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For Collectors

“Manta Ray Meets the Executioner,” and Other Juvenalia

Recently a couple of old comics fanzines from the 60s with some of my stuff in them have been observed selling on ebay for hundreds of dollars. Boggling, when one stops to recall that these same amateur magazines, most of them produced by high school kids with mimeograph machines or ditto, originally went for one “sticky quarter.”

This has prompted a couple of my more devoted collectors (a polite way of saying “crazed completists”) to email me, asking for a list of all the stuff I published way back when the world and I were both young. One suspects a mania verging on masochism, truly… but as a crazed toy knight collector myself, I understand.

So here it is, a list of all of my contributions to comics fanzine in the 60s.

published LOCs (letters of comment)

ROCKET’S BLAST #24, October 1963
ROCKET’S BLAST #25, December 1963
THE COMIC WORLD NEWS #7, January 1964
ROCKET’S BLAST #28, March 1964
THE COMIC WORLD NEWS #9, March 1964
THE COMIC WORLD NEWS #10, April 1964
KOMIX ILLUSTRATED #12, April 1964
THE COMIC WORLD NEWS #11, May 1964
FIGHTING HERO COMICS #10, June 1964
ROCKET’S BLAST – COMICOLLECTOR #31, June 1964
THE COMIC WORLD #6, Spring 1964
THE COMIC READER #29, August 1964
ROCKET’S BLAST – COMICOLLECTOR #33, September 1964
COUNTDOWN #3, November 1964
ROCKET’S BLAST – COMICOLLECTOR #34, November 1964
THE COMIC READER #32, December 1964
YMIR #1, December 1964
THE COMIC WORLD #7, January 1965
ACTION HERO # 5, January 1965
YMIR #2, February 1965
THE COMIC READER #35, March 1965
ROCKET’S BLAST – COMICOLLECTOR # 37, April 1965
ACTION HERO #6, May 1965
CORTANA # 3, May 1965
THE COMIC READER #38, June 1965
TEXANS ONLY # 4, July 1965
TEXANS ONLY # 5, September 1965
ACTION HERO # 7, October 1965
BATWING # 2, November 1965
BATWING # 3. December 1965
STAR STUDDED COMICS #8, March 1966
ON THE DRAWING BOARD, Vol 2, #2, June 1966
STAR STUDDED COMICS #9, August 1966
STAR STUDDED COMICS # 15, May 1969

I continued to loc fanzines through the 70s and well into the 80s and 90s, though with decreasing frequency. After 1969, however, the fanzines publishing my locs were all SF fanzines rather than comics fanzines.

published artwork (!!!)

THE COMIC WORLD NEWS # 6, December 1963
(I drew the cover, thereby proving that I was a writer, not an artist)

published non-fiction

THE COMIC WORLD NEWS #6, December 1963, news item
THE COMIC WORLD NEWS #9, March 1964, “Can This Hero Be Saved? The Legion of Super-Heroes, Adventure Comics”
THE COMIC WORLD NEWS #10, April 1964, “Can This Hero Be Saved? Eclipso, House of Secrets”
THE COMIC WORLD NEWS #11, May 1964, “Can This Hero Be Saved? Doctor Solar, Man of the Atom”
CITADEL, essay/ letter in the special “How Dinosaurs Did It” issue, 1976

published stories

YMIR #2, February 1965, Manta Ray in “Meet the Executioner”
STAR STUDDED COMICS # 7, August 1965, Powerman in “Powerman Versus the Blue Barrier”
BATWING # 3, December 1965, “The Strange Saga of the White Raider”
YMIR #5, January 1966, Manta Ray in “The Isle of Death” (pt 1)
STAR STUDDED COMICS # 10, March 1967, Dr. Weird in “Only Kids Are Afraid of the Dark” (prose version)
IN-DEPTH # 1, May 1967, “The Coach and the Computer”
DOCTOR WEIRD # 1, Fall 1970, Dr. Weird in “Only Kids Are Afraid of the Dark” (comics version) and “The Sword and the Spider,” both illustrated by artist Jim Starlin

And if by some mischance you should actually manage to stumble on some of these long-forgotten publications, please do remember that I was still in high school when I wrote most of this stuff.

Shoe Inside
© 2024 George R.R. Martin. All rights reserved.