That's what Alan Weiss calls it. The summer of 77 on 45h and 9th. I shared an apartment on 45th st. and 11th Ave in Manhattan with Chris Goldberg. A comics community insider adopted by the gang, found this sublet at the same time I was looking to move into the city from Queens. Didn't matter much where we lived then because we spent most of our time at Continuity. Neal Adams' studio, where we hung out and made comics. I shared a room in the back with Marshall Rogers. Both of us drew lots of Batman. A couple of years later, Chris also became a creator and wrote 'Cap'n Quick & a Foozle' for Eclipse. Marshall drew it. That sublet was a little surrealistic. Big furniture, four poster beds, plants everywhere. A spaced out movie set is what it really was. We hung out there a little but Continuity was the real home. That's where we made the comics. Alan had an apartment on the corner of 9th Ave and 45th st. We'd sit on his fire escape having a smoke and waiting for Lisa Chapin, Harry's sister, while we conspired how to fix the big mess of a world we were having such a good time in. Alan and I spent more time on his fire escape, overlooking 9th Ave, than I did at my sublet. Tony Dispoto had a land rover. An art dealer from Jersey with lots of old Warner Brothers' cartoon soundtracks and Benny Goodman tapes. It was for going out to hunt for food or to find a good Italian restaurant, depending on who you asked. The soundtracks and the tapes blasted every ride we took in the rover. Joe Barney was an assistant. Cary Bates wrote Superman. Larry Hama played in a band. Russ Heath told jokes. Mike Hinge illustrated Time magazine covers. Jack Abel and Terry Austin inked. Joe Brozowsky colored. Carl Potts pontificated. Joe Rubinstein asked questions. Howard Chaykin popped in. Jim Starlin too. Even Sergio Aragones. Gray Morrow also puffed on a pipe. Everyone in the family popped into the studio sooner or later, during the summer of 77 on 45th and 9th.
We saw Zeppelin, Genesis twice, Yes twice, and ELP at the Garden, Tull at Radio City and Peter Gabriel at Carnegie Hall. We toked, we sipped. We tripped. We tooled, we partied, we dined and wined. We smacked each other silly with a volleyball at the Sheep's Meadow in Central Park. We were celebrities at the conventions and pests at the publisher's offices. We gathered at the Wrightson, Kaluta, Jones and Smith studio to have a drink, shake hands with Berni's skeleton and make sure everyone was accounted for. We bashed the First Fridays of every month at Jeanette Kahn's apartment on Central Park West. The comics community was a family in its heyday and we were its children. It was our magical summer of 77 on 45th and 9th. That's what Alan still calls it.
The party was coming to an end anyway, so I busted out and got on a highway to California. The family would soon scatter, not to gather together again. Not in the same way it was together in the summer of 77 on 45th and 9th. Everyone was now gone.
Except for Alan.
Alan Weiss. Latest addition to Portraits of the Creators Sketchbook.
