It never ceases to amaze me how things I did as a child or teen — things which back then might have seemed silly or frivolous or an enormous waste of time — later became a part of my career and livelihood. The first time Hanna-Barbera put cartoons out on home video, eons ago in the era of Beta, I was paid actual money to advise on which cartoons from their early shows (Huckleberry Hound, Quick Draw McGraw, Yogi Bear, etc.) should be on the first release.
I did it from memory. The fee wasn't majestic but I actually did make money because I'd watched those cartoons at ages 7-10. I could and did call my parents and tell them I'd made sitting in front of our one TV as a kid pay off. Here's another example.
As we all know, none of us are at Comic-Con International at the moment because there ain't no Comic-Con International. If it were on, I'd be in San Diego right now. I'd have done two or three panels this morning to add to the nine I did yesterday and I'd now be over at the Abrams booth signing copies of this…
It'll be out next month and you can pre-order a copy of it here but they would have had copies available at Comic-Con. It's a boxed set reprinting the teensy-tiny Marvel Mini-Books of the sixties with an explanatory introduction by me, including the tale of what I had to go through to collect all six of them. It took a lot and it's another one of those things I did as a youth that somehow later turned into actual employment.
I talk about how hard ut was to collect all six of then on the Abrams ComicArt panel which goes "live" at 1 PM today on YouTube. It's not really live. We recorded it a few weeks ago so you can watch it at any time after 1 PM today on the Comic-Con website and once I can, I'll embed it below…