I’ve been on a quest for about 16 years researching my grandfather, Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson’s life and work. In the halls of the Court of Comic Book Land I've encountered Courtiers who would flatter one out of the few gold pieces held. I crossed swords with an Evil Wizard who is still lurking about. And I [...]
My local comic book store, Escapist Comics on Claremont Avenue in Berkeley, CA is right down the hill from me. It is in an elitist neighborhood of million dollar plus homes not far from the grand old Claremont Hotel. There's a small section of commercial establishments on Claremont including the infamous Star Market where it [...]
Comics, New Orleans and long time friends—Is there anything better than this? I spent the past weekend in New Orleans staying with my childhood boyfriend and his superlative wife whilst attending Wizard World ComicCon New Orleans. CBF and I have been friends for a very long time since our early summer days of swimming, sailing [...]
The Major was a prolific, creative writer, visionary, editor and publisher. In the process of putting together his story I am continually amazed at the scope and amount of work he produced in different genres over the course of his life. Everything from low-brow comic strips to graphic representations of classic works and in the [...]
It’s a bird, it’s a plane, no it’s Superman! Truth, justice and the American way and George Reeves flying across the black and white screen of an early 50’s television set is indelibly printed on my brain. Like so many other children of that era, I pinned the requisite towel to my tee shirt and [...]
The comics as we know them are rooted in that late great period of American writing known as Pulp Fiction. The pulps encompass a variety of genres including adventure tales, detective stories, cowboy tales, science fiction, romance and more. Many well-known authors such as Edgar Rice Burroughs, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and Ray Bradbury got [...]
It's Halloween and time for shivers of excitement. Ghouls, ghosts, goblins, witches and their black cats, bats flying and skeletons dancing in graveyards--Trick or Treat? The Batman. © respective holders. Comic books are filled with superheroes fighting monsters and dark forces and pulp fiction has more than its share of heroes and damsels [...]
Dark clouds filled the sky. As I drove on the winding mountain road I had a bad feeling that I should have followed my instincts about traveling this way. Rain began to fall and huge trucks roared past spraying the windshield making it harder to see. With night falling the rain came down in sheets. [...]
In comic books it’s always good to start with the origin story so let's begin at the beginning of Major Malcolm Wheeler Nicholson’s life in Greeneville, Tennessee and his schooling at Manlius Military Academy in upstate New York. Most of the time I feel like a detective searching for clues and a lot of times [...]
Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson was born January 7, 1890 marking this year, 2011 as the 121st anniversary of his birth. He often listed his place of birth as Greeneville, Tennessee, the county seat of Greene County in East Tennessee. More than likely he was born at home in the Jonesborough/Johnson City area some 30 or so miles [...]