Weekend Plans and Television

My spousal unit Len Wein is being interviewed at noon at the West Hollywood Book Fair on Sunday. It should be a fun day. It sounds like a smaller version of the L.A. Times Festival of Books which is held in the spring. He'll be on stage at the Comics, Sci-Fi, and Beyond Pavillion from 12-1 ("Watching Len Wein: In Conversation with the Book Editor and Video Game Writer of Watchmen"), and then at the Golden Apple Comics booth for an autographing session. He'll be followed on stage by Ray Bradbury. There seems to be a fair number of celebrities in attendance, among them Adrienne Barbeau, Robert Wagner, Heather Thomas, Ed Begley, Jr., and Laraine Newman. Len's connection with Adrienne Barbeau and Heather Thomas? Both actresses have been in Swamp Thing productions, Barbeau in film, Thomas on the television series.

I'm going with my camera and audio recorder.

Sunday night, the Amazing Race returns to television, so we'll be gathering up the usual gang to have dinner and cheer. Rumor has it that at least one of the teams may have someone from the science fiction or comic book fan community.

The season premier of Big Bang Theory did not disappoint. We were particularly delighted when Sheldon started listing his favorite X-men in order, starting with Wolverine, who then got shifted to second place by Professor X and then to third place by Nightcrawler coming in second. Since Len created both Wolverine and Nightcrawler, we considered it a winning night. Sheldon had also called Hallie Barry his fifth favorite Catwoman, putting her behind every other actess who has played Catwoman on television or screen: Julie Newmar, Michelle Pfiffer, Ertha Kitt and Lee Merriweather. There was also a wonderful riff early on where Sheldon explains that he couldn't ever be Green Lantern, but with enough money (it was put much more creatively), he could be the Batman. When Leonard questioned that, Sheldon did a scary impersonation of Christian Bale's "I'm Batman." We love this show.

Len's Latest Acheivement

Wizard Magazine published its 200th issue this week and came up with a list of the top 200 comic book characters. Beating out Batman, Superman, and Spiderman to come in at #1 is Wolverine, created by my talented husband, Len Wein (with art by John Romita, Sr.), in about 1973. In addition to Wolvie, Len's other X-men contributions, Storm, Nightcrawler, and Colossus (Dave Cockrum was the artist on them--and Dave's redesign is the costume most people think of for Wolverine) made the list and Swamp Thing (Bernie Wrightson did the art) did, too. Five characters in a list that covers 70 years of comic book history, with thousands of characters to choose from. Not a bad achievement. Even if Wizard didn't bother to list the creators' names.

Shameless Swamp Thing Plug

Swamp Thing: the Complete First Season will be released on DVD by Shout! Factory this coming Tuesday. My spousal unit, who created the character with artist Bernie Wrightson, is featured in the trailer, which you can see here. If I've done it right, there's a little more of Len here, before an interview with Dick Durock. I love the fact that the trailer uses Len's lovely alliterative description of Swampy, the "muck encrusted mockery of a man." Not a bad turn of phrase for a young writer.

SwampThing

Of all my husband's characters, the one with which I identify most is Wolverine. The one which I think is or was closest to his own view of himself is SwampThing.

SwampThing was the $1000 answer in the D.C. Comics category on Jeopardy! last night. I think Swampy was the only non-golden age character in the five questions up there represented by five pieces of artwork--and two of the characters were from Batman (Dick Grayson and the Penguin.) Green Arrow and Plastic Man were the other two.

SwampThing could also have fit the category of words introduced in the 20th Century in the same round.