POP-A-LOOZA: Spider-Man, Spider-Man (My MARVEL COMICS Try-Out)

Every week, the pop culture website Pop-A-Looza shares a post from my vast 'n' captivating Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do) archives. This week's shared post is about my failed Marvel Comics try-out, that time in 1983 when I bought The Official Marvel Comics Try-Out Book and tried to write The Amazing Spider-Man.



I was in my teens in the 1970s when I decided that I wanted to be a writer. My first attempts to realize that dream manifested in a series of unsuccessful submissions to DC Comics in the '70s and '80s. Unable to sell any of my (Godawful) made-up stuff, I started making small inroads in nonfiction, beginning in 1984 with Amazing Heroes, a professional magazine about comic books. Those who can't do, pontificate. In 1986, I began a twenty-year freelance association with the record collectors' tabloid Goldmine, a story told in my reminiscence The Road To Goldmine.

For all that, I still wanted to write some fiction...some day! For this blog, I wrote a Batman prose short called "The Undersea World Of Mr. Freeze," the first few script pages of a Green Hornet '66 rock 'n' roll story called The Beat And The Sting, and the first five chapters of a rock 'n' roll superhero time travel novel called Eternity Man!  I think my writing improved over the years, even if I didn't have any editorial validation to show for it.

My AHOY character The Copperhead, depicted by Shane White

I finally made my first professional fiction sales in 2019, selling four short stories to the good folks at AHOY Comics. AHOY bought and paid for "Guitars Vs. Rayguns" and "The Picture Of Amontillado," though neither has seen print yet. AHOY passed on a few others, including the sword-and-sorcery tale "Sword Of The Chosen One" and the music-industry thriller "Home Of The Hits," but did buy--AND PUBLISH!--my Western "The Last Ride Of The Copperhead Kid" and my '30s pulp hero adventure "The Copperhead Strikes!" The Coronavirus brought the publishing industry to a plodding pause, so I'm still waiting word from AHOY regarding the fate of my 1965-set secret agent story "The Copperhead Affair." 

I confess that I haven't had time to work on any fiction these last few months, but I'm not done makin' stuff up just yet. For now, I invite you to read about my pathetic but intrepid effort to break into Marvel Comics when I was 23: my attempt to write Spider-Man, this week's Boppin' Pop-A-Looza.



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This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, and on the web at http://sparksyracuse.org/ You can read about our history here.

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