Writing...

I'm working hard to finish what I have promised will be the last zombie book I will ever write. Yeah, I know: 'Never say never'. But this is it, for me. No more zombie novels. With any luck at all I should wrap it all up by Saturday and get it to my publisher.

Then I have two more projects to polish off. A fantasy novel to hand in to my agent and another book I'll be working on with an old friend (details later).

Today, I picked up an old comic. This is the way it is with comic book collecting. You stumble upon something that's nowhere near your target for collecting, but the  price is right or it just seems like a weird and unique item. So it was with TOP SECRETS #5. It's just a strange little title from the Golden Age that had never even registered for me. But the cover and some of the interior artwork is by Bob Powell who often turned in unique and borderline brilliant work. His cover art here is intriguing and the price was right, so I bought it.

TOP SECRETS #5, cover art by Bob Powell.

STRANGE Additions.

I'm also slowly picking up all of the Ditko issues of STRANGE TALES. I mainly want these for the Dr. Strange stories. Again, I only want the issues that are by the man who created, wrote, and illustrated the character: Steve Ditko. I don't  care to see what was done with Dr. Strange after Ditko walked away from his creation, leaving it to the thieves who claimed ownership.

I'm always reminded of the fact that Ditko was never allowed to do a Dr. Strange cover of STRANGE TALES. He was, even then, making demands that he be given credit for the work he was doing on the characters that he had created. This was causing friction between Ditko and Lee who was stretching the concept of "writer" to ensure that he took home more of a paycheck. Since covers paid relatively well, Ditko was obviously denied the chance to do these for the title. In the meantime, the readers got stuff like this awful cover by, I assume, Bob Powell, who was at the end of his career (and his life) during this period, and whose talents had largely faded by this time.