Jim Shegas writes that neither I nor Scott Edelman wrote the first solo Falcon story…

Actually, the first Falcon solo story was by Gary Friedrich and Gray Morrow in Captain America #144. It was produced during Marvel's brief flirtation with 25-cent double-sized comics. They changed their minds after only one month and went back to the regular format. This story had its start as a backup story to an extra-long Captain America lead story. While the double-sized story was being produced for issue #144 they found they needed to chop it into two parts with the rest going into #145. John Romita was enlisted to make some alterations to the Falcon story's first and last pages to make it fit to insert into the (now-shortened) Captain America story in #144 as a "Chapter 2" instead. But it is to all intents and purposes a separate Falcon story.

I remember that story. John Romita did more than "some alterations" to the first and last pages. And I remember it because I met Gray Morrow at a comic convention shortly after it came out and he was still quite upset that someone had ordered so many redraws, not to alter the story but because they just didn't like the way he'd drawn so many of the faces and figures.

He was not angry so much as hurt and puzzled that they felt they had to do that to a guy who'd been in the business for so long. He was another one of those artists — I could make a lengthy list — who was brimming with talent and had so much to offer…but the business never knew quite what to do with him.

Okay, I hereby remove myself from any position of authority on what the first Falcon solo story was. If anyone wants to know for sure, don't ask me.

Frank Balkin wrote me to say…

I can't speak for other comics fans, but I started reading at 8 years old in 1976, and I enjoyed back-up features. I didn't feel like "Well, I bought Detective Comics for Batman, why am I not getting 17 pages of Batman?" I thought, "Wow, this Elongated Man character isn't as interesting to me as Batman but he's fun to read about, too."

Yeah, that was how it was when I started reading comics. My first super-hero comic was Action Comics #250. Half the comic was Superman, a fourth was Tommy Tomorrow and the rest was Congorilla. I enjoyed them all and I think I enjoyed the sheer variety…but that was long ago. Folks who've analyzed sales figures more closely than I ever did came to the conclusion in the seventies that readers didn't feel that way about their comics.

They likened back-up features to if you bought a can of corn, got it home and opened it and discovered it was two-thirds corn, one-third peas. I'm not sure they were right but I wouldn't be surprised if they were.

Meanwhile, Michael Grabowski wrote about some back-up stories from my past…

Funny you mention back-ups in comics featuring other than title characters. I was still a single-digit aged comics reader when Hanna-Barbera comics stopped coming from Charlton and started coming from Marvel, and it was in one or more of those that I first noticed your name, and I believe I even wrote you a fan letter then! I may never have sent it, but I loved the line "Elbow macaroni sits on a poodle's nose" in what I think was a Fred Flintstone spy adventure. (My thinking was that they would never run a letter from me in The Amazing Spider-Man, but there couldn't be nearly as much competition to get in an H-B comic.)

I bought several of those Marvel/H-B comics from 7-Eleven, but rarely in consecutive order. But what really bugged me was the way each comic had a back-up story featuring other characters that set up the lead story in that other character's next comic. For instance, the Fred Flintstone spy story was probably set up in the back of Yogi Bear or Dynomutt. Thankfully, the lead stories never seemed to depend on the other comic's back-up intro, (Nice editing, there!) but it was always frustrating getting a little hook to find another comic the next month, which I never quite made happen. (I don't know why that never bugged me when hero comics had regular cliff-hangers if I never found their part 2s on the spinner rack.)

Yeah, the guy who set up that deal — who knew as much about comic books as I do about Evolutionary Culturology — had this brainstorm. Each issue of the Yogi Bear comic and the Flintstones comic would have a three-page back-up story of the other, teasing the next issue coming out. Same deal with the Scooby Doo and the Dynomutt comics. It was a bad idea, I thought, but we were stuck with it.

If you sent that letter, you wasted your time. The only address in the comics was Marvel's address in New York and they did not forward any mail to us so we did not do letter columns. A person who worked back there told me they got some and threw them away. Perhaps the thrower-awayer was the low-level individual then on staff at Marvel who let me know in no uncertain terms that he was very upset the Hanna-Barbera comics were being produced out of the Hanna-Barbera studio in Hollywood instead of out of the Marvel office back east. That meant he couldn't work on them and that bothered him a lot. He also told me that the day would come when he would run Marvel Comics…and he got about as close to that goal as I did to sleeping with all the Golddiggers on The Dean Martin Show.

Lastly, my buddy Phil Geiger was the only person who wrote to tell me…

You've probably had dozens of people tell you by now, but yeah, DC just started doing back-up stories in a lot of their books again. For example, Bibbo in Superman and Midnighter in Action Comics.

Duly noted. Hey, is anyone doing letter columns these days? I don't see a lot of current comics but the ones I see don't have them. I'm about to compose a letters page for an upcoming Groo comic, the on-sale date of which will be announced in the next week or so. How alone am I in taking the time to do these?

I have received two e-mails practically begging me to stop with the Flintstones theme videos. I have received a few dozen messages from people who love them.

I do not understand why a person is bothered by an easily-skippable item on a blog, especially one which cannot harm you even if you do somehow feel compelled to click and play it. 95% of the Internet is of no interest to me and I have no trouble avoiding it, nor do I want to take it away from those who might enjoy it.

So here we have another rendition of the "Meet the Flintstones" theme. This one is by the Big Band Waidhofen…

In this post the other day, I told the story of how I wrote the first solo story of the Marvel Comics hero, The Falcon. Well, I thought I had. Turns out it was the first book-length story to feature the character. My pal Scott Edelman wrote, as one of his first jobs in comics, a short Falcon tale that appeared in Captain America #220, four months before mine saw print. Scott notes in an e-mail to me that…

My story was created as part of a different initiative to solving the lateness issue than yours. Rather than slotting in an entire fill-in issue to allow a title's regular creative team to catch up, back-ups allowed that team to deliver a shorter lead story, with the issue filled out by a back-up, giving that team some breathing space, though not as much as a full fill-in issue would have.

These back-ups gave many beginners the chance to show what they could do, and I wrote 5- and 6-page stories not only about The Falcon, but about The Vision, Nick Fury, Spider-Man, Hawkeye, and many others as well.

Do comics even do back-up stories anymore? I know they went outta fashion in the seventies. Folks like Len Wein and Dick Giordano occasionally theorized that readers resented them; that if you bought an issue of Batman, you wanted an issue of Batman and would feel cheated if you got two-thirds of an issue of Batman and then there was a Batgirl story in the back. Even worse was a back-up story that in no way connected with the lead feature…

…although when I did the Blackhawk comic for DC in the early eighties, Len (my first editor on it) and Dick (then the Exec Editor at DC) wanted there to be an occasional back-up feature called "Detached Service Diary." It was a recurring feature of previous Blackhawk runs and it consisted of solo stories of the members of the Blackhawk squadron.

We did not do it for deadline reasons. In a way, we did it to please a couple of artists who loved Blackhawk and wanted to draw some stories of it. For much of the time I did that comic, it was not only the only DC comic with back-up stories, it was the only DC comic with stories under book-length. This led to an interesting situation where the back-up stories in Blackhawk were solving deadline problems for other DC comics. I'll have to tell that story here one of these days.

Anyway, Scott Edelman wrote the first solo story of The Falcon. I am pleased to pass that distinction on to him.

Another rendition of the "Meet the Flintstones" theme. This one is by Simon Åkesson and Evan Sanders, with the help of Fred, Wilma, Barney and Betty…

I don't seem to have much to say about the verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial that others aren't saying. Viewed from afar as most of us viewed it, it seemed like an open-and-shut case of police wrongdoing…and it's nice to see one of those not go the cop's way for a change. I saw someone on CNN (I think it was) say that police would be outraged at the jury's actions. I think they should be outraged at the crime.

Naturally, I'm curious as to how long ex-officer Chauvin will serve…and where he'll serve it. I'd really love to know what he was thinking as that verdict was read. We could only see his eyes but they looked like they were saying, "Yeah, just about what I expected." What I saw of the closing argument from The Defense looked to me like the attorney was just going through the motions, already resigned to the outcome.

And I wonder how the jury's ten hours of deliberations went. Were there ever any votes to let Chauvin walk out of there a free man? Or did they spend the the time reviewing the case carefully and then debating which of the three counts applied?

Here's a solid explainer about today's verdict. It doesn't answer any of my questions but it will remind you what today was all about. It's about all that and working towards a justice system that doesn't treat minorities as guilty until proven innocent.

The Palace Theatre, a restored art deco-style 1940s theater in Dallas-Fort Worth runs classic/vintage movies. This Saturday at 4 PM, they're running It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World on what I'm told is a big screen. That's one of my two requirements for enjoying this film at its maximum strength. The other is a large, enthusiastic audience.

The Palace is currently operating at 75% capacity so people don't have to sit so close to strangers. Their website also says "While masks are no longer a requirement, they are highly recommended. Staff will continue to wear masks." Even fully-vaccinated, I don't think I'd take the risk but you do what you want to do. And either way, let's thank Dan Koller for letting me know about it.

Q: What's worse than your Internet service being out?

A: When it goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and goes out and comes back on and g

Not really but it can feel that way when your Internet connection ain't working…as mine isn't. And just as I don't put much stock in anyone's predictions of when The Pandemic will be over, I've learned not to rely on my Internet Service Provider's reassurances as to when service will be restored. "Sometime between now and the turn of the century" is their current forecast and I don't even trust that.

So posting here will be light until it happens (if it happens) because I'm lousy at typing with my thumbs on my iPhone as I'm doing now.

The Daily Show ain't what it used to be but they've had some great material on it in the last year or two. A lot of what I've most enjoyed have been reports filed by Jordan Klepper, a brave man who ventured into Trump rallies and even the 1/6 demonstration/assault. They've just put together a "best of" compilation that includes new material. If you have a half-hour, you might enjoy it. At the very least, you will admire the man's courage…

Another rendition of the "Meet the Flintstones" theme. This one is by Asia's premiere vocal group, The CompanY (that's how they type it) accompanied by the University of the Philippines Jazz Ensemble…

If someone is trying to argue with you that it's wrong for the U.S. to get the hell outta Afghanistan, send them a link to this article by Daniel Larison.

• Can you imagine what the late Reverend Jerry Falwell Sr. would say about a Democrat who had behaved like Jerry Falwell Jr.?

BRIEF ANNOUNCEMENT #1: I want to thank all of you who've written in to tell me of the great Creamy Tomato Soup you've found in some store. I'm not belittling your taste when I tell you that if I tried it — and I'm tried all the ones suggested that are obtainable where I live — it wasn't what I wanted. I really am happy with the kind I now make for myself and will probably try no others. But I appreciate that someone took the time to write and try to help.

BRIEF ANNOUNCEMENT #2: I have decided not to post as much on Facebook or to read some of the forums where I find messages that compel me to debate or correct. Some especially nasty/inaccurate postings on the Marvel forums lately have me limiting my participation on them. But if you see something posted on this blog that might be of interest to the folks in any Facebook forum or anywhere, please post a link over there to them. Apart from tipping (hint, hint) it's the best way to show appreciation for this blog.

BRIEF ANNOUNCEMENT #3: I've had more than the usual sprinkling of typos on this blog lately. A frighteningly-perceptive reader (and reporter of some typos) named Larry Blair noticed that they almost all involved my left hand because they involved keys on the left side of my keyboard. This is probably because I'm having a fair amount of trouble with my left shoulder.

I am now under the care of a Terrific Shoulder Doctor and I start physical therapy tomorrow for the problem. The Terrific Shoulder Doctor says it will be a few months before the condition is eradicated but it already feels a bit better thanks to him…and I should also thank whoever invented Meloxicam, which also helped a lot back when I had my knee replcement. I would fix the missing letter in "replacement" but it's on the left side of the keyboard.

I recently did a post here about what happens when, as occasionally happens, the artwork for a comic book gets lost in the mail. Right after I posted that, I noticed that the Comic Book Resources site had this post up about a time back in 1978 when by a strange twist of fate, I wrote the first solo story of the Marvel super-hero, The Falcon. [CORRECTION: No, I didn't.]

As you'll see, it was another example of artwork getting (sorta) lost in the mail so I figured I oughta tell the whole story. This may take a while so I'm going to include this cautionary note…

Now then: My friend Steve Gerber was living out here in Burbank, working for Marvel and serving as writer-editor of his beloved Howard the Duck comic. They'd just assigned him a similar post on the Captain America comic and when he got it, the book was several months behind schedule, probably through no fault of whoever had preceded him.

The way to get it on-schedule — the only way, really — would have been to do two or three issues a month until he was caught up. I had that problem once on the first comic book on which I was editor and in this case, it was my fault. I stupidly let my "lead" slip away so I sat down and wrote full scripts for three issues in one week. Then I hired a couple of different artists to draw them and before long, I was not only on schedule but ahead.

Steve couldn't do that. He couldn't find a couple of different artists who were acceptable and immediately available. He couldn't find one. He made a number of calls and at that moment, anyone he knew who was good enough to draw Captain America was also good enough to have a full schedule of work.

The only artist he had was the book's regular artist, Sal Buscema. And the problem there was that Sal was drawing, I believe, four comics a month for Marvel at the time…doing rough layouts or rough pencils, true, but he couldn't do more than one issue a month for Steve.

Steve spent a lot of time talking to various folks in the New York office and it was finally decided that there would be a fill-in issue that spotlighted The Falcon, The Falcon then being Captain America's sidekick and co-star of their comic. Marvel was then somewhat fussy about how their superstar characters like Captain America were drawn but The Falcon was not then a superstar character. There was less concern about who would draw him…and someone other than Steve could write that issue so Steve could focus on getting ahead on the regular Captain America storyline, which was going to be neglecting The Falcon for a while.

He then called me and asked me to write that Falcon story. It had to be a one-issue standalone story and it had to be out-of-continuity because they weren't sure exactly which month it would run. Also, it could have a brief cameo of Captain America but for no more than a few panels. I asked who was going to draw it. He said, "Whoever's wandering around the Marvel offices tomorrow who needs work."

I shrieked, "Tomorrow?" and he said, "Yes! I need you to drop everything and write a plot outline we can get in the mail to New York tonight so it can go to an artist tomorrow. I'd do it but I have to finish dialoguing Howard the Duck pages and get them in the mail tonight."

(I should explain: Like most Marvel comics then, Howard the Duck and Captain America were being done "Marvel Method," meaning that the writer wrote a plot outline, it was sent to an artist to draw in pencil and then those pages were sent to the writer to compose the dialogue.)

I said okay, fine, I'll do it. You could then send overnight packages to New York via Express Mail if you got them to the big post office near Los Angeles International Airport by 10 PM. I sat down and wrote a plot. Around 9 PM, Steve arrived at my house with his Howard the Duck pages and we went over my hastily-written Falcon storyline. He okayed it — like he had much of a choice — then we packed it and his pages up in an Express Mail package and drove out to the airport, getting there with seconds (but not minutes) to spare.

We then drove to Canter's Delicatessen for chow since neither one of us had had dinner. Steve was confident it would all work out and get the book ahead. I asked him who he thought would draw the Falcon story from my plot and he said, "I asked them to give it to anyone…well, anyone except Sal Buscema." He said that because as soon as he finished the next Captain America plot in a day or two, that would be going to Sal Buscema. It wouldn't get the Captain America book ahead if they sent my plot to Sal.

And of course, the next day, whoever assigned such things in the Marvel office then sent my plot to Sal Buscema.

There was some question as to whether whoever did that did it because they didn't pay attention to Steve's request or because they were trying to sabotage him or because at that moment, Sal needed something to work on and there was no plot to send him from Steve or the folks writing the other books Sal worked on. I have no idea which was the case; just that my plot went to Sal so the fill-in to get the book ahead was not going to get the book ahead. (I also have no idea who sent it to Sal. In the Comic Book Resources piece, author Brian Cronin speculates it was Jim Shooter. I see no reason to assume this.)

Steve meanwhile had a similar but not-as-severe deadline problem with Howard the Duck which was being drawn by Gene Colan — again, one of several books (like Tomb of Dracula) that Gene was doing for Marvel then. Gene's schedule was similarly tight so he could only do one issue of Howard per month at best. Fortunately, Steve didn't have to get anyone's okay to assign an issue of Howard the Duck to another artist so again, I quickly wrote a plot and our mutual friend Will Meugniot began drawing it.

He continued battling with Marvel over deadlines and before the penciling was completed on either of the stories, Steve was fired. I don't know to what extent that was because of lateness and to what extent it was because he was making noises about how he should own all or part of Howard the Duck. I'm not sure Steve knew, either. In any case, he still owed Marvel a certain number of pages for which he'd been paid in advance and his lawyer suggested that it would be good if Steve finished them, a.s.a.p. before everyone plunged into the murky area of lawsuits relating to his termination.

Will had just finished penciling the Howard story and turned its pages over to Steve to give to me to dialogue. I suggested that Steve do it instead of me, which would help him whittle down the number of pages he owed Marvel. This was done. Meanwhile, Sal Buscema had sent Marvel the pages for the story with The Falcon and they were reportedly being forwarded on to me to dialogue. I was going to turn them over to Steve to dialogue, again so he could get even with Marvel on pages owed.

But that didn't happen. Well past the date when they should have arrived at my home, I hadn't received them. I called Marvel to tell them and someone there — Roger Stern, I think — told me to just keep waiting. (These were the original art pages Sal had penciled. And no one in New York had made copies of them.)

The folks back there were worried about lost pages but not about deadlines. I was told they weren't going to use the story in the Captain America comic because, once it was drawn, they saw that it didn't have more than a few panels of Captain America in it. That is, of course, exactly what I'd been told to do. Not using it in the Captain America comic would put that book even farther behind for whoever took over as editor from Steve…but, hey, that wasn't my problem. It was also no longer Steve's.

They weren't sure where, when or even if it was going to be published so we could just give the mail time. If the pages never showed up, they would just scrub the whole story. If the pages did turn up, I could dialogue them at my leisure and send them in whenever.

Weeks passed. The pages did not arrive. We gave up on them.

Now all this time, I was editing and writing most of the Hanna-Barbera comics that Marvel was then publishing. The original art pages for those comics were returned to H-B after publication in packages that were not addressed to me — just to the studio. A guy in the mailroom there would look at the return address and think, "Marvel Comics? I guess this goes to the office where they're doing the comic books!" And he'd then throw the packages in the corner of my office where they usually remained unopened for some time. For me, it was one of those "I'll get around to it one of these days" tasks.

One of those days, I had a rare spot of Nothing To Do so I opened a half dozen of them and in one package, there it was, nestled in amongst a batch of returned Scooby Doo and Yogi Bear pages: The missing Sal Buscema artwork! It had arrived when it was supposed to arrive. I just didn't know or imagine it was in one of those packages.

I don't know why whoever shipped art out from Marvel did that. Clipped to the pages was a note with my home address and instructions to send the art there but whoever sent them hadn't done that. He or she had no way of knowing that package would wind up in my office instead of going to some H-B warehouse. Even if they had known that, I could have gone several more months without opening that particular package and finding Sal's pages in it.

Anyway, I called Marvel to report that I'd found the missing story. They said fine, just get it done whenever you get it done. I got it done, sent it in, got paid, assumed I'd never see it published…and many months later, was surprised to see it turn up as an issue of Marvel Premiere. What did I think of the finished product? Well, it had a real nice Frank Miller cover on it.

(More detailed answer: If I'd known it was going to run as a standalone — and if I'd had more than about three hours to plot it — I would have done a very different story.)

Before I end this, I don't want to give anyone the impression that Steve Gerber — a friend I still miss an awful lot — was always late with his work. When he worked for me on several projects, he was always on time or close enough. But we all go through periods where we have problems — sometimes of our own making, sometimes because we find ourselves in a less-than-ideal work situation, occasionally both.

Steve was not one of those writers who could sit down every day at 9 AM and have X number of pages completed by quitting time and that is not a criticism of the man. I've known good and bad writers who could do that and good and bad writers who couldn't. And sometimes, the guys who can are the guys who are satisfied with whatever they produce, whether it's any good or not.

And sometimes, work comes in late due to circumstances beyond our control…like when someone mails pages to the wrong address in a package they weren't supposed to be in.

Another rendition of the "Meet the Flintstones" theme. This one is by pianist Vinheteiro…