Thompson wins national award
By Robert Cloud
Comics have been a meaningful part of Maggie Thompson’s life ever since she can remember.
She collected comic books throughout most of her life, and wrote about the writers, artists and editors who created the comics.
Maggie and her husband Don also created magazines for fans of comics and science fiction, beginning with the one-sheet flier “Harbinger” in 1960, the 16-page mimeographed “Comic Art” in the spring of 1961, and “New Fangles,” which ran for 10 issues in 1967-68.
What made their work unique is that they focused on the comic book fans of comics, as well as the comic books.
Beginning in 1983, Maggie and Don Thompson co-edited Comics Buyer’s Guide for Krause Publications in Iola until Don’s death in 1994. She continued the publication until its final issue in March 2013.
Their efforts over the years earned the Thompsons numerous awards.
Among their accolades are the Eisner Award, the Inkpot Award and the Kirby Award.
On Oct. 4 at the Harvey Awards during New York Comic Con, Maggie and Don Thompson were recognized as Comics Industry Pioneers.
The award is named after Harvey Kurtzman, who is best known for writing and editing for Mad magazine.
“It was a tremendous honor and a delight,” Thompson said. “I didn’t realize until I was sitting at the table that I was giving a speech.”
Thompson noted another winner of the Harvey Award that night was Alison Bechdel, the author of the Bechtel test that measures the representation of women in fiction.
“Is there more than one woman? Do they talk to each other about something more than men?” Thompson said.
She recalled she was one of only four women present when she went to her first Comic Con.
While at Comic Con, Thompson also spoke with R.L. Stine, who writes horror stories for teens.
Thompson said Stine told her, “As I was getting ready to come in, a guy stopped me and said, ‘You look just like R.L. Stine … No offense.’”
Early collector
Among the gems of her vast collection, Thompson still has “Easter with Mother Goose.”
The illustrated children’s comic book was printed in 1946 when Thompson was 3 1/2 years old.
Created by Walt Kelly, who is best known for his comic strip “Pogo,” it helped inspire Thompson’s life-long love of the narrative art form of comics.
“Mom would read Pogo to me,” Thompson recalled. “I knew for years that Walt Kelly was important to us. I didn’t know we were important to him.”
Thompson has two recently discovered drawings that were part of the correspondence between her father, William Curtis, and Kelly.
Curtis wrote his doctoral dissertation on echolocation in bats.
In response to the dissertation, Kelly drew a cartoon with a bat, named Ding The Drum Store Man, telling Howland Owl, “Ear Drums? No, Ah got de snare, bass, oil, conun, hum and a Tuscaloosa tom tom wif side saddle but de ear type isn’t in ma line.”
Howland Owl says, “Ah knewed it! Ah knewed it!”
Underneath the cartoon, Kelly wrote, “Modest and wif lowered eyeballs us present factuable proof.”
Her father’s response was a cartoon of himself looking distraught, with a bat hooked up by its ears to some 1950s equipment, a picture of a bat, a bat’s ear and ear drum, books, microscope and a word balloon that says in part, “Years and years and years of work and all for nothing! Oh gooness!”
Don and Maggie
Her mother, Betsy Curtis, was a science fiction writer, and Thompson grew up socializing with other science fiction writers.
“In June of 1957, I was at a picnic where there were some famous science fiction writers, and some not so famous ones like my mom, and some fans who had been invited,” Thompson said. “One of the fans was Don Thompson.”
In a column she wrote in 2008, Thompson recalled, “What happened was that we spent most of the day discovering almost identical fannish interests, ranging from Old Time Radio (which wasn’t Old Time at that point) to Western movies to fantasy to science fiction to mysteries to, yes, comics.”
Both of them shared an interest in collecting comics.
“It’s 1961. How do you find comic books from the 1940s and ‘50s?” Thompson said. “We started looking through Salvation Army stores and used book stores.”
Thompson remembers a used book store in Cleveland, Ohio, where she and Don spent about two hours rummaging through stacks of comic books and picking out their favorites.
When they brought their purchases to the counter, the clerk showed them that he also had stacks of Golden Age comic books.
“We didn’t have a lot of money, so we took the ones we most wanted,” Thompson said.
When Comics Buyer’s Guide came to an end, Thompson began writing a column for Toucan, a blog for the San Diego Comic-Con.
In her first installment, Thompson recalled the words of a Walt Kelly character her mother read to her.
Albert Alligator told Pogo Possum, “Ah good at readin’ pitchers.”
Thompson noted she learned to read by reading comics.