The Far-Flung Fellowship of FOOM!
From my Secret Oranges Blog: 14.12.2011
Time: 8.30 am (ish) GMT
Date: 24th March, 1973.
Location: Wilmot Road, Carshalton, Surrey, UK.
Item: FOOM Membership pack.
The letterbox flap slammed shut and outside, a squeaky gate closed behind a bemused postman. The eager boy leapt from the breakfast table and ran towards the front door, unconcerned that his Puffa Puffa Rice™ cereal was destined to become horribly soggy. On the worn coir doormat, something lurid and green lay there... just lay there, grinning. 50 new pence down and finally the wait was over; I had finally been accepted into the far-flung fellowship of FOOM and here was my membership card...
I have to admit that when I first saw the FOOM #1 cover, I was just a little bit disappointed. The boy that I was at the time, wanted something a bit more comics-related, but when I opened the magazine, I loved everything about it. Seeing the cover 49 years later as an adult, I can totally appreciate it as another brilliant piece of Steranko graphic design. The fact that Stan and his fabulously verbose Shakespearean text graces the cover is completely justified, for he was and always will be, Stan the Man.
I gained an immense amount of pleasure re-discovering these FOOM issues, and I'd forgotten just how much they'd inspired me as a kid. I happened to mention this to my long-time collaborator and friendly neighbourhood neighbour, Alan McKenzie, a few years back, and he told me that it was actually him who'd mailed out all the FOOM issues back in the day.
"I've no conscience! I'm willing to take advantage of you big-hearted boobs! (Yeah, don't think that meant quite the same thing in 1973) So here's my measly 50p (Ten shillings!!!) Rush my big bargain FOOM membership kit immediately.
To me this actually seemed pretty cosmic. The thought that a young Alan McKenzie had actually pasted my hand-written address label onto the back of that Hulk envelope and put it in the post to another kid who would then, ten years later, turn up for the design job in his editorial office at Marvel UK was a little bit, yeah... cosmic. Just to get the facts straight, I emailed him about it and he replied...
Hi, Steve,
Yep ... I did a few stints of holiday work at Marvel UK during my student days. This was when the offices were still in Holborn. I’m pretty sure the first stint I did was at Easter. Then I did the Summer and the next couple of holidays. I was doing all the mailouts. I remember some of the items I did – Sea Monkeys (honest!), Spider-Man Spinners (frisbies!) and of course FOOM packs.
I remember we ran out of Hulk envelopes (the FOOM thing was a massive success). So the tail end of the mailout went out in plain manilla envelopes. AM
10 years later... A selfie of Me, Alan McKenzie and Jane Hindmarsh at Marvel UK, circa 1984
With this in mind, alongside an extensive list of eager kids who'd entered the FOOM Create-a-Character-Contest, who now seem to be working in the comics business throughout the land, it really does seem that birds of a feather flock together. Perhaps Stan was onto something; might it just be possible that he had inadvertently created a sort of comics cabal; a Prieuré de Sion for the modern age?
Read the cover and think about it...
Now, the interesting thing I discovered when searching for my name among the zillions of other Create-a-Character-Contest entries in issue #4 of FOOM (below), were a few familiar names of people working in the comics biz today. Some are highlighted and I've chopped and pasted a few others from elsewhere on the spread.
R.I.P. Tim Sale May 1, 1956 - June 16, 2022.
Fun Fact: Dan (Danny) DiDio was my boss for 6 years, after I’d joined DC Comics in Burbank, 42 years later.
There may well be more… if anyone knows a familiar name that I missed, feel free to mention it. Could that be Mark Moore of S'Express, the British dance music act from the late 1980s? I had to know...
One email later…
Yes, my suspicions were correct, it was indeed Superfly Guy and Heroic DJ, Mark Moore. This is what he said when I asked him.
"Omigawd. Yes that's me! I came up with the lamest super-hero who was a gangster midget on jet-powered roller-skates. Looked like Jimmy Cagney in 'The Public Enemy'.... He was called Joe DaMidge >groan<".
Coincidentally, Mark and S'Express made a guest appearance in 2000 AD weekly, in the Bradley strip by Alan McKenzie and Simon Harrison. I also got to meet and photograph Mark and S'Express when I did some work for Rhythm King Records in 1989. It’s a very small world, innit!
Above: Mark Moore and S'Express (Linda, Michellé, Chilo) in their Stretch Limo - London, 1989. And my favourite shot of them, below.
ulp. In my excitement and zeal to be an oh-so-clever supernerd, I didn’t do my research. Humus Sapien(s) DID indeed appear in a Marvel comic 28 years later in THUNDERBOLTS #54!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humus_Sapien
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Giant-Size_X-Men_(no._1_-_cover).jpg
Truth. I was also a fellow FOOMer, 16 years old in that glorious instant back in 1973! Alas; I didn’t enter that Create-a Character contest, but I did rapturously await the debut of the winning creation, Humus Sapien! Oh, how disappointed I was when I read GIANT-SIZE X-MEN #1 two years later and Humus Sapien was nowhere to be found! Not that I complained in the least, since the brand-new mutant characters that Len Wein and Dave Cockrum introduced in that historic issue more than made up for H. Sapien’s absence!
However, to this very day, I’d like to believe that Krakoa, The (Mutant) Living Island; also famously introduced in that hallowed tome, was a reworking of that concept! And if true, considering how integral Krakoa is to the current X-Men saga; Mike A. Barreiro, the creator of ol’ Humus, should be very proud indeed!
P.S., NOBODY, past, present, or in the far flung future will EVER be able to write purple prose like Stan Lee, bless his soul - pardon me for even DARING to try!