{"id":2424,"date":"2014-05-06T14:29:00","date_gmt":"2014-05-06T21:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comic-con.org\/toucan\/?p=2424"},"modified":"2024-01-10T11:43:17","modified_gmt":"2024-01-10T19:43:17","slug":"maggies-world-017-organizing-memories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comic-con.org\/toucan\/maggies-world-017-organizing-memories\/","title":{"rendered":"Maggie\u2019s World 017: Organizing Memories"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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MAGGIE’S WORLD<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maggie\u2019s World 017: Organizing Memories<\/h1>\n\n\n
Maggie Thompson<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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I\u2019m in the midst of one of those gigantic, never-ending projects that are among the duties and joys of life. Which is to say: I\u2019m tackling the project of organizing memories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It started when I was going through family papers, came across a small, professionally framed photograph, and realized that no identification appeared anywhere on it. Then it occurred to me that, should they be the ones to have access to it eventually, daughter Valerie and son Stephen might not realize its significance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Who is this? There was no indication on the photo, front or back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The anonymous little boy sitting with a guitar is my dad, less than 4 years old. The reason he\u2019s grinning as he prepares to pluck the string is that he\u2019s going to tell the adults in the room what the color is of the note when he plays it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The photo is one that they didn\u2019t print out of several taken for an article that appeared in Popular Science<\/em> in November 1922: an article about Dad and the synesthesia he was demonstrating. No, I don\u2019t think anyone else in the family has ever manifested synesthesia\u2014but, in any case, that\u2019s not the point here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The point is that I knew about the photo, about the magazine, and about the story behind it all. But almost no one else did\u2014until I posted the information on Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of which made me consider again the boxes and boxes and files and files of photographs I\u2019ve accumulated. In one folder, marked simply \u201cFans + Friends,\u201d there are photos of folks I immediately recognize\u2014alongside those of folks whose identity I\u2019ve long since forgotten. While I\u2019ve been relieved to find that I\u2019m not alone\u2014Jackie Estrada has mounted a campaign on Facebook to have her friends help to identify celebrities of years gone by\u2014it\u2019s time to begin to get a handle on the situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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How about him?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And time for me to ask whether it\u2019s time for you to do the same. In your files, have you maintained captions to identify your photos of people long gone at events of years gone by?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I was smart enough to write identifications on the back of this 1966 photo of Klaus Nordling, Otto Binder, Larry Ivie, and Ted White.
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For example, in that \u201cFans + Friends\u201d file, I found a photo of a mustached gent standing by a vehicle. I knew immediately that it was a photo of himself that underground comix artist George Metzger had sent us in the 1960s. But it carried no identification beyond my memory. And what about photo after photo I\u2019ve taken at a variety of conventions (science-fiction and comics) over the decades?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I came across a handful of photos that Don and I took in 1966 at John Benson\u2019s July 23-24 comics convention in New York City. On some of them, I had written identifications; on others, there\u2019s just a note of the year. But that was the only time we ever had the chance to meet Lady Luck<\/em> artist Klaus Nordling\u2014or Fawcett\u2019s Captain Marvel<\/em> writer (and DC\u2019s Supergirl creator) Otto Binder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(As a pioneering comics convention, the event is also notable to me as having been attended by only four females: Western author Lee Hoffman, fan Pat Lupoff, Marvel representative Flo Steinberg, and me. But I digress.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s the thing: As I Google the images for Nordling, I find page after page of his Lady Luck<\/em> work and more\u2014but not a single photo of Nordling himself. Surely, there are such images out there somewhere. But how many are sitting in scrapbooks without identification? And he was a professional who worked in the comic book field for decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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On the other hand, I have only my dim memories to tell me that this 1966 panel consisted of (left to right): Gold Key Editor Bill Harris, Marvel Editor Roy Thomas, comics historian Maurice Horn, and writer-artist Gil Kane.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And, come to think of it, how many online photos of Bill Harris exist? When we first met, he was our kindly host at Gold Key, but I don\u2019t think we brought a camera along to preserve the event. (Later, Bill did his best to steer King Comics into a new distribution plan for comics, trying to solve the perennial problem of low sell-through. However, there doesn\u2019t seem to be much information online concerning him, aside from listing after listing for his work scripting Phantom<\/em> comics.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back to my topic: While there\u2019s a wide variety of images online and in comics collections devoted to the fictions we all enjoy, there do not seem to be nearly as many images of the people who made those comics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don and I put together Comic-Book Superstars<\/em> in 1993. Ostensibly, it was to provide yet another item for sale by our comics division. But I confess it was also designed to provide us with a reference file for ourselves in non-Googling days: We needed creators\u2019 photos and contact information. It was our own resource, and we even used it from time to time to provide work for people who wanted to get job offers without having to have an agent or make their addresses public knowledge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Could it be time now for someone, somewhere to set up such a resource again? You may think all the images ever needed are out there somewhere, but that doesn\u2019t mean they\u2019re available. And even when the images survive, sometimes the identifications don\u2019t. I\u2019ve lost track of the number of photos I\u2019ve taken that don\u2019t have identifications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I recently began the following process:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve peeled the photos out of the destructive 1970s scrapbooks that blended photos on sticky pages with plastic overlays. Thanks to the gooey residues, each photo now sits in a small plastic bag that protects each. (Bigger photos go in clear report covers.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m labeling each plastic covering with as much information as I can include.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve bought file boxes, hanging folders, and non-hanging folders for subfiles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I\u2019ve begun to sort the physical photos, of which I have decades\u2019 worth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The young man holding my baby Valerie in 1967 is 18-year-old writer-artist Wayne Howard, before he began his professional career.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Sorting by date is a good place to start; it brings like next to like and often provides context. (Who knows? Eventually, I may be able to identify someone by emailing the photo to someone else in that photo and asking for help.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the course of things, I\u2019ll add negatives when they turn up. And, when I hit something that strikes me as of special interest, I\u2019ll scan it for further distribution. (Note: Photos shown here\u2014and many other photos on the Internet\u2014look terrific online, yet would look terrible in print; scanning for proper preservation requires higher resolution. Just saying.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then? Well, I\u2019m thinking an Excel file and a printout thereof to go with the physical material in the folders. Which brings me to other electronic historical considerations, including filing and printing the digital images, of course. And backing up everything, also of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the 2014 convention season has already begun. My camera is loaded with a fresh photo card.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This photo project could take a while. I\u2019m starting now. How about you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Maggie\u2019s World by Maggie Thompson appears the first Tuesday of every month here on<\/em> Toucan!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Written by<\/p>\n\n\n

Maggie Thompson<\/div>\n\n\n

Published<\/p>\n\n\n