Greg finally ended my suspension, so here goes a new howl:
(Okay, more accurately, Greg finally wheedled at me enough that I made it a point to come up with a couple posts.)
I do not know Paul Levitz. I see him once every couple years at a con. I would probably call him a friendly acquaintance or something like that. He knows who I am because Martha Thomases and I are friends, though I've lost touch with her recently and I don't think she ever quite got my sense of humor. One year I brought food for the DC crowd at the American Booksellers Association meeting. In the course of that, I met a guy who wasn't a comics fan but whose main job was selling comic books to book stores, and he asked me, point blank, "So, I hear Paul used to write comics, how was he?" or words to that effect. So, I told him the truth: Paul Levitz was a god. As good as anyone currently writing and right up there with anyone who ever has written comics.
This incident is important to our narrative, because as it happens, Paul Levitz had stopped by the tail end of a few of our Chicago LSH dinners in Chicago where we'd sit around at the Sofitel and hang with Tom McCraw and KC Carlson and Jeff Moy and Cory Carani. So in the mid-1990's he might have known me by sight as a LSH fan. (I am extremely large and ugly. In fact, I am so large that people can't quite grasp it on the first few meetings. If I had a dime for every time someone said "I'd forgotten how goddam huge you were..." This doesn't mix well with my Dr. Doom-without-mask-like face, and small children have been known to scream and run in the other direction on first seeing me. I swear I am not making this up. In any event, he probably recognized me from that context.)
By the mid-late 1990's the LSH dinners had become a bit of an institution. And one year �� wait, I'll check �� 1997, Sidne Gail Ward who was not really a participant on Compuserve was arranging the LSH dinner as she did every year, and it turned out that the fans on Compuserve were outraged. This was also the hey-day of the AOL Legion chats, and there was some crossover amongst online fans. Sidne, rather than just ignoring the whiny idjits on C$, decided to try to accommodate them, and we had quite the crowd reserved, and Sidne was unhappy with the idea of anyone else coming. I realize, btw, that I have potentially insulted several people I have never met, so let me add that if you were on C$ in 1997, I meant every word.
Anyway, I had fed the DC crew at ABA that year, so I saw Paul Levitz, and I thought, I'd say "Hi." So we got to talking a little, and I thought that I might as well invite him to the LSH dinner, as a matter of politeness. (We invited Waid every year, but he could never go. I have a couple Waid stories that I�ll post sometime.) I figured he wouldn't be able to go, but since he consistently ran into us afterward, I thought I'd let him know ahead of time that year. Besides, Sidne had told me there was no room for anyone else, so it was a moral imperative for me to invite more people. He said it depended on what his daughter wanted to do, and I mentioned that if they decided they wanted to, they should drop by the Atlas Comics booth and let Sidne know.
I immediately went to the booth and told Sidne I had a couple friends who wanted to come to dinner. The expression of pure disgust on her face was alleviated when I told her it was Paul and Nicole Levitz. I believe her exact words were "If Paul Levitz wants to come, he can sit on my lap." Anyway, to make a long story even longer, that night, who comes to dinner but Paul Levitz and I think he brought Bob Wayne. Anyway, these dinners tended to be casual affairs, but that year the *BOSS* was in the house. First of all, it was a Legion dinner while we were used to having the current creative team join us, having Levitz there was like going to a dinner for Beatles fans and having Paul McCartney there. The only way it could have been more intense would have been if Keith Giffen, Jim Shooter and Curt Swan showed up as well. Second, well, as I said, our dinners with the creators had previously been rather casual affairs. This one seemed a bit more formal, and I couldn't help but feel that having Mr. Levitz there shifted the atmosphere a tad. It was the most fun of any of the LSH dinners because we had Paul Levitz there and he went and talked with everyone at the dinner. Third, and most importantly, well, not really, but third, anyway, he picked up the check, except for the alcohol, but Ron Boyd, one of the nicest men ever to draw oxygen on planet Earth picked that up. So, instead of the prior years when we picked up the tab for the creators, Levitz picked up the tab for us.
My point being, of course, that if you were at that dinner, you *OWE* me. Just kidding, because I was honestly surprised, though I was later informed publishers usualy have some sort of discretionary fund for entertaining fans or doing spur of the moment promotional things, but I like to think he paid himself, because I live in a naive dream world with sparkling fairies and marmalade skies. Strawberry fields forever!!!!!! During the course of dinner, btw, I mentioned my encounter witrh his sales staff, and said "So I told him you were a god." and, of course, the other people at the table heartily agreed with us, and Paul Levitz's daughter said we were weird because we said her father was a god, but I stand by the statement.
If this seems like a relatively pointless howl, blame Greg.
Posted by Mike Chary at October 12, 2004 11:23 PM