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Pam Auditore

 Will Eisner Hall of Famer Len Wein walks with a beautifully crafted Giger Alien handled cane, wears his cap jauntily, and exudes a joy of life that entrances fans gathered around the DC booth to see him. As Chris Claremont said in 2009, “The history of modern comics would be incredibly different if you took [Wein's] contributions out of the mix. The fact he doesn’t get credit for it half the time is disgraceful. We owe a lot of what we are – certainly on the X-Men – to Len and to Dave [Cockrum] http://www.mania.com/legends-chris-claremont_article_114549.html.

Hoping to break into comics as an artist as a teen, Len wrote stories for his friend Marv Wolfman‘s comic fanzines, with both eventually being hired as free-lance writers for DC.  Len’s first published story was “Eye of the Beholder” for Teen Titans #18 (1968).  Thereafter, he went on to populate the modern mythological mind-scape as co-creator of Wolverine, Swamp Thing, Man-Thing, NightCrawler, Storm, Lucius Fox, etc.  You can listen to Len describe those early “fun, Wild West Days” of DC and Marvel and the Comics Industry in general here: http://www.nerdist.com/2014/03/the-mutant-season-120-len-wein/  A prolific writer, he’s also an accomplished raconteur, on a panel, in person or on a podcast i.e. the Nerdist Comic Writers Podcast–Comics Edition https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/nerdist-writers-panel/id455020248?mt=2.

Len’s most recent Batman story can be found in the March 2014 issue #5 of Batman: Black and White. Outside of DC and Marvel, Len also did a Simpson’s Tree House of Horror for Bongo.

I  was able to get a few minutes of his time at the DC booth WonderCon 2014 to find out what else he was up to.

PA:  The complete Before Watchmen: Ozymanaidias is out in hardback and trades, along with some of your Justice League and Justice Society stories.  So whatcha been writin’ lately?

LW: I’m in the middle of writing a full issue of Batman ’66 off a Harlan Ellison story with Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez on the art.  I just wrote an episode of  The Avengers animated series.  My episode of Ben 10 will air soon.  And I’m told they are planning on bringing back Beware the Batman back to Toonanmi, starting May 10th at 3 in the morning.  So set your DVRs! My episode will be either the first one they air, or if they start in order, the eleventh episode.

PA:  You’ve helped lay the much of the ground work for two Universes, DC and Marvel, so my question to you is what haven’t you done? What characters might you want a crack at?

LW:  It gets harder and harder…Two years ago at this Con (WonderCon), I met Joe Hill for the first time and I’ve been friends with his Dad (Stephen King) since we were both teenagers.  We went to dinner together and he asked me the same question.  At the time I said ‘nobody.’  But a few months later I was with some other friends and I was asked that question again and realized that there was someone.  When he asked, ‘Who?’ I said, ‘Exactly!’  As it turned out, they were able to make that happen and I have a story in the 2012 Dr. Who Annual.

PA:  And you are also working on the The Phantom Stranger? (The Phantom Stranger is a paranormal entity who aides individuals and heroes in the DCU taking the form of a cloaked man) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_Stranger

LW: I helped bring back back The Phantom Stranger  (created in the 50s) in the 70s hoping to work on the book. I just finished dialoguing the next issue of plot for the current Phantom Stranger with J.M. DeMatteis.  I was supposed to do a couple of upcoming issues which doesn’t look like its going to happen, since I think the book is not long for this world.

PA:  I was also wondering if you would re-visit The Human Target again?

LW:  I did the recent comic mini-series and the television show (Mark Valley, Jackie Earle Haley Fox,2010).  He was really the first character I created but not the first published.  Yes, I would do it in a heartbeat.

PA:  Did you ever want to do a text only novel or short story?

LW:  I did an Elfquest short story and an Amazing Spiderman Pocket Novel with Marv Wolfman.

PA:  You also told me some stories about the Marvel days that I think would make great ‘Days of  Marvel Past’ stories.  Such as a time someone went crashing through a wall and went sliding down a long hallway to end up at the feet of Stan Lee.

LW:  A lot of people have said that to me.  I would love to do something like that!

PA:  You’ve done some acting recently.  I know you’ve done Improv.

LW:  I’m in the next X-men:Days of Future Past and an independent film called Savage Land.  I lead a very surreal life.  I’m the luckiest man on the face of the Earth.  I’ve go to do everything I’ve ever wanted.

 

Many Thanks to Nicole at DC for this opportunity!

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When I was a boy, I loved J. G. Ballard.  And when I was a teenager I loved J.G. Ballard. And as an adult I loved J.G. Ballard.   Different books, though, in each time -- as a boy I read and loved his disaster books, in which the world drowned or was blown away or slowly turned into crystal, and his Vermilion Sands short stories (particularly one called "The Cloud Sculptors of Coral D"). As a teen I took weird cool challenging Ballard out of the library (I loved Concrete Island most of all, a Robinsonade about a man in a road accident stranded on the centre island in a busy motorway). As a young man I loved Empire of the Sun -- but I never stopped loving the old books, even as I discovered the new.

And somewhere around 1985, my friend Kathy Acker took me to a party/book launch/some kind of event somewhere in London and I met William Burroughs and Jim Ballard, stood there and chatted  as they reminisced about London in the 1960s. I don't know what or who I had been expecting, but Jim Ballard, then, and whenever I met him after that, was terrifying in his ordinariness, like the protagonists of his high-rises and drowned worlds, like the man on the motorway island. 

As the years continued, I remained fascinated with Ballard, and with the strange way that Ballard's most outre work from the late 60s and early 70s, odd un-stories with titles like "Why I Want To Fuck Ronald Reagan", or books like Crash, on the sexual festishism of car crashes and beautiful women who die in them, seemed to have somehow predicted the future that we were in, the world of postReagan image control and the psychofallout of a dead Diana, better than any of the SF writers who thought they really were predicting the future.

And I found myself hesitating on writing this one, as if, if I didn't write something for my blog, I would keep him alive just a little bit longer.

The photo is by Miriam Berkley, from about 1991.

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Over at Cat Mihos's Neverwear she threw open a competition for people to suggest t-shirts, and the results she got back are, frankly, amazing, and not easy to judge. If you would like to weigh in or vote for anything you would like to wear, head over to http://kittysneverwear.blogspot.com/2009/04/in-which-we-judge-another-contest.html. (And if you ever wondered what my mail looks like, she's started photographing it.)

And a quick one: Just heard from HarperChildrens that my audiobook of The Graveyard Book has been chosen as one of the three Audiobooks of the year. It's already nominated for two Audio Awards -- you can read the full list at http://www.audiopub.org/2009Finalistspressrelease.pdf and to have it picked a potential audio book of the year put a smile on my face nothing could shift. http://www.audiopub.org/2009ABOTY_DAPfinalistsrelease_final.pdf

This is what they said about it:

The Graveyard Book
By Neil Gaiman
Read by the author
Published by HarperAudio
Also a Finalist in the Thriller/Suspense and Children’s Titles for Ages 8-12 categories.

The Graveyard Book leaped into immortality with its Newbery Medal win, but the audiobook adds the author’s haunting performance, which strikes the perfect balance between a professional reader and the heart and soul of the author. Bela Fleck’s eerie and whimsical original musical composition for the audiobook sets the tone and punctuates the production. Gaiman’s unabashed enthusiasm for the audiobook format
found expression throughout his book tour and on his website. Gaiman’s and HarperAudio’s efforts have clearly won new fans through these recorded readings and effective social media marketing.

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And no. It's not Death.

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The Who Killed Amanda Palmer Book went on sale this morning, but it sounds like there were some problems with the robustness of the website you could order from, so I'm going to hold off on tweeting or blogging it until tomorrow, by which time I should be able to send people there without it immediately crashing and wasting everyone's time. If you wish to find the link yourself in the meantime, you are very welcome to.

But for now, here's a link to the anniversary issue of Mythic Delirium, a poetry publication in which I have a poem. It was inspired by the same strange event that made Amanda write her "Trout Heart Replica" song. I was going to call my poem "Trout Heart Replica" but when I told her that she said, "You can't. That's what I called my song, and I got there first." And she had. (The illustration in the first 350 issues is hand-coloured.)

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