Ever get thrown in with one of those “charismatic” people you hear about? For me, I had just started at Marvel Comics and all of a sudden, there’s this guy: Peter Ledger.
Early 1979, I’m there running a Photostat reproduction camera. I’m around-the-corner, in-the-back of the whole building. I get out to the rest of the place delivering stats—those funny, black & white photographic prints that are copies of original art—to whoever gave me that art in the first place.
I get to know Editor Rick Marschall and his Assistant, Ralph Macchio (yes, that Ralph Macchio!). One fine day, early 79, I’m quietly nursing my stat camera back to life (“Just one more stat, baby… one more…”) and down the hall swaggers this blond bearded, long-haired Australian character. He’s been given an empty office that I believe had housed Crazy Magazine Editor Paul Laiken and all his crap had to be dragged off to who knows where. Turns out Rick n’ Raf had found this fellow (through ex-pat and remarkably talented artist and creator, Paul Powers—an “art world” acquaintance of Rick’s) because Rick n’ Raf were in trouble.
Peter was a successful artist back home. He came to America to – frankly – make some money. He was pretty damn good and made Weirdworld really shine. What the hell was that? While I slept the past few decades, Weirdworld rose and fell then rose again… I highly recommend you look it up in Wikipedia.
‘Australian’ was a new thing for me. I’d met a few, of course — this was New York City after all, but had certainly not spent any time with one. Australian TV funnyman Paul Hogan became the premiere walking-talking symbol of all things Australian. Till Crocodile Dundee came along, I had Peter Ledger lodged in my brain.
His office is just a couple of doors up the hall and he settles in.
Right off the bat, he convinces me to start taking garlic oil pills. To try to give you an idea of how odd that was, I was as white a piece of New England white bread there was and doing anything with such a material like “garlic” was the stuff of make-believe. But there I was, helping Peter assemble his own fillable digestible pills with garlic oil.
This world-weary Oz refugee taught me so many things. There deserves to be an entire tribute to Peter. This is not that. What this is, is a collision of a time-honored Marvel practice—the Caption Contest and Peter Ledger.
Where this picture came from, I do not know. If I was told at the time, I cannot remember. It was sharp and feisty Paty Cockrum, Art Director and comic doyenne superbe, who procured the picture from somewhere and set this particular ball a’rolling. This was her door that it was affixed to. Suspiciously close to office wag, the actually really funny Stat-Man of Yore, Stu Schwartzberg, whose stat room was just to the right of this picture!
And here’s a crappy, blurry shot of the whole thing in place on Paty’s door!
Finally, here is a decent picture of Peter, taking a break for me to get a good picture of him in the furious rush that was Weirdworld.
Note: I intend to do a much larger tribute to this odd Man of Marvel Legend!