronn Sutton. Issue #7 was written by Stan Timmons and drawn by Paul Daly. Issue #8 was written by Skip Simpson and drawn by David and Dan Day. Issue #9 was written by Paula Smith and drawn by Wayne Reid. Issue #10 was written by David M. Lynch and drawn by Ken Penders, Bruce Meservey, and Edwin Brady. Issue #11 was written by Paula Smith and drawn by David and Dan Day. Every issue was profitable but when it came time to renew our contract with MGM- Turner, they wanted to double the fees so we sadly made the decision to stop publishing the series. It was fun for a while but the profits from the sales of the comic books were now too small and it wasn't "worth" the time, energy, and stress to continue.

Next chapter: Hollywood buys the option to produce a movie based on our comic book series, "Delta Tenn!"