Over in a comment thread on the 13th Dimension site, a fellow named Scott Rogers posted the following and a lot of folks have sent it to me to ask about it. By "SDCC," he means San Diego Comic-Con, which is now known as Comic-Con International. The events he'd recalling took place back when it was at the old San Diego Convention Center…
When I was about 7 years old, I was attending SDCC. The show was so small that it pretty much fit into one large ballroom. I remember seeing a man sprinting across the room holding something under his arm. Suddenly Harlan (I didn't know it was him at the time) stood up, and shouted. "The son of a bitch just stole Jack Kirby's Inkpot Award! GET HIM!" The entire room turned as one. That thief never had a chance!
Mr. Rogers, being around seven at the time, can certainly be forgiven for not recalling or knowing quite what happened. What happened was that Jack had been given an award…and it was not an Inkpot. He got his Inkpot years before the first con Harlan attended. I believe it was a plaque indicating that Jack had been initiated into the Hall of Fame, which is now known as the Eisner Hall of Fame. He received it during an afternoon ceremony.
A bit later, Jack, his wife Roz and a daughter or two were roaming the exhibit hall and Jack was occasionally being stopped for an autograph. A kid of about fourteen asked for one and Jack was happy to oblige.
I never knew this young man's name but we'll call him Tom here. He had a stack of comics and purchases with him. Jack had an armload of books he was carrying around with him and the plaque was somewhere in that armload. Both Jack and Tom put down their piles, Jack signed whatever it was that Tom wanted signed and thanked him. Jack always thanked you if you asked him for an autograph. He thanked you for almost everything.
Jack and Tom then picked up their respective piles and somehow, Jack's plaque transferred from his armload to Tom's stack of goodies. Neither noticed.
Five or ten minutes later, Jack ran into Harlan and they had a nice conversation full of mutual respect and compliments. In the middle of it, Jack noticed that his plaque was missing. He rummaged through the armload and there was no sign of it. Harlan immediately sprinted for the entrance to the room and grabbed up a microphone which the staff used to make announcements to all present. I cannot quote to you exactly what he said but it went roughly like this…
This is Harlan! Some son-of-a-bitch scumbag just stole Jack Kirby's award and he's not getting away with it! I am going to stand in the doorway and nobody's leaving this room until we find Jack Kirby's award and when I get my hands on the depraved degenerate who would do something like that, I'm going to make that pissant sorry he was ever born!
That's not the precise wordage but it is, I assure you, the precise rhetoric.
No one in the hall knew quite what to make of it and you could hear many pairs of eyes rolling. Following it, Harlan indeed stood in the doorway and everyone else went about their business.
About five minutes later as I walked through the hall, a young man came up to me. I didn't know him but he said, "Excuse me. Aren't you Jack Kirby's assistant?" I told him I had been that and he asked me to follow him behind a nearby dealer's display to a spot where we could not be seen. There was a kid standing back there, trembling and sobbing. It was the lad I'm calling Tom and he was holding Jack's award. "I didn't steal it," he told me. "I swear to God, I didn't! I guess I accidentally picked it up or something! Can you help me, please?"
I took the award and assured Tom he would not be arrested or forced by Harlan Ellison to regret being born. He was even more worried about Jack Kirby being mad at him and I promised him that would not be the case, either. Then I returned the plaque to Jack, who (of course) thanked me and never for a second imagined anyone had stolen it. It was just missing, that's all. Then I went over and told Harlan it had been found and he could stop standing in the doorway almost threatening to strip-search anyone who tried to leave. He seemed…disappointed.
A bit later, Tom had it together and I took him over to Jack, who couldn't have been sweeter or nicer. Tom apologized. Jack told him no apology was necessary and since he could see the kid was shaken and honestly upset, he offered to do Tom a little sketch of his favorite character. When Tom then chose The Hulk, Jack didn't flinch even though at that point in his life, he had left that character behind at his former employer. (I could see a couple of folks who witnessed the whole exchange start trying to figure out how they could steal Jack's award and then return it for the free sketch.)
I haven't told this story for a long time and I think the last time I told it, it was in a discussion with someone about how in life, if you meet someone you admire and respect, you naturally try to take a little something from them, looking at what they do well and hoping you can emulate even a smidgen of it. I learned many things from Jack and from Harlan but I've tried to learn more from Jack.
Which is not to say I did not admire many, many things about Harlan. Start with his writing and his constant demands for dignity (including proper payment) for his/our profession.
Toss in his childlike, unrestrained glee when things went super-right or even just right. I wrote about that in the previous piece about him.
And then let's not forget how sensitive and benevolent he could be to some people. At times, I was one of those people and others have posted many stories about his compassion and desire to make things better. If you never experienced that side of him, you would not have an accurate sense of him as a human being.
But I came to be really, really uncomfortable at his tendency to turn minor differences (or in the case of the above story, a simple misunderstanding that righted itself within minutes) into all-out war, threatening to chew on someone's eyeballs. That he usually did it with colorful, clever language only mitigated it a tad or, I dunno, maybe it made it worse. When I'd hear him rage and speak of violence by fists or lawyers, I'd think a guy that smart and that clever ought to be able to come up with a different ending to most stories besides staging a big fight scene.
I don't enjoy screaming matches, don't like loud confrontations, don't have rosters of people I yearn to punch out or otherwise get revenge upon…and yes, I know some people are entertained by that kind of thing or even enjoy participating. I don't…and as I get older, I see less and less reason to overlook or forgive it. Most of our mutual friends would tell you — some with a certain odd pride — of that time Harlan was an unbelievable asshole to them. Then they might or might not add something like, "Hey, if you want to be Harlan's friend, you have to put up with a certain amount of this."
At some point in our friendship of nearly fifty years — I can't tell you precisely when — I decided that I didn't want to put up with a certain amount — I can't tell you how much — of that. I decided it would prolong that friendship if I didn't see him too often. That may have been my loss because he was a brilliant man and — as I said and I don't want this overlooked — he could be the sweetest, most considerate person on the planet. But I decided I just couldn't take the times when he was that other guy.