I've mentioned in other threads that Gil Kane walked me down the aisle at my wedding. He was subbing for ulie Schwartz who didn't want to fly to Los Angeles after thanksgiving. Gil and Elaine Kane were, for most of my life, a second set of parents and Julie was a super-combo of Grandad/dad/best-friend and sometimes beloved burden.

All this came about quite by accident when I met Julie at the age of 17 or 18 (I forget which). We became close when I left Graduate School in 1986 and began driving him to regional conventions. He had taken a shine to me during a long fire-drill at a Lunacon when he and I and Isaac Asimov got tfed up with repeated pullings of the alarm and sneaked back into our hotel together. isaac was so mad he packed his bags and took a taxi back to the train station and Julie and I stayed up talking. He had lost his wife a couple of years prior and when he found that I loved Dixieland Jazz, contract bridge and dry manhattans, he felt we were made to be BFFs.

This was a blessing that changed my life forver since Julie isnisted I get a job as Analog/Asimov's magazines and stop working a thankless Wall Street job. his motives were to free me up to accompany him to more conventions each year since he hated traveling alone and had a terrible fear of falling in a hotel room in tthe dark while alone. Our relationship was completely and totally platonic but that didn't stop people from snickering about "us".

Anyway - I had always been interested in comics but Julie schooled me in the cutting edge materials of the 1980s and gave me copies of as much Silver Age material as he could get his hands on. I remember how wonderful it was to get to handle and read a copy of the Batman film script a year or more before it came out. Julie also gave me everything of Alan Moore's. He thought rewally highly of him.

Eventually Julie introduced me to the Kanes in 1987 and when I moved to Los Angeles in 1990, we became close. I had a bad year in 1993-94 with a terrible health crisis and a home-invasion robbery/assault right after Jack Kirby's funeral of all things and that brought us much closer. After I moved, I began dating my husband and the Kanes often douvble-dated with us which was so darling!

We double-dated to the Hollywood Bowl to see Mel Torme in one of his last public performances. It was one of thosemagical nights you never forget. We went out to a cafe afterwards and Gil was drawing on the paper table-cloth. He was embarrassed when I tore it off to keep as a souvenir but I did it anyway. Long story short- when Dave proposed, nobody was more thrilled than Gil and Elaine. Gil assumed the role of Father of the Bride with enthisuasm and Elaine took me dress shopping. Now that Gill has passed way, I am so thankful for those memories.

What has any of this to do with the original question - not much I suppose except to say that since the age of 19, I have spent my personal life and a large part of my professional life immersed in the Comics world. My happiest memories are often of long, lazy sundays at the end of conventions when Julie and I and his group of friends and colleagues would sit in a hotel restaurant and I would listen as then reminsced and argued about the past! I spent a lot of time with the wives and duaghters of Comic greats since we kept eachother company while the "boys" were onstage doing panels or sitting signing autographs. It gave me an interesting perspective on the industry.

I still have some Superman jewlery that Julie used to give to his favorite girls known as "Juliettes". Reading this thread has brought back many happy memories.

FYI - I always felt bad for Jughead too. i rememebr one story where he nearly died from Food poisoning and the gan didn't find him cuz he had played a prank or something and was lying sick in the school on a weekend. Horrifying!

The other totally horrifying comic I recall was when Bandit from Johnny Quest got lost and eventually captured by a Dog Fighting Ring! It was so ghastly. Eventually, He tells the other dogs how to team up and escape and Johhny finds him but the really baaaaad dog who is all grizzled and busted up from years of fighting to the death - he sacrifices his own life against the captors to buy time for Bandit and the others. I sobbed for DAYS over that one. bandit was a good dog.