Photo by Leonard Pederson

Via Leonard Pederson’s Facebook page here’s a photo of me interviewing Frank Miller and Bill Sienkiewicz about Elektra Assassin at the Golden Apple in LA c1987. I guess I could make a better guess to the time by looking at the books in the background. Void Indigo, Mage and The Far Side.  I think that’s Mikal Gilmore with his back to the camera.

One small note, the shirt I’m wearing was manufactured for, I think , the 86 or 86 San Diego Comic Con in support of Jack Kirby. I forget who made the shirts but I think it was a group including Miller and Marv Wolfman. At the time Kirby was engaged in a fight to get his artwork back from Marvel, a struggle you can read about here.  I’m sure I still have that shirt, probably in storage somewhere. Because I am a packrat.

BTW upon looking at old pictures like this, one is tempted to exclaim “But I was so young and cute and skinny!” but then you realize that being young cute and skinny did not prevent you from dressing in very very unfortunate styles.

14 COMMENTS

  1. “Being young cute and skinny did not prevent you from dressing in very very unfortunate styles.”

    Nope to that… chalk it up to living in the 1980s.

    (From a fellow 80s relic, who was none of young, cute, and skinny, then and definitely not now.)

  2. Don’t worry; it’s all cyclical, though I guess it’s magnified a bit when you’re a younger age and tend to hit the trends to extremes. But so much of the style that people scoffed at from the 80s by the late 90s are what they’re wearing today, anyway. (The three-quarter length shirts haven’t come back yet, surprisingly, though.)

    At the rate things are going today, we should be in for an unfortunate grunge revival soon… Get out those plaid shirts, folks!

  3. I did love that old Golden Apple store. I would go there every week even though it was not in any way convenient because it had such an alive vibe new comic book day.

  4. On the Beat! It’s a very put-together look that dates very well, especially when compared to the formless mufti worn by the schlubs around you in that photo!

  5. That photo is fantastic.
    In these kind of shots, the 80’s can look like a more colorful, alternate version of 20’s Paris.

  6. Look out ! There is an inflated Godzilla above you!
    This is wonderful. And if you really want to talk fashion: add a hat and doesn’t Miller still dress this way?

  7. Nice shoes, too! Are they blue suede? At least you don’t have huge fluffy hair and gigantic shoulder pads in that pic. You look great.

  8. “In these kind of shots, the 80’s can look like a more colorful, alternate version of 20’s Paris.”

    Does that make Miller the Hemingway of the ’80s, and Chris Claremont the F. Scott Fitzgerald?

  9. Okay… I can’t find a match for the Zippy calendar…
    Wait… it’s 1982? (You can buy the original art from Mr. Griffith for $950.)
    The Far Side? Geez… not found either. (The gag? Godzilla driving a car with a license plate which reads “I 8 NY”.) 1985 publication in papers, so maybe 1986.
    Betty Boop? Yes! 1987. (16-month calendar)

    The Marvel graphic album of “Hooky” is 1986. (April 1986, according to Books In Print.)
    The two DC titles are 1983.
    “Magebook” is 1985.
    Void Indigo? 1984.
    Sword of the Swashbucklers? 1984.
    The UNCLE fanzine? UF-2
    https://d1466nnw0ex81e.cloudfront.net/n_iv/600/1073935.jpg
    1985, 1986?
    To the left, underneath, is the “Deadly Quest” softcover (UF-7), 1986.

    So Autumn 1986 (as that’s when 1987 calendars shipped) at the earliest.

    (Yeah, photo archeology is a hobby of mine. My faves? Times Square!)

  10. They were talking about Elektra: Assassin, which was published from August 1986 to March 1987. (Those are the cover dates; actual publication dates might have been a bit earlier.) So it was sometime in that frame.

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