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Crazy stories about your personal interactions with Comic Book Professionals...

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darkmark (RIP):
Never met Ditko.  My interaction with C.C. Beck was a brief correspondence in which he sent me an article disparaging DC's retelling of Captain Marvel's origin in SECRET ORIGINS.

Rocket Riley:
Jim Steranko was the guest of honor at a Detroit Convention in the mid 1970's.  A guy I went to High School with was his assistant at the time.  So we were all hanging around with Jim and headed up to his hotel room.  Somehow I ended up carrying Jim's portfolio case which contained at the time the paintings for the G-8 and his Battle Aces paperbacks he was doing.  Anyway we all stood around outside Jim's room gabbing and the case was getting heavy.  So I set it down and leaned it against the wall.  The discussion moved into the room.  About a half hour later, Jim starts yelling "where's my case, where's my case!" and running around the room.  I remembered setting it down.  I said "I left it in the hall"  A quick mad scramble later and it was retrieved, no harm done.  The kicker to this story is that two or three decades later, I had got to know Jim very well through our mutual appreciation of pulps and hard working but obscure Golden Age artists.  At some PulpCon we were standing around and talking about Ken Battefield(sp?), the man who single handedly drew the majority of Standard (Nedor) issues in 1944-45, and I said to Jim do you know when we first met?  He said he didn't and I told him the portfolio story.  Very theatrically he raised a shaking finger to the sky, then pointed at me and thundered "That was you?!!"  Then he said "No Rich, I don't remember that at all" 

Yoc:
Great story RR, thanks for sharing it.

crashryan:
I've told this story in my blog but maybe it's worth retelling. Twenty-some years ago the late Manny Stallman lived nearby and we became friends. One night he and his wife hosted a party for an assortment of fellow artists. Among them was the legendary Burne Hogarth. At the time Hogarth was teaching at Art Center in Pasadena. Manny introduced me to "Burnie" (you can bet I called him "Mr Hogarth") and we chatted. Our conversation turned to artists from illustration's Golden Age--specifically, Dean Cornwell. There followed the strangest conversation I've ever had. You may have heard stories of Hogarth being...shall we say, strongly opinionated. I wasn't ready for him to be so opinionated that he'd argue with someone he agreed with! Our conversation went something like this:

Me: "Though I like all of Cornwell's illustrations, I think his work from the twenties was better than his forties work."

Him: "No, no, not at all, Ron. His forties work was inferior to his earlier work! No, no, his work in the twenties was far superior."

Me: "Much of Cornwell's later mural work had a flat, cold poster style. It seemed to be inspired by Deco sculptures. I didn't think it was as exciting as his illustrations."

Him: "Oh, no, Ron, that's not it at all. Cornwell's early illustrations were much more dynamic than his later murals. Much more! No, those murals were poster-liike. Flat, almost sculptural."

And so on. Hogarth actually agreed with all the opinions I expressed, yet he still argued them as if I'd said the opposite! Very strange.

Yoc:
And they say men don't listen.  Hehe. 
And thanks for mentioning an artist that I likely should know but haven't heard of before now.  He is very good!

-Yoc

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