Harlan Ellison, one of the world’s foremost science fiction writers, has died at 84. His death was announced by family friend Christine Valada via twitter. Though Ellison was a longtime resident of Los Angeles, the location of death was not disclosed.
Tweeted Valada, the widow of Wolverine creator Len Wein: “Susan Ellison has asked me to announce the passing of writer Harlan Ellison, in his sleep, earlier today. “For a brief time I was here, and for a brief time, I mattered.’ – HE, 1934-2018. Arrangements for a celebration are pending.”
Among Ellison’s highly influential and very popular novels and novellas are 1969’s post-apocalyptic A Boy and His Dog (made into a 1975 cult film starring a young Don Johnson) and, among the very many short story collections, [his] 1980 [collection] Shatterday, which included the remarkable title story that became the basis for the very first episode of the rebooted 1985 Twilight Zone [Ellison was the creative consultant/ story editor for the entire first season].
Among Ellison’s Hollywood work was the screenplay for the non-sci-fi [film] The Oscar, starring Stephen Boyd, and he also wrote for such TV shows as The Flying Nun, Route 66, The Outer Limits, Star Trek and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.
Ellison’s Star Trek episode, “The City on the Edge of Forever,” is often cited as among the original series’ very best. Ellison himself was no fan of the end result, though, often complaining about rewrites. The 1967 episode had Captain Kirk (William Shatner) traveling back to 1930s New York and falling in love with a pacifist memorably played by Joan Collins. The twist: Kirk is faced with the prospect of saving the life of his new lady love, but doing so would altar the course of history to the extent that Germany would win World War II.
Revisions made to the script by, among others, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, so angered Ellison that the two feuded for years.
Decades later, on March 13, 2009, Ellison filed a lawsuit against CBS Paramount Television for income from the episode; a settlement was reached with amounts not disclosed.
Along with the Star Trek episode, Ellison’s 1964 Outer Limits installment “Demon with a Glass Hand” is widely considered among the best of its series. The bizarre, uncanny episode starred Robert Culp as a man who wakes with no memory but an apparently all-knowing glass hand. For years, rumors persisted that “Demon” inspired Terminator, though Ellison was quoted to have said, “Terminator was not stolen from ‘Demon with a Glass Hand,’ it was a ripoff of my OTHER Outer Limits script, ‘Soldier.'” According to a 1991 Los Angeles Times article, Ellison once again sued and settled.
His 1964 episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, “Memo From Purgatory,” starred a young James Caan as a writer who goes undercover to write about violent youth gangs of Brooklyn. The script was inspired by the Cleveland native’s move to New York to research a novel about street gangs.
Ellison also was a creative consultant to both the 1980s Twilight Zone reboot and Babylon 5.
[An Ellison] biography, A Lit Fuse: The Provocative Life of Harlan Ellison by Nat Segaloff was published last year.
Among the many awards won by Ellison are multiple Nebula, Hugo and Edward awards, along with Edgar Allen Poe and Writers Guild of America trophies.
Ellison was married five times, with no children. A full list of survivors was not available. Arrangements for a life celebration are pending.
He is one of the few creators I can think of who is as well known, if not more so, for the cult of his personality as for his work. And his work is quite outstanding.
Y'know, we always know you're joking, but in Ellison's case, there are no doubt people who probably feel that way. Gary Groth, for one. The two have a feud going back to 1980. Ellison was one of the most litiginous guys on the planet.
James Cameron's 1984 The Terminator movie's end credits start with "An acknowledgement to the works of Harlan Ellison". Because Ellison sued director James Cameron, and that acknowledgement was part of the settlement. Swiped concepts include Ellison's short story and televised episode "Soldier" (1964), about a genetically bred soldier sent back in time to our present, and his short story "I Have No Mouth, I Must Scream"(1967) about a sentient worldwide computer that deliberately starts a nuclear war to wipe out the human civilization it was designed to protect.
Ellison also partly contributed to the end of Warren magazines, when he sued in 1980 for Ellison story ideas swiped in one of their stories. Although Warren was already experiencing a precipitous drop in sales. They ceased publication in Feb 1983.
Another contribution by Ellison relevant to comics fans like ourselves is a 60-minute documentary that came out in 1987 titled THE MASTERS OF COMIC BOOK ART.
Ellison was the host, and he did 1-minute introductions to the 10 artists interviewed in the program. In order: 1) Will Eisner 2) Harvey Kurtzman 3) Jack Kirby 4) Steve Ditko 5) Neal Adams 6) Berni Wrightson 7) Moebius 8) Frank Miller 9) Dave Sim 10) Art Spiegelman
You can judge for yourself, but don't get turned off by the early interviews of Eisner, Kurtzman and Kirby (and reclusive Ditko didn't appear on camera, and instead did a rather intense editorial with voice-over images) who virtually all died just a few years later. The other 6 interviews afterward are all intelligent and very much worth seeing. And even in the first 4 weaker efforts, it's still great to see the artist, and listen to them in their own words. And most of all, I list it as a place to see Ellison in person, as no obituary or biography could capture him.
I also stumbled across this 1998 profile of Ellison from the Sci-Fi channel that really captures what Ellison was like. I knew he was friends with Robin Williams, it was nice to see him in the video, along with several other famous people.
For any who haven't ever sampled Ellison's short stories, I recommend starting with his ALONE AGAINST TOMORROW collection (1971), that collects some of his best and most acclaimed stories from the first 15 years of his writing career, including:
"I Have No Mouth,. I Must Scream" "The Discarded" "Blind Lightning" "'Repent Harlequin' said the Ticktockman" "Bright Eyes" "Eyes of Dust" "The Very Last Day of A Good Woman".
I like most of his short story collections through the 1970's and early 1980's, that for me have a high ratio of good stories. The downside of his 1960's collections, while also good, is that many of them repeatedly reprint a number of the same stories. A practice Ellison stopped after 1971 in his books. But in the first 15 years, his books were much harder to find.
For me, Ellison's most compelling nonfiction collection was MEMOS FROM PURGATORY, where he describes a number of things he observed living in New York, both socially among his peers, being arrested at political protests and spending time in "the tombs" (jail) overnight with a segment of society most of us rarely if ever see, and the hopelessness of them numbly rolling along on that track. And when he briefly ran with a gang in the late 1950's to understand the gang problem, a subject he initially knew nothing about, and so basically researched it undercover, running with a gang in Brooklyn for 4 months. It's an eloquent snapshot of American society as Ellison saw it in the early/mid 1960's.
Of the stories that best capture Ellison's personal life where he presents his true life and personality as a barely veiled character in his stories, I recommend: "One Life Furnished in Early Poverty" (in APPROACHING OBLIVION, 1974) "The New York Review of Bird" (in STRANGE WINE, 1977) "All the Birds Come Home to Roost"(where he nightmarishly relives all his past sexual relationships with women, in SHATTERDAY, 1980) "Jeffty is Five" (in SHATTERDAY, 1980) "The 3 Most Important Things In Life" (in STALKING THE NIGHTMARE, 1982) "The Hour That Stretches" (also in STALKING THE NIGHTMARE, 1982)
For those who haven't already read them, I hope I turned you onto some cool stuff. I think it virtually impossible for you to be disappointed with these stories. This is some passionate, brilliant, and often very funny writing.
I'm really surprised to see this published online, particularly by THE COMICS JOURNAL, from COMICS JOURNAL 53 (1980), where Groth gave a very lengthy and wide-ranging interview of Harlan Ellison. By their own conversation during the interview, it spanned about 5 hours. And transcribed in print form, it spanned about 40 pages.
Which combined with letters of his I'd seen in SWAMP THING 6 and FOREVER PEOPLE 3, are what finally compelled me to look for and read Ellison's books.
This is the interview where Ellison trashed Gerry Conway, Don Heck, Jack Abel and a few others, and led Michael Fleisher to sue Ellison and the COMICS JOURNAL, a lawsuit that lasted from 1980-1987, and almost bankrupted Fantagraphics.
It's also what spawned the 38-year feud between Gary Groth and Harlan Ellison. Ellison's every mis-step in those years was covered in the COMICS JOURNAL. Although certainly, Ellison provoked it on many occasions. But it made me think of the COMICS JOURNAL, for all its more intelligent offerings, as the NATIONAL ENQUIRER of comicdom.
From PLOP 8, Dec 1974, "A Likely Story" by Steve Skeates and Sergio Aragones, Ellison is hilariously parodied as a short-tempered elitist art collector named Elliot Harlanson.
Among several other parodies done of Ellison in comics.
Beyond parodies by others, Ellison also scripted or plotted many other stories in comics, his love for the medium is made plain in many of his book introductions, interviews, published fan letters and comic book story collaborations with many in the field. The adaptations of his work he wasn't pleased with he savaged relentlessly. Two I can think of offhand are:
a Gerry Conway/Syd Shores adaptation of "Delusion for a Dragon Slayer" in CHAMBER OF CHILLS 1, Nov 1972 (the short story is in Ellison's 1975 short story collection The Deathbird Stories.) And the Roy Thomas/Alex Nino adaptation of " 'Repent Harlequin!' said the Ticktockman " in UNKNOWN WORLDS OF SCIENCE FICTION 3, May 1975. As I recall, both panned by Ellison in his 1980 COMICS JOURNAL interview.
A far superior adaptation of "Repent Harlequin" illustrated by Jim Steranko appears in THE ILLUSTRATED HARLAN ELLISON, published by Byron Preiss in 1978.
Ellison's oddly architectured home, containing a vast array of art, sculptures and books, that even photos I've seen only give you the slightest glimpse of.
I came across a piece by a writer friend of Ellison's, where he describes Harlan Ellison's home as one of several that provided some inspiration for what he would like to do in creating his own home, give some impression of what it was like in all its glory.
lot of us male writers designing our own homes are, I suspect, a bit too much like boys planning their private treehouse. It’s hard for some of us grown-up-boy writers to avoid sticking secret rooms and passageways in our house designs.
I’ve visited Stephen King’s summer house, a very pleasant but unpresumptuous second home on a lake in central Maine, but I’ve never been to his home in Bangor. Still, many of us know that his main writing area in the expanded Bangor home is a hidden room with access through a secret door on a landing.
I don’t know if King has any other secret rooms in his home (I would hope so), but I do know that our mutual friend Harlan Ellison has seven secret rooms in his house. (Or is it eight now? It’s so easy to lose track.) There is a secret room made up of black rock and black carpet to simulate a cave. There are secret rooms, humidity controlled, in which archival racks of sliding shelves hold thousands of classic comic books and other collectibles. There is a hidden door opening on a low secret passage leading to a ladder opening on a hidden tower in which . . . but to tell more would be to ruin the fun.
The first time I visited Ellison Wonderland more than 20 years ago was the day I realized that most of us live in our homes more like tourists who keep their stuff in their suitcases during their entire stay somewhere (somewhere called . . . life), making little real mark on our environment. Entering many people’s homes is like coming into some place they’ve rented and expect to leave soon. Entering Harlan’s home is like entering Harlan’s mind. Actually, you don’t have to enter the house to get the first taste of Harlan’s mind.
Finding his little street may be a challenge, but picking out Harlan’s home once you’re on the street should be easy. Just look for the Martian temple. Do you think I’m kidding? Just check out this photo I pulled from the ‘Net –
Then, after you’ve parked at the curb and are heading for his front door – only a few steps from the street – you enter the next layer of Harlan Ellison’s cerebral cortex. Is it the 1949 Packard parked in the carport? No. Is it the beautiful, elaborately carved custom front door? Not yet. No, as you enter the small entry courtyard area next to the carport, the glint of sunlight on razorwire catches your attention and you glance up toward the roof of the carport and the deck up there outside his writing office, all protected by the razorwire, and you notice the gargoyles. And then you notice that the gargoyles look familiar . . . wait, isn’t that . . .?? It is. Phyllis Schafley. And the monstrosity next to it is Spiro Agnew. So Richard Nixon has to be . . . ah, there he is, that grinning saurian thing.
But the full shock awaits you inside.
I’ve heard different tallies for Harlan Ellison’s book and art collection: 100,000 books and 15,000 works of art? 200,000 books and 28,000 works of art? Depends upon who’s counting, I imagine – although Harlan and his minions have every single book, painting, poster, and collectible carefully catalogued – but let’s agree that there’s one hell of a lot of art and reading material in Harlan Ellison’s house.
Actually, during the terrible Northridge earthquake at 4:30 a.m. on January 17, 1994 – (no jokes or humor in this paragraph, folks) – a friend of mine, Ed Bryant, was staying at Harlan’s home, which, you should remember, is just below Mulholland Drive along the high ridge separating the Los Angeles basin from the San Fernando Valley, and Ed, thrown out of bed by the violent tremors, had to swim out of the house,. Everyone who escaped had to swim . . . swim through books and art and broken glass that filled the hallways to a depth of four feet.
Harlan himself was working at that early hour in his mezzanine writing area, above the long billiard room (shades of Mark Twain!) which is accessed through the low, beautiful hobbit door which is just the right size for Harlan but usually makes guests duck low, and at the first serious tremor he started to run down the stairway to the billiard room (somewhere near which is a secret door which opens into a room designed as a cave which I made the mistake of sleeping in during my first stay with Harlan, but that’s another story) when the real earthquake hit, traveling up to the ridgetop with a force equal, engineers later figured, of a negative six gravities . . . .
Harlan was launched up and over the stairway railing in the sudden darkness and then fell ten feet to the floor, his head missing the edge of the huge billiard table by less than an inch. Books and artwork were falling by the thousands. The billiard room is windowless and there was no light at 4:30 a.m.. Harlan lost consciousness for a few seconds and when he came to and started swimming his way up through the the books and papers – including thousands of pages of manuscript for the legendary and still-unpublished The Last Dangerous Visions which had been stacked up all around the mezzanine railing twenty feet above him – suddenly a heavy framed and glassed poster fell in the pitch blackness and struck him in the face, breaking his nose, giving him a serious concussion, and knocking him out again.
The Last Dangerous Visions and a ton of other literary and artistic treasures, now fluttering detritus, continued to fall until he was buried alive.
Harlan survived. (And he’s never appreciated my suggestion that death from being suffocated by a ton of The Last Dangerous Visions pages, now twenty years overdue to the publisher, would have been the most fittingly ironic obituary in the history of obituaries.) A few days after the earthquake he was standing at his sliding glass doors to the patio watching a raging storm outside and had just stepped away when the heavy metal canopy over the patio, weakened by the earthquake, gave way and smashed through the doors, destroying everything in its path. Again, Harlan survived.
Every collectible broken during the earthquake was painstakingly repaired or replaced. Some seemed irreplaceable – such as a unique, handcrafted cookie jar that I believe was given to him by Robin Williams – but Williams came through with a replacement that same week. Now every work of art is earthquake-proofed double-anchored, all the tens and hundreds of thousands of books now held in place by tasteful and expensive yachting bungee cords, every part of Ellison Wonderland itself patched and repaired and strengthened for the next earthquake.
The house may look like a Martian temple on the outside, but inside it’s a physical, three-dimensional celebration of the mind and unbounded imagination of Harlan Ellison. I’ve never encountered a home quite like it, even among the very, very wealthy or the very, very artistic. Oscar Wilde once said – “Put your talent into your work but your genius into your life.” Harlan Ellison’s home, Ellison Wonderland, is a strong argument that this man has put his genius into both his work and his life at home.
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On a smaller scale, my home shares similarities. I describe my own home as like a cross between an art gallery and a used book store. It's pretty universally liked by those who visit the first time.
Love the groovy modular/sculpture-like furniture, very evocative of the mid/late 1960's and 1970's. The linked photo of Ellison at his desk is the back cover photo from Approaching Oblivion hardcover, Ellison's 1974 short story collection.
A photo TCM showed of Ellison when they gave a recurring short montage of stars who died in 2018. I'd guess this photo is from the mid/late 1970's.
Ellison frequently in the 1970's would write a short story either in the display window of a bookstore, or live on the air during a radio program guest appearance. A display of the writer at work, and also of his craftsmanship, to work in a short prescribed time, or with call-ins to give him words or sentences that he would expand into a full story to complete and read on air, or at a booksigning appearance.
Harlan Ellison photo from the COMICS JOURNAL 53 cover, in early 1980 (age 45), the interview that got Ellison and interviewer/publisher Gary Groth sued.
Up till reading this interview in 1980, I'd only read Ellison's stories, starting with Approaching Oblivion (1971), that I actually checked out of my high school library. With the COMICS JOURNAL interview, I first saw what he looked like, and the cult of personality that extends beyond his writing.
There's a famous story of Ellison getting in a fight in a bar somewhere with Frank Sinatra, and then Sinatra's bodyguard, that (while probably embellished) presents Ellison as a guy who refused to be bullied.
Another story has Ellison getting in an argument with a network executive while writing an episode of Voyage To The Bottom Of the Sea, where the executive called Ellison a toady and to do what he was told, and Ellison responded by pushing the executive into a large model of the Seaview submarine, that allegedly fell on the executive and broke his hip.
Another story from the 1960's goes that some pulp magazine editor had wronged Ellison and they bitterly argued for several weeks, and Ellison in person and by phone railed on the guy endlessly. Then Ellison was gardening and found a dead gopher in his yard, and came up with the idea of mailing the dead gopher to his editor. Fourth class! By Ellison's account, the editor finally had enough when he received the gopher, called Ellison on the phone, and consented to reverse himself and give Ellison whatever he wanted.
Funny stories of Elllison's contentious nature. Highly embellished if true at all, but entertaining stories.
I was just re-reading the COMICS JOURNAL 53 interview of Ellison, wide-ranging, highly opinionated, and at points wildly funny stuff. It certainly captures Ellison's personality.
In the latter half of the interview, here's an excerpt of the part that spawned a lawsuit by writer Michael Fleischer.
Quote:
[Intermission. Ellison goes to pour himself a drink. As the tape resumes, he is explaining the nature of The Comics Journal to a friend who sat in on the interview. Her question: Is it like The Armchair Detective?]
ELLISON: In a way. Except The Armchair Detective is much more literary and it’s about something of greater substance. I mean, what they’re basically talking about is comic books. Comic books. Whether, in fact, the Hulk is a modern representation of the Faustian legend. Or, does Spider-Woman — I’m being deadly serious — does Spider-Woman more perfectly represent contemporary woman’s search for self-identification and self-fulfillment than the traditional image of Wonder Woman? This is the kind of thing they’re in. Or Steve Gerber: “Why They Threw Me Off the Howard the Duck Strip.”
Steve Gerber is crazy as a bed bug.
GROTH: Is he?
ELLISON: Yes. He’s as crazy as a bed bug. And if he isn’t, Mike Fleisher is. Did you find that review in Publishers Weekly [of Fleisher’s new book, Chasing Hairy] that I told you about?
GROTH: No, I couldn’t get the damn issue.
ELLISON: I read it to Len [Wein] and Marv [Wolfman] when they came out to the house. Their hair stood on end. I want to tell you something. The Publishers Weekly review said, “This is the product of a sick mind. It is so twisted and nauseating, it has no — absolutely no — redeeming social value.” It’s a book about a couple of guys who like to beat up women and make them go down on them. In the end, they pick up some woman — a hippy or whatever the fuck she is — and set fire to her and she loves it so much she gives them a blow job. Which is essentially what the review said about the book. It said, “This book is so fuckin’ twisted, there is no point even in discussing it. It is beyond the pale.” Who is the publisher?
GROTH: St. Martin’s.
ELLISON: They’re an A-1 publisher. I mean, they’re not a top rank, but they’re a very reputable house. Fleisher, when he was doing the Spectre — and I guess he did Aquaman too, didn’t he?
GROTH: No, I don’t think so. Steve Skeates did Aquaman.
ELLISON: He did the Spectre and he did something else.
GROTH: And he does Jonah Hex, which is really twisted.
ELLISON: Oh, yeah, right, right. This is a guy — it’s like looking at the paintings of Giger. There is a genuine, twisted mentality at work here, and it’s fascinating to look at. And I understand he’s a very nice, pleasant man.
GROTH: I understand he looks like an accountant.
ELLISON: Aren’t all Texas Tower snipers like that? [In cornball accent:] “He went to church every Sunday. He loved his mother. I have no idea why he cut up those 135 people and mailed parts of them off to other people COD. I don’t know why he did that. But he’s a good boy, a good Christian boy.” Fleisher — I think he’s certifiable. That is a libelous thing to say, and I say it with some humor. I’ve never met the man. But, what I see in Fleisher’s work and in Giger’s work… I mean, Giger’s clearly deranged. I mean, look at [his work]. Show [his work] to any psychiatrist. All of his visuals for Alien are sexual and psychosexual in nature. All of it. Endless vaginas and fallopian tubes and burning penises, and all kinds of fascinating stuff that makes life worth living. But, I mean, he’s really a nut case. His personal life, too. He’s got the skeleton of his second mistress in his home. I’ll tell you what’s really scary. Dan O’Bannon told me how [Giger] claimed the body [of his mistress] — apparently there was nobody to claim the body, so he claimed it. At that, you say, “OK, he loved her. He’ll bury her.” No, he doesn’t bury her. He takes her and he had the flesh taken off. You know how? Carpet beetles. You know what carpet beetles are?
GROTH: They eat flesh?
ELLISON: They eat flesh. They’re used by museums to clean the flesh off skeletons. And they pick it to the bone. They’re like piranhas. He used carpet beetles to clean her off and he’s got her now as an artifact in his apartment. Cute. Cute.
GROTH: Did you read the Jonah Hex story where Fleisher had Hex killed and stuffed in the end [in DC SPECIAL SERIES 16, Sept 1979] ?
ELLISON: [Laughter.] That’s fascinating. What’s interesting is that the thing that makes Fleisher’s stuff interesting was the same reason Robert E. Howard was interesting and nobody else can imitate him. Because Howard was crazy as a bed bug. He was insane. This was a man who was a huge bear of a man, who had these great dream fantasies of barbarians and mightily thewed warriors and Celts and Vikings and riding in the Arabian desert and Almuric, Conan, Kull, and all these weird ooky-booky worlds. He lived in Cross Plains, Texas in the middle of the Depression, and he never went more than 20 or 30 miles from his home. He lived with his mother until his mother died and then he went down and sat in the car and blew his brains out. Now, that’s a sick person. This is not a happy, adjusted person. That shows up in Howard’s work. You can read a Conan story as opposed to — I mean, even as good as Fritz Leiber is, Fritz is logical and sane and a nice man. Or take the lesser writers, all the guys who do the Conan rip-offs and imitations, which are such garbage, because all they are are manqué. They can’t imitate Howard because they’re not crazy. They’re just writers writing stories because they admired Howard, but they don’t understand you have to be bugfuck to write that way. Lovecraft — you can tell a Lovecraft story from a Ramsey Campbell story, from all the rest of those shlobos trying to imitate him, all the nameless yutzes shrieking like Lovecraft, they still have not got the lunatic mentality of Lovecraft. And the same for Fleisher. He really is a derange-o. And as a consequence, he is probably the only one writing who is interesting. The Spectre stuff was fuckin’ blood-chilling, which it was supposed to be. I mean, he really did the Spectre, man. For the first time since the ’40s, that goddamn strip was dynamite. And the first time they looked at what they were publishing, they said, “My God, we have turned loose this lunatic on the world,” and they ran him off. And that was a shame because Fleisher should have been kept on the Spectre forever. It was just the most perfectly nauseous ghoulish thing for him.
[Laughter.] What an absolute fuckin’ booby hatch this whole industry is.
GROTH: Aren’t you glad you’re not in it?
ELLISON: Yeah! I mean, I’m writing a Batman story for Julie Schwartz… [DETECTIVE COMICS 567, finally published in Oct 1986]
GROTH: You’ve been doing that for six years, haven’t you?
ELLISON: I know. I plan on getting it done before Julie retires. I really do. But, every time I get around these people, if they’re in L.A. and they invite me to their Comic Guild artist thing, and I look at some of these people, and I know them socially, and I say to myself, “Do I really want to go sit in a room with these people?”
GROTH: They’re all a little bonkers, aren’t they?
ELLISON: Oh, yeah.
GROTH: Have you met professionals in the industry you’ve felt were, comparatively, normal and well adjusted?
ELLISON: Yeah.
GROTH: Denny [O’Neil] is pretty normal.
ELLISON: Denny’s fairly normal. But, Denny’s got his oddnesses, too. Denny’s self-image is Orson Welles in The Lady from Shanghai. Black Irish. That’s what he thinks he is. That’s a little deranged for a man his age.
GROTH: Who do you think are abnormal and what are their particular traits?
ELLISON: I think anybody who works for Jim Warren is a card-carrying righteous nutcase who ought to be put away…
GROTH: There’s a great animosity between you and Warren, so your opinion is probably flavored quite a bit…
ELLISON: Well, the animosity is because he screwed me. And he’s got a very small mind.
I included a bit more with Ellison's comments about other writers, such as Gerber, artist H.R. Giger, Robert E. Howard, Ramsey Campbell, Dennis O'Neil and others. I don't think Ellison was any harder on Fleischer than he was on many others, and even saying "crazy as a bedbug" is a compliment of their off-the-wall creative genius that made their work so outstanding. I mean, his "crazy as a bedbug" comments mention Fleischer in the same category with the likes of Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft. That's some pretty damn fine literary company.
Gerry Conway, who Ellison railed on the hardest, went to Hollywood about a decade after, and became a prolific and successful Hollywood screenwriter, that I remember most for Father Dowling Mysteries, Law and Order, and Law and Order: Criminal Intent, among many other series. For all Ellison's savaging of him, arguably even more successful than Ellison.
They mention a few comics adaptations of Ellison's work that rank among my favorites.
Such as THE ILLUSTRATED HARLAN ELLISON (1978) with adaptations by Jim Steranko, Tom Sutton, Alredo Alcala, Leo and Diane Dillon, Wm Stout, and Overton Loyd. And the Earth/Kyben war stories by Ellison from the 1950's, adapted by Ken Steacy in EPIC ILLUSTRATED, later collected in the NIGHT AND THE ENEMY graphic novel, with some new bridging material.
The last of the Earth/Kyben stories adapted was "Demon With a Glass Hand" in a 1986 DC graphic novel by Marshall Rogers (adapting the award-winning Outer Limits episode in comics form). There are a few that remain unadapted.
I'd forgotten that Ellison had collaborated with Roy Thomas on one or more INCREDIBLE HULK stories in the early 1970's. And some adaptations by Thomas and Conway that Ellison recalled with contempt in his COMICS JOURNAL interview, of "Repent Harleqin" in UNKNOWN WORLDS OF SCIENCE FICTION magazine 3 (adapted by Thomas and Alex Nino) in 1975, and in CHAMBER OF CHILLS 1 "Delusion For A Dragon Slayer" in Oct 1972 (by Conway and Syd Shores).
Ellison's first published work in comics was an EC story "Upheaval" in WEIRD SCIENCE-FANTASY 24, June 1954, that you can see someone posted in a sealed CGC graded comic container, on the case listed as Ellison's first published work. Which it may or may not be, Ellison was still attending Ohio Stae University in 1954. As I recall Ellison began his career writing short stories in 1956. Ellison had first written the "Upheaval" story for a 1952 s-f fanzine, then re-packaged it and submitted it to EC. Ellison hit the jackpot, as it was not only purchased by EC, but also illustrated by Al Williamson. Ellison also sold the same story in various forms to several other publishers. The short story version of it, "Mealtime", was eventually published in Ellison's short story collection ELLISON WONDERLAND in 1962.
So while Ellison sporadically worked in comics while having his primary success as a book author and Hollywood screenwriter, it's pretty wild that he got his initial break as a comics fan who got to work professionally in the comics he loved, and then moved up from there.
Another not listed here is Ellison giving a plot idea to Dennis O'Neil to do a story about Batman hunting a Nazi war criminal that wound up as the O'Neil/Adams story "Night of the Reaper" in BATMAN 237, in Dec 1971. BATMAN 237, Dec 1971 complete story, online: https://readcomiconline.to/Comic/Batman-1940/Issue-237?id=17851
Ellison was friends with a lot of comic book writers, particularly Dennis O'Neil. And I guess it was just irresistible to do collaborarive stories with Ellison, either co-writing stories or Ellison offering plot ideas to guys like O'Neil and Roy Thomas that came out in comics like AVENGERS 101, BATMAN 237, or as cited here, Friedrich in JLA 89. Also one I cited earlier by Skeates in PLOP 8. The one in JLA 89 I was until now unaware of.
Ellison in interviews has talked about his friendship with Dennis O'Neil, and that Len Wein and Marv Wolfman regularly came to his home in Sherman Oaks to shoot pool and talk. Harlan Ellison and Frank Miller were also close friends. For most of these guys, they and Ellison were pretty close in age. Even for the younger ones, as time passed, even 15 years apart isn't much of a difference. Slightly older and well established, they would inevitably look up to Ellison. And that friendship and admiration inevitably led to a number of tributes, collaborations, and then adaptations of his stories. In my previous post, a review pointed out that increasingly throughout the mid/late 1970's and 1980's, Ellison did less and less, and most of the later works in comics form were others independently adapting Ellison's previous short stories.
Amazing how, even after all this time, you can still find little tidbits like this that you missed, almost 50 years ago.
I first met Harlan Ellison at a science fiction convention in New York in the 1950s [in 1955]. He approached me and asked me how tall I was. Satisfied that I was shorter than he, he asked me out. I was 16, he was 21.
Harlan lived down the hall from Bob Silverberg, whom he was in awe of, because Bob was already a much-published writer. Harlan himself had just sold his first book, “Rumble,” later reprinted with the classier title, “Web of the City,” in which Harlan claimed to have run with a teen gang using the name “Cheech Beldone.” He swore it was all true. I didn’t believe him.
We didn’t last a year, and I moved on to a handsome but terrible boyfriend who liked to make anti-Semitic remarks, and when I objected, would say he was just joking. But Harlan had become part of my karass. The word karass comes from Kurt Vonnegut’s book, “Cat’s Cradle.” It refers to a group of people who are somehow linked together for some reason, so that they keep showing up in each other’s lives. Fast forward to the early 1960s; I’m married and living in Los Angeles, and Harlan moves to L.A. to write for Star Trek, and we resume our friendship, adding my then husband, Paul, whom Harlan likes, to the karass.
In 1963, Paul went with Harlan to march for Civil rights in Selma, Alabama. I stayed home because we could only afford airfare for one, and Paul, being a man, was “more important” (It was 1963!). Harlan wrote it up for Playboy and Paul wrote it up for the underground newspaper, The L A Free Press.
Harlan was doing well, writing science fiction, movie and TV scripts, and articles for top-of-the-line magazines. When the Rolling Stones came to L.A. in 1964, he interviewed Bill Wyman for Playboy, and brought us along with him. Because of Harlan, I also got to meet Edie Adams, the very funny wife, then widow, of the incredibly funny Ernie Kovacs.
In 1966, Harlan wrote the screenplay for a movie which even he admitted was possibly the worst movie ever made, “The Oscar,” and in it was a supporting character named Trina, played by Edie Adams. Harlan said he based the character on me. Edie wanted to meet me, so that she could better understand the character she was playing, so Paul and I met her for lunch at the studio. Edie was smart, funny, gracious and beautiful, but when I saw the movie, she wasn’t the least bit like me.
That same year, Paul and I split up, and I moved back to New York. It was a no-fault separation, but even though Paul and I remained friends, Harlan somehow felt he had to take sides, and of course he took the side of the man (it was 1966!) and told everybody that I was an evil vampire who had broken Paul’s heart.
After that, Harlan and I would run into each other at conventions, and although his negative feelings about me cooled down, he liked to tease me by calling me by my maiden name, since he was the only friend left who had actually known me before I was married. I think maybe he was hoping to get my goat, but it didn’t bother me (I have been called far worse than my maiden name!) and I was always pleasant in return
Harlan could be a true friend, too. When “Women and the Comics,” my first history of women cartoonists, which I co-wrote with Catherine yronwode, was published, a certain cartoonist sent angry letters to all the comic industry magazines and newspapers, calling me names like elitist and careerist, because I had left out the names of some women whom he had published in his magazines. Truth told, I had forgotten about them because they didn’t really draw comics, but just single panel cartoons. But Harlan phoned to offer me his support, saying that the cartoonist was just jealous. He phoned me again when Ted Sturgeon, who had been friends with both of us, died.
The last time I spoke with Harlan was when I phoned him, hoping he would blurb my memoir, “Last Girl Standing.” He told me he was very ill, too ill to write anything for me. Once again, I didn’t believe him; I thought it was just an excuse so he wouldn’t have to write anything for me.
I’m sorry, Harlan, I shoulda believed you.
An interesting retrospective of Ellison by Trina Robbins, enlightening on many levels:
1) Trina Robbins was a pretty girl
2) That they had a decades-long initial dating relationship and then friendship
3) That Trina Robbins, a well-known lesbian artist, was apparently not a lesbian until the 1970's, dating Ellison and then married through most of the 1960's. No disclosure of why she changed teams.
4) A timeline of things that went on during both their lives in those years, the artistic accomplishments of both her and Ellison.
5) That he for a time for no apparent reason was hostile to her after her divorce might have resulted from his own bad relationships and divorces in four marriages up to that point, that might bias him toward the male POV of a divorce.
6) That she and Ellison dated when she was 16 and Ellison was 21. Clearly times and public perception of that age difference in a relationship have changed.
Also noteworthy that Trina Robbins herself is now 80 years old. When I first heard of her, she was in her late 30's.
Something I just discovered, comics writer Michael Fleisher, who sued Ellison and Groth in the lawsuit that lasted from 1980-1987 and almost bankrupted Fantagraphics, also died, just a few months before Harlan Ellison.
Michael Lawrence Fleisher (November 1, 1942 — February 2, 2018)[1][2][3] was an American writer known for his DC Comics of the 1970s and 1980s, particularly for the characters Spectre and Jonah Hex.
After Fleisher's 15 years as a comics writer, primarily on the Spectre in ADVENTURE COMICS 431-440, and on WEIRD WESTERN and JONAH HEX from 1974-1987, he left comics and embarked on a completely different career:
Quote:
Afterward, Fleisher attended college in New York City from 1987 to 1991, while also writing for the British comics magazine 2000 AD.[21] Leaving the comics field that year, he moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan for graduate school[21] at the University of Michigan, spending from 1994 to 1996 researching his Ph.D thesis on commercialized cattle theft in Tanzania while living for two years[21] near Nairobi.[22] He then spent a year in New York writing his dissertation and earned a doctorate in anthropology.[21] After that, he worked as a "freelance anthropological consultant carrying out research assignments for humanitarian organizations in the developing world."[21] Fleisher died from complications of Alzheimer's disease in Beaverton, Oregon on February 2, 2018.[23]
I read elsewhere that Fleisher had a wife and children in Kenya.
He completely changed gears and lived a completely different life after the Fantagraphics lawsuit.
And despite that, Fleisher (Feb 2 2018) and Ellison (June 28 2018) died within months of each other.
" 'Repent, Harlequin!' said the TickTockman", Ellison's most famous short story, originally published in 1965, in which year it won both the Hugo and Nebula awards for best short story. As illustrated with 10 full-page illustrations by Jim Steranko, accompanying the original text in 1978, for the anthology book THE ILLUSTRATED HARLAN ELLISON, published by Byron Preiss.
The above pages (6 of the 10 book illustrations shown) are from the "Repent, Harlequin" 12 X 18" limited edition portfolio (2000 copies, signed by both Ellison and Steranko) released at the same time as the book. At the end of the pictures is the ad that ran in Steranko's PREVUE magazine for the release of both. The book version has color overlays (3-D separtions by Neal Adams), as can be seen in the very last image. The portfolio version is black and white.
For all the talent of both Thomas and Nino, it was a less than satisfying adaptation. For me the original text with Steranko's illustrations is a far more definitive version.
I understand Ellison was exceptionally pleased with this adaptation by Steacy. And he was very vocal about any adaptations he was not pleased with. This was one of 3 stories of Ellison's "Earth/Kyben war" series adapted by Steacy in EPIC ILLUSTRATED. The others were: "Sleeping Dogs" in EPIC ILLUSTRATED 4, and "Life Hutch" in EPIC ILLUSTRATED 6.
All the Steacy adaptations, with some bridging new material, were collected in the graphic novel NIGHT AND THE ENEMY in 1987.
One additional Earth/Kyben story was adapted by Marshall Rogers, in SCIENCE FICTION GRAPHIC NOVEL issue 5 version of DEMON WITH A GLASS HAND in 1985. It has some subtle differences from the Outer Limits"Demon With A Glass Hand" TV episode, going more to Ellison's original script to eliminate changes made by network censors in the televised version in 1964.
There are other Ellison Earth/Kyben stories that remain unadapted. My favorite being "The Crackpots" in Ellison's 1967 short story collection, Paingod.
"Dogfight On 101" was a one-page illustration that accompanied Ellison's short story in the S-F anthology AMAZING STORIES, Sept 1969.
Later reprinted (without Steranko's illustration) in Ellison's short story collection THE DEATHBIRD STORIES (1975) under Ellison's original title for the story, "Along the Scenic Route".
I first saw this illustration in the STERANKO HISTORY OF COMICS, and only in the age of the internet was I able to find out where that image was originally published.
Somehow I neglected to previously add a link to the story. Skeates presents the character Elliot Harlanson, a short-tempered elitist art collector, who exhibits a lot of the same traits as writer Harlan Ellison. No doubt some playful ribbing of the author, by story writer Steve Skeates.
Adapted by Gerry Conway, with art by Syd Shores. I thought it was well done, but Ellison savaged Conway's adaptation in the COMICS JOURNAL 53 interview.
Another story in the same issue presents the first published work of Craig Russell, while he was still an art assistant for Dan Adkins, who inked the story.
Ellison was friends with a lot of comic book writers, particularly Dennis O'Neil. And I guess it was just irresistible to do collaborarive stories with Ellison, either co-writing stories or Ellison offering plot ideas to guys like O'Neil and Roy Thomas that came out in comics like AVENGERS 101, BATMAN 237, or as cited here, Friedrich in JLA 89. Also one I cited earlier by Skeates in PLOP 8. The one in JLA 89 I was until now unaware of.
Ellison in interviews has talked about his friendship with Dennis O'Neil, and that Len Wein and Marv Wolfman regularly came to his home in Sherman Oaks to shoot pool and talk. Harlan Ellison and Frank Miller were also close friends. For most of these guys, they and Ellison were pretty close in age. Even for the younger ones, as time passed, even 15 years apart isn't much of a difference. Slightly older and well established, they would inevitably look up to Ellison. And that friendship and admiration inevitably led to a number of tributes, collaborations, and then adaptations of his stories. In my previous post, a review pointed out that increasingly throughout the mid/late 1970's and 1980's, Ellison did less and less, and most of the later works in comics form were others independently adapting Ellison's previous short stories.
Amazing how, even after all this time, you can still find little tidbits like this that you missed, almost 50 years ago.
I neglected in my earlier post to provide a link to the complete story, so here it is, for your reading pleasure :
While there are a lot of big names adapting Ellison's stories in this collection, such as John Byrne, J.K. Snyder, Tom Sutton, David Lapham, Doug Wildey, Mike Deodato, Pat Broderick, Michael T Gilbert, Phil Foglio, Gary Gianni, Paul Chadwick, Brett Blevins, Rags Morales, Eric Shanower and so forth, even of the short stories I originally liked in text form, I found the adaptations a bit half-hearted and unspectacular. Dark Horse promoted this series as award-winning Harlan Ellison stories adapted by first rate talents, but as I said in my letters to Dark Horse, I found them to be "third rate adaptations by first rate talents". I far prefer other Ellison adaptations more, such as the far more worthy THE ILLUSTRATED HARLAN ELLISON (1978), and the Ken Steacy adaptations in EPIC ILLUSTRATED 4, 6 and 11. https://readcomiconline.li/Comic/Epic-Illustrated/Issue-11?id=106232#1
