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Sure, it was a rough time in the real world what with New York and the Pentagon and the rest. But in comics, we were on the cusp of greatness. This is just a few years before Johnny Favs, Robert Downey and Iron Man sparked a renaissance in comics. There was still good Star Tre k on TV. We were years away from the glory that was Ant-Man. We had an inkling that good things were on the way, but none of us had any idea that we were going to live through a Golden Age. Which, oddly enough, is a conversation I’ve had with Larry and our group of friends before – how do you know when you’re living in a golden age? Part of the answer, at least to me, is you read stuff like Larry has been putting out FOR FREE for years and realize that, you know, this stuff is pretty good and I got access to it just by plugging a couple of letters into an internet web machine. Anyway, I hope you all enjoy this book as much as I did, because it remind ed me of all the stories that Larry has woven into his writings over the years. All of this made possible by two things – first, because sometimes there’s a man, a man for his time and place, and that’s Larry, in San Francisco. A man who knows about cutting granite and writing comics and writing Star Trek scripts for MTV and totally rocking the Santa cosplay every year and raising a great kid and pumping out thousands of words for his friends and fans over the years and bitching about Star Trek Discovery and loving that we can watch reruns of Agents of SHIELD on pieces of black glass that make noises when you touch them like we saw on TV in the 80s. The second thing, of course, is, for your information, the Supreme Court has roundly rejected prior restraint. If you’ve made it this far, you’re clearly going to have read the whole book, which I hope you did, because Larry is a pretty smart guy and the stuff in here transcends comics and pop culture. I’m not saying this is book is the Rosetta Stone, but it’s not going to hurt you, me, or anybody else to take a break from scrolling Instagram and waiting for Opening Day of baseball season to read a book written by a smart guy about fun things. The world could use a few more books like this. And thank God Chuck Dixon and Garth Ennis and Jon Bernthal came around and made me forget being pissed about that bootleg VHS tape back in 1989.

Brian W. Schoeneman, Esq. Washington, D.C. February, 2024