This episode, six months into the COVID-19 lockdown, is the first since my chat with Michael Dirda I was able to record the way these episodes are meant to be recorded — seated face to face with a guest over a table of delicious food. In this time when both conventions and restaurant dining are impossible, I’ve been hosting remote meals with guests whose face-to-face encounters “might have been,” most recently the previous three episodes — with Lee Murray, Stephen Dedman, and Farah Mendlesohn — which would have been recorded in the flesh in New Zealand if this year’s World Science Fiction Convention hadn’t gone virtual.
This episode, I was able to totally fulfill the mandate of this podcast, and lose myself in a meal as I sat across a table face to face with a creator. That’s because I’ve known this guest for 46 years plus a few months — and have been in constant conversation with her for almost all of that time. She’s been a part of comics and science fiction fandom several years longer than I have, and worked in comics longer than I did, too. When I started at Marvel Comics on June 24, 1974, she’d ready been there for a couple of months. She has many fascinating things to say about her time in comics — and her decades working in the romance field as well.
I’m of course talking about my wife — Irene Vartanoff — or as she was dubbed by Stan Lee — “Impish” Irene Vartanoff. Her novel Hollywood Superheroine — the final book in her comics-inspired Temporary Superheroine trilogy — was recently published, so this is the perfect time to have a chat about it all.
We discussed how she’d never have gotten into comics if not for her father’s cigar habit, what made a comic book reader become a comic book fan become a comic book professional, the “heartbreaking” advice given to her by Julie Schwartz during her teen visit to DC Comics, why her reputation as a famed letterhack meant she didn’t face the same sexism as other women in comics, what it was like working for Roy Thomas at Marvel and Paul Levitz at DC (and why she respected them both), how critiquing romance manuscripts for 25 years was like being at Marvel all over again, the secret origins of her Temporary Superheroine character, how politics changed Hollywood Superheroine, the final novel in her trilogy, why pantsing works better for her than plotting, the reason she decided to go the indie publishing route, and much more.
Here’s how you can eavesdrop on our conversation —
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3) Or check it out via the embed below.
Here are the take-out we devoured from the Evergreen Chinese restaurant as we chatted —
Egg Rolls
Fried Dumplings
Boneless Pork Ribs
General Tso’s Chicken
Happy Family
beef, chicken, jumbo shrimp, scallops, and lobster
with vegetables in brown sauce
House Special Fried Rice
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Finally — because of Eating the Fantastic’s unique niche — that is, on-the-road restaurant interviews, to which I’ll return as soon as the pandemic allows — there are expenses beyond the usual ones for studio-based podcasts. I sometimes use ride-sharing services to carry me and my guests from convention centers to restaurants and back, or I gas up to drive them myself — and then there’s that food I use to entice those guests to wander off and share of themselves with you, food which loosens their tongues, relaxes them, and — counterintuitively, because we are after all out in public surrounded by other diners — results a much more intimate environment than if we were alone together in a sterile studio.
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Next up will be my old pal Danny Fingeroth, who got his start in comics in 1976 as an assistant at Marvel to this show’s previous guest Larry Lieber, and whose biography A Marvelous Life: The Amazing Story of Stan Lee has just been published in paperback. I hope you join us as we eat Spider-Man SpaghettiO’s and many other superhero-shaped foods.
Thanks for listening!