Forrie

I love science fiction, comix, fantasy, all that stuff.  Started out with Dunsany and Morris, Tolkein, Sturgeon, Bradbury, Sprague de Camp, Farmer, Lovecraft, Dick and Zelazny. Like Card but honestly don't read that much Scifi anymore because it's too hard to find anyone decent to read. I liked the Wild Card mosaic series a lot.

Like most adolescent youth my age, I had a huge comic collection - all the Shield, Avengers, early x-men, New Gods, Deadman, FF, Doctor Strange, Spidey (a love I share with the president elect), Steranko, Watchmen, etc.  World class collection of undergrounds at one time, from Joel Beck onwards.  Loved Dave Sheriden and Scheier, Spain, Geiser, Bode, all of them. And unfortunately my mom threw the whole shitload of my straight comics away when I was in high school one day. Hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of golden age comix at today's prices. So I killed her.

I started going to comic conventions in the mid seventies and met the coolest cats in the world - both Kirby and S. Clay Wilson drew on my cast when I had a broken leg. (I kept it for a while until my ex-wife made me throw it away because it smelled so bad.)  Deitch, Kitchen, Mouse, Kelley, Griffin, Sheriden, Ron Turner, everybody was so friendly.  Moscoso, all the heavies. Greg Irons. Williams. Later Crumb, when Griffin and I brought up pages for Zap.  

The scene at the San Diego Comic Con used to be really fun before it went corporate. El Cortez era.  I remember a lot of crazy zany people, many no longer with us.  Dave Gibson, Shel, Scroggy, Mielke, Rick Geary, Trina, Kaluta, Scott Shaw!, Yeh, Chaykin, Wrightson, Elder, Kurtzman, Pini, Schanes, the weird writer Garris, his talented brother Phil.  Nino, Redondo, Alcala. The incredibly gifted William Stout who had done some great bootleg album covers of the dead and the who. Steve Lealoha. Jeff Jones. Corbin. Dave Stevens. Carol Lay. So many more and all so talented. Lots and lots of my artistic heroes - got to meet Clay Wilson and Sturgeon and Roger Z. and so many great guys. Remember George Clayton Johnson taking all of his clothes off at some trippy party.  He had written some star trek episodes and was a real strange cat. I was just a snot nosed punk kid yet everyone treated everybody with respect.  Eventually the underground artists sort of got shunted out or disappeared.  Too much corporate lucre around and the thing became more money driven and less fun.

I remember seeing Forrest J. Ackerman at one of these fetes and he was like a god.  I won't give you a whole bio - you should google his obit - but what a seminal figure in science fiction and horror.  He was Lovecraft and Bradbury's agent. Wrote lesbian fiction under a pseudonym. Phenomenal collector and walking encyclopedia.  He died this week.  I never talked to him, was probably afraid to, but saw him from time to time and know that he will be missed by many fans, aficionados and everyday people.