A few words about this picture!
There’s a lot going on is this picture. First, it’s taken on Shap Day, April 27, 1982. Not only the late Barry Shapiro’s birthday but Marvel’s moving day! This is the old Mail Room on the 10th Floor (of 575 Madison Ave — soon to be moved down to the achingly new mail room at 387 Park!). This is a rare shot of a very “clean” Marvel Mail Room. Because, it is moving day and most of everything is stuffed in a box somewhere.
Obviously a lot of the Mail Room’s materiel is flat. Paper, comic books, more paper—that sort of thing. Or–! Something that is round, fluffy and delicate (and I am not referring to anyone’s toupee… ) is much harder to stuff in a box…
That would be Howard the Duck’s head.
WHAT is that doing there? One must recall that there was a sweet time when you could hire costumed people to portray comic characters for store openings, auto dealership new car events, marketing opportunities—whatever! In the mid-to-late 70s, Howard was a boiling hot character and a fairly cheap costume to make and maintain… (which I attribute to the brilliance of Steve Gerber and Val Mayerik!)
I believe this was a spare head. These costumes were the devil’s own to wear and walk around in. Tripping (in those giant webbed shoe/feet) and bashing in the delicate heads were a real possibility. Having a spare was vital. Mustn’t traumatize the children.
But the special box to carry it in? Must’a gone missing. I believe Howard had to be specially carried by hand, by one of the moving men in the front cab…
The cage to the rear was to keep wandering freelancers out! That doorway was along the corridor that housed my own and Robbie Carosella’s stat cameras, the typesetting machine, George Roussos’ coloring room and at least one artist (Dave Cockrum) or Editor (Tom DeFalco and his batman, Mark Gruenwald). Thieves and brigands all! And that cage was all that separated them and the rich bounty of office supplies…
Of course anyone with the stick-to-it-iveness of staying late to work, would see that dear Anna the Cleaning Lady would have left that cage wide open in order to run her cart of our daily trash around more efficiently.
Anyone need a #10 envelope? Or a low-mileage Howard The Duck head?
(Old, age-ist me, must remind the young of the world out there that this title makes reference to a wild 1974 movie, starring Warren Oats and directed by Sam Peckinpah: Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia!)
Rumor has it that Anna the Cleaning Lady went through all the Marvel trash and amassed a treasure trove of Stan’s typewritten scripts and notes to artists and writers and sketches by John Romita, Dave Cockrum, Marie Severin and others. She took home all of the submission people sent to Marvel including original penciled versions of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Simpsons comics and cartoon drawings by Matt Groening and many others. Then she took all of this material to a man named Alex and in turn he paid her enough cash that she and her aged husband were able to move back to Czechoslovakia and live like millionaires.