2/26/06
Elizabeth and I found out we’re having a boy. We’re going to name him Oscar Francis Wisnia. Everyone had been telling E and I that they predicted it was going to be a girl. A woman who does the “scientific” (sure-proof) “dangling needle on thread over belly.” A woman who claims she always knows when someone in a room is pregnant or going to die, and who had visions it would be a girl, then later said, maybe I’m going to have second thoughts about that, and so when it was born could argue she was right either way. My mom, who had a dream. People who told us if the heart beats faster it’s a girl. People who told us if you don’t have morning sickness it’s a girl.
The more people said we’d have a girl, the more I realized I wanted a boy. But you don’t want to go out and say it, because then it sounds like you don’t want your baby, and of course I’d be happy with whatever I had. But boy did I start getting excited to see the ultrasound. See little Oscar’s feet, legs, arms, profile. Boy was it exciting realizing we knew it was a boy, and now we had a name.
Elizabeth is due mid-August, and the date of the San Diego Con, she will be eight and a half months pregnant. We were sweating whether or not she’d be able to make it this year, but the doctor says it should be okay. I don’t know how I’d do a convention without her. It’s such a relief.
We forgot to register for a hotel until two days after the day they became available. Naturally, everything was sold out. But this week we learned that we were able to get a room at the Hyatt, which is only a couple blocks away. It will be the closest we’ve ever been to the convention, and this is the year to do it. Poor Elizabeth will be huge this year.
This year we got a pretty sizeable tax refund. We should be saving up for a house, and saving to have a baby. But E and I discussed it and decided, I better get all the pin-ups I can now, while I have the money. Yesterday I pulled out all my business cards I’ve amassed over the years. I actually called Larry Lieber on the phone. He doesn’t have an email, and I’ve sent him my comics, but never heard back from him, over the last year and a half or so. So I called.
He answered, Hello?
Yes, is this Larry?
Who is this? Almost defensive. Irritated?
My name is Chris Wisnia. I met Larry at a New York Comics Convention a couple years ago. I draw giant monster stories. He remembered me, and his attitutude became much kinder. He said I’d caught him at kind of a difficult time. According to his description, he’s amassed so much stuff over the years, that his apartment has become a path to his bed. I think he was trying to get his taxes ready to file, and he needed his calculator from his drawer, and he has so much stuff, that he couldn’t get to the drawer to open it, so he was trying to delicately move the piles of things in front of the drawer. He told me I might be the last person to speak from him, and I’ll read in the news that he was buried alive by all this stuff he has, when it toppled on top of him.
He’s so funny and friendly, he just got talking. I asked if he’d gotten the comics I sent him, and he said, Please stop sending him comics. He just doesn’t have the time to read them. He said it was nothing personal. He also gets the New Yorker, and he hasn’t read it for years, even though he keeps renewing his subscription. He keeps thinking some day he’ll have the time. So he begged me not to send him comics, because he would never read them (not to mention the space they would take up).
I asked him again which Marvel characters he had told me he named. He said he came up with Tony Stark, Donald Blake, and Henry Pym, and he took great care trying to come up with those names. He said Stan didn’t really care what their names were. Stan named the hero names, and wrote the basic plots, but didn’t care what Larry did with the scripts beyond that.
His favorite story was about naming Thor’s Uru hammer. He said he wanted a short, three syllable name, because he felt bad for the poor letterers, who had so much to write. Later, but long ago, Roy Thomas had approached him, with a copy of Bullfinch’s Mythology, and asked him where he’d gotten the name. Larry admitted he’d made it up, and Roy was furious, and immediately had it changed back to the actual name of the hammer, Mjolnir. But when the San Diego Con had Larry flown out in 2004, he was on a panel, and a woman told him that actually, in Norse, Uru means powerful or mighty or something like that, so the word he made up turned out to actually be applicable! Bizarre.
Before I hung up, I told him I knew how busy he was, but asked him if he might ever have time to draw a pin-up of a giant monster for me. He shouted, No! Absolutely not! I’ll never draw a giant monster. I told him I’d pay him handsomely. He said, No! I don’t want your money! I don’t want to draw a giant monster. I don’t draw Western pictures any more either. He said he’d like to draw a comic some day, but a nice one without superheroes and monsters. He also said he’s always wanted to write a novel, but he’s just never had the time.
We parted, and he said he probably wouldn’t come out to a convention again. I told him if we make our way to the East Coast, I hope he would join us for dinner, and he said that would be much easier for his busy schedule. I really enjoyed visiting with him.
* * *
Last week, I drew my first commissioned piece, a giant monster sketch, similar to Fantastic Four #1’s cover, for Andrew Gregory. Then I inked copies of the three pencil pin-ups Al Feldstein gave me, because I just wanted to do some inking, and I thought it would be a great opportunity to ink a living legend. It was a lot of fun.
I thought I would be done with them and begin Doris Danger stories all last week. I wound up having things to do all week (trying to email people, having the baby’s ultrasound, going out to my local comics shop to sell two grocery bags full of comics, then going back a couple days later for their 50% off sale. And also my Dad was down for the ultrasound by chance, so he spent the night, and we got to have some time together). Before I knew it the week was over and I hadn’t done any drawing.