Saturday, 13 June 2026

Aardvark Flashback: Deni and Dave @ Marvel comics October, 5th 1982

Hi, Everybody!

My kid needed some pictures printed, so I decided to get two sets of Birdsong's color corrected versions of Deni and Dave's photos of their visit to the Marvel/EPIC offices on October 5th, 1982:

So, here they are with Dave's '82 Tour notes on the visit (from the Waverly Press version of the tour book):
Dave Sim, Mary Jo Duffy, Archie Goodwin

Mary Jo Duffy

The Marvel "Bullpen" (more on this directly)

Louise "Weezy" Simonsen (nee Jones) (More on this pic in a bit)

Denny O'Neil and Dave

Archie Goodwin, Dave Sim, Mary Jo Duffy, and (possibly) Michael Hobson.


Deni Sim and Chris Claremont
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Now, I said we'd get back to this pic:

See that art on the wall by the blue dictionary?

It's either the original art, or a photocopy of the original art to the cover of New Mutants #1
Neat, huh?

There was one other photo from the Marvel visit:

It's a comic strip of some kind.

I did a Google Image search which yielded:
Folks, it's not.

It's this strip:
From FOOM #14, 1976
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Now, if you cut out the bad photo of the comic strip, there are SEVEN photos from Deni & Dave's Marvel '82 visit.

By an odd coincidence, I was hit with a targeted ad for custom ViewMaster-style photo  reels. They hold seven photos per reel...

So I ordered three reels (it was buy two get one free)

I'm keeping one (hey! I PAID for the damn things...), I'm sending one up to Dave, and the third one goes to Margaret (if you make Cerebus stuff and don't make a copy for her, the Angels cry...)

BUT, I can always order more. The pricing gets a little cheaper as you order more reels:

They don't really run the numbers well in this one,

So, if you've gotten this far and "WANT!", lemme know. If we hit high enough numbers, the price will get real cheap, but I'll still have to pay to ship them. I'll find out how expensive that is when I mail Margaret hers (domestic), and Dave his (international).

If the Waverly Press version had hit Kickstarter, I feel like this would have been something they would have done.

SPEAKING of my friends at the Waverly Press, they're moving their office, and to lighten the loads, they're temporarily cutting prices on their remaining Cerebus inventory on their eBay store starting this weekend. They're gonna be gradually listing more things in the coming days and any orders placed next week will receive new ‘82 Tour promo cards. They may go ahead and offer the remaining prototypes of the big book and comic versions next week. MAYBE. So if you're interested, maybe stalk their eBay page like a crazy person...

Next Time: Cerebus.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

In terms of linking the tour book to Marvel movies, why not mention things happening in the comics in October 1982 that showed up in movies later? A quick google indicated that Iron Man #163 was released then and it had the first appearance of Obadiah Stone i.e. the bad guy in the first Iron Man movie that kicked off the whole Marvel cinematic universe. I know in October 1982 comics would have had November cover dates but not sure Dave wants to get into that if the idea is to appeal to laypeople. Just have something like "Dave and Denny visited Marvel in October 1982, a key time for the company. Comic book stories at this time included {X} featured in the Marvel blockbuster {Y} " Because we're mentioning characters and ideas, not specific panels, that saves the X-Men homework issue of matching up panels to movie timestamps.

Michael Grabowski said...

I don't want one but I am curious if the faux-viewmaster production process adjusts the photos the right way to get that stereoscopic effect the images are seen in properly mastered view. Let us know, Manly.

Dave Kopperman said...

Not to be “that guy”, but Louise Simonson’s maiden name was Alexander. Jones was her first married name (for which I confess I don’t know if there’s a term).