POP-A-LOOZA: The Comic Book Telephone Pitches, Part 1

Each week, the pop culture website Pop-A-Looza shares some posts from my vast 'n' captivating Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do) archives. The latest shared post is the first of two reminiscences about the times I dialed up comic book companies and tried to get work, "The Comic Book Telephone Pitches, Part 1."

Although I've sold prose fiction to the good folks at AHOY Comics, I never did get around to writing comics professionally. Some of my abortive attempts to do so have been examined on this blog: DC Comics, Marvel Comics, The Green Hornet (a teaser blurb and some initial script pages), and my own character Jack Mystery. Getting back to prose, I wrote a Batman short story, the start of a Wonder Woman short story, a DC Comics Crisis fantasy called "The Loveable Lunkhead Returns," and the first five chapters of an original novel, Eternity Man! And, of course, there are the connected short stories I've sold to AHOY: "The Last Ride Of The Copperhead Kid," "The Copperhead Strikes!," and "The Copperhead Affair," plus the recently-published "Chaos At The Copperhead Club," discussed here but not yet available to share on the blog. For humor, there's also my foul-mouthed sci-fi rock 'n' roll farce "Guitars Vs. Rayguns," and a bunch of unsold stories: "Home Of The Hits," "Pop Friction," "Sword Of The Chosen One," "Montie Pylon Finds His Holy Grail," "The Greatest Thud Never Heard," and "Dreaming Deadly."

"Chaos At The Copperhead Club," illustration by Ed Catto

For now, we turn the clock back a few decades to the first of a couple of stories about me calling comic book people and saying, "HIRE ME!" "The Comic Book Telephone Pitches, Part 1" is the latest Boppin' Pop-A-Looza.

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You can support this blog by becoming a patron on Patreon: Fund me, baby! 

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.

The many fine This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio compilation albums are still available, each full of that rockin' pop sound you crave. A portion of all sales benefit our perpetually cash-strapped community radio project:

Volume 1: download
Volume 2: CD or download
Volume 3: download
Volume 4: CD or download
Waterloo Sunset--Benefit For This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio:  CD or download

I'm on Twitter @CafarelliCarl.

POP-A-LOOZA: Captain Marvel Adventures?

With one magic word--SHAZAM!--young Billy Batson is transformed into the World's Mightiest Mortal: CAPTAIN MARVEL!

Each week, the pop culture website Pop-A-Looza shares some posts from my vast 'n' captivating Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do) archives. The latest shared post is a wish for what I'd like to see in comic book (and other) stories starring the original Captain Marvel: "Captain Marvel Adventures?"

As a comic book fan and a would-be writer, I've often imagined how I might like to see new heroic adventures play out. Some of the notions involved existing characters like Captain Marvel, Batman, Spider-Man, The Green Hornet, The Justice Society of America, and others featured my own creations. Here are a few notions (and one complete Batman story) that made their way to my blog:

Aquaman and Batman by DC Comics great Jim Aparo

BATMAN AND AQUAMAN: The Undersea World Of Mr. Freeze [complete]

BATMAN AND WONDER WOMAN: Paradise Does Not Believe In Tears [introductory scene only, without the heroes]

BATMAN MEETS THE MONKEES

SPIDER-MAN: Marvel Comics Try-Out

THE JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA: The Movie

THE GREEN HORNET '66: The Beat And The Sting teaser and introductory pages

THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD: A 12-issue series of Batman team-ups [teaser and blueprint]

MY FAILED ATTEMPTS TO WRITE FOR DC COMICS

THE TELEPHONE PITCHES: Harvey Comics and The Mighty Crusaders, and The Monkees

And my own people:

The JACK MYSTERY Story

ETERNITY MAN! chapters 1 through 5

The Last Ride Of The Copperhead Kid

The Copperhead Strikes!

My pulp hero The Copperhead, depicted by artist Shane White

(There's also my secret agent story "The Copperhead Affair," discussed here when it hit comic book stores in 2020. The introductory paragraphs of a follow-up story "Chaos At The Copperhead Club" were posted here.)

And what the hell, some attempts to write and draw:

THE SNOWMAN

AGENT 690: Man Of ACTION!

HERO

ADVENTURE!! And my idea of the Captain Marvel adventures I'd like to see provides the subject for the latest Boppin' Pop-A-Looza.

CAPTAIN MARVEL SAVES THE DAY! Art by Alex Ross

TIP THE BLOGGER: CC's Tip Jar!

You can support this blog by becoming a patron on Patreon: Fund me, baby! 

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.

The many fine This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio compilation albums are still available, each full of that rockin' pop sound you crave. A portion of all sales benefit our perpetually cash-strapped community radio project:

Volume 1: download
Volume 2: CD or download
Volume 3: download
Volume 4: CD or download
Waterloo Sunset--Benefit For This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio:  CD or download

Carl's writin' a book! The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1)will contain 165 essays about 165 tracks, each one of 'em THE greatest record ever made. An infinite number of records can each be the greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. Updated initial information can be seen here: THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE! (Volume 1). My weekly Greatest Record Ever Made! video rants can be seen in my GREM! YouTube playlist. And I'm on Twitter @CafarelliCarl

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.



TIP THE BLOGGER: CC's Tip Jar!

You can support this blog by becoming a patron on Patreon: Fund me, baby! 

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.

The many fine This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio compilation albums are still available, each full of that rockin' pop sound you crave. A portion of all sales benefit our perpetually cash-strapped community radio project:

Volume 1: download

Volume 2: CD or download

Volume 3: download

Volume 4: CD or download

Waterloo Sunset--Benefit For This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio:  CD or download

Carl's writin' a book! The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) will contain 134 essays about 134 tracks, each one of 'em THE greatest record ever made. An infinite number of records can each be the greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. Updated initial information can be seen here: THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE! (Volume 1).

100-Page FAKES! presents: Giant-Size Spider-Man # 3 [with DOC SAVAGE]

100-Page FAKES! imagines mid-1970s DC 100-Page Super Spectaculars that never were...but should have been!



Continuing Marvel Comics week on the blog, in memory of Stan Lee. Doc Savage was the first pulp hero I ever read. My discovery of The Man Of Bronze commenced when I found a paperback of Doc's second adventure The Land Of Terror while (trying to) help my Dad work at the ballpark in Syracuse. When Marvel secured the license to produce a Doc Savage comic book in 1972, I was well and truly stoked for it. The series ran eight issues, then transitioned to a black and white Marvel magazine in 1975, prepping for the inevitable Savagemania expected to follow that year's major motion picture Doc Savage, Man Of Bronze starring Ron Ely. The film's box office fizzle didn't prevent the magazine from lasting until 1977.

In between the cancellation of Doc's color comics and the debut of his black and white magazine, Marvel kept its Doc Savage license active with this co-starring appearance in 1975's Giant-Size Spider-Man # 3. When you consider the fact that Doc Savage was one of the most pervasive influences on the creation of Superman in the '30s, you might consider writer Gerry Conway and penciller Ross Andru's efforts here a dry run for a very high-profile project they would produce in 1976: the DC-Marvel crossover book Superman Vs. The Amazing Spider-Man.

Giant-Size Spider-Man # 3 also included a reprint of a classic tale by Spidey's co-creators Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, pitting the wall-crawler against The Man Without Fear Daredevil. Since it was already a Giant, it didn't take much more to turn this into another 100-Page FAKE! That mission was accomplished with just the addition of a 1940s Doc Savage story (presuming for our purposes that Marvel's Doc Savage license would have given them access to Doc Savage comics originally published by Street & Smith) and a Stan Lee Spider-Man story from a 1968 issue of Marvel Super-Heroes, also pencilled by Andru.

Spider-Man and Doc Savage in "The Yesterday Connection," Giant-Size Spider-Man # 3 (January 1975)
Doc Savage in "Live, Evil...Veil," Shadow Comics Vol. 6 # 1 (April 1946)
Spider-Man in "The Reprehensible Riddle Of...The Sorcerer!," Marvel Super-Heroes # 14 (May 1968)
Spider-Man and Daredevil in "Duel With Daredevil!," Amazing Spider-Man # 16 (September 1964)

Doc Savage and his friends are copyright Advance Magazine Publishers Inc./The Condé Nast Publications, and Marvel owns everything else. We can only show representative sample pages here; I share the whole thing with my patrons. It's time for the pulp hero once billed as a superman to meet your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.

TIP THE BLOGGER: CC's Tip Jar!

You can support this blog by becoming a patron on Patreon: Fund me, baby! 

Our new compilation CD This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 4 is now available from Kool Kat Musik! 29 tracks of irresistible rockin' pop, starring Pop Co-Op, Ray Paul, Circe Link & Christian Nesmith, Vegas With Randolph Featuring Lannie Flowers, The Slapbacks, P. Hux, Irene Peña, Michael Oliver & the Sacred Band Featuring Dave Merritt, The Rubinoos, Stepford Knives, The Grip Weeds, Popdudes, Ronnie Dark, The Flashcubes,Chris von Sneidern, The Bottle Kids, 1.4.5., The Smithereens, Paul Collins' Beat, The Hit Squad, The Rulers, The Legal Matters, Maura & the Bright Lights, Lisa Mychols, and Mr. Encrypto & the Cyphers. You gotta have it, so order it here. A digital download version (minus The Smithereens' track) is also available from Futureman Records.








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