Mike's Monthly Missives

Dear Readers,
Unfortunately, for all of us, Mike Kalibabky will be taking a leave of absence for the foreseeable future to deal with some pressing personal matters. All of us at BobLayton.com wish Mike all the best. It's been a genuine honor to work with him.

Dear Readers:
With the recent passing of my mother-in-law and all the responsibilities related with the settling of her estate, and the

green-lighting of a dream project, I'll no longer be writing my "Mike's Monthly Missives" column for boblayton.com.
I had a GREAT and exciting four years working with my all-time favorite Iron Man creator, Bob Layton. I absolutely hate to be leaving with Bob back in the saddle with the upcoming IRON MAN: LEGACY OF DOOM miniseries on the way, but that's how it goes.
My greatest contribution, perhaps, was KNOWING that Bob would be back on IRON MAN someday -- and even HE didn't BELIEVE me! Luckily I knew better.
But! I'll be the first in line purchasing my issues of IM: LOD and buying packs of the IRON MAN movie cards, hoping to get an original Layton sketch card.
As for my dream project, I'll be working more in-depth with digital photography and kids in my local district. In fact, I'm liquidating my entire comic collection and using the money to purchase small digital cameras to that end. (I am, however, keeping all of my original IRON MAN comic art pages by Bob.)
It was fun; it was a fanboy's dream.
Thanks to everyone for reading.

CONTEMPORARY PICTORIAL LITERATURE (CPL) #8 RETROSPECTIVE

Publishing fanzines in the early 70's was an exciting time for me. This was before the internet and before the ability for fans to congregate online or at conventions. C.P.L. was my first experience with meeting other people who were interested in comics and comic art. So, as you can imagine, my memories of that time are fond, indeed.

After High School, I met Roger Stern (who worked for a local radio station in Indianapolis and went by the nickname of "Sterno".) and we began publishing fanzines together.
Contemporary Pictorial Literature was the name of our main 'zine. It turned out to be an extremely popular fan publication for its day and eventually led us into a working alliance with Charlton Comics, with Sterno and me editing and publishing the Charlton Bullseye magazine. From there, we and many of our CPL cohorts moved on to have successful careers in the mainstream comic industry.

I am still amazed, to this day, that there are so many people who remember that small digest fanzine. I think we can attribute that to the number of contributors who went on to have notable careers in the comic book industry. Not just myself, but fan folks like John Byrne, Roger Stern, Don Maitz, Bob Hall, Michael Uslan, Tony Isabella, Roger Slifer, Steven Grant and Duffy Vohland all went on to work in the comic industry in one capacity or another. Add to that, the number of contributors to CPL who were already-established professionals like Gil Kane, Alex Toth, Paul Gulacy, Mike Vosburg, Dan Adkins, P. Craig Russell and Joe Sinnott and I think you have a formula for a milestone in fan-publishing.

Not only did we carve a nifty little niche into the infancy of comic fandom, but we also created a few memorable characters like the lovable letter hack Rog-2000 (who went on to his own series at Charlton Comics).

So this month, we're presenting a restored version of CPL #8 (originally published in 1974) in its entirety--warts and all!

I hope you'll have a good time seeing the early works of John(X-Men)Byrne, Michael(Batman & Constantine films)Uslan, Tony(Black Lightning) Isabella, Steve(Fantasy Illustrator)Fabian, Don(Fantasy Painter)Maitz, and others-- as well as the contributions of such professional greats as Joe Sinnott , Neal Adams and the rest.

It's a walk down 'memory lane' for some of you and a small piece of comics history for everyone.

Enjoy!