Days In Monsterville

I remember Marc. We’re dancing in a tiny, partially enclosed room — Wizard: The Comics Magazine’s copy editors. Our tormentors are away. They positioned their desks so they could spy on us with impunity, but they can stop neither the rhythm nor the funk. We are free and alive, and the music is glorious.

They make fun of Marc. This is mean to say in a eulogy, but it is true. Marc is timid. Different. Special. He loves to sing and to dance and when he speaks it’s an endless series of digressions.  When it comes time for him to befriend me, he does so without reservation. And this is Marc: He can befriend a jerk. He is the best copy editor I will ever know. He makes me, and everyone else around him, a better person.

Marc has, in his mind, created a Batman story so convoluted it has become the stuff of legends among his former Wizard friends. We laugh at the plot twist that has Batman in Catwoman’s body taking a soapy shower for 15 consecutive pages, and then suggest if you buy a copy of the comic, Marc will personally come to your house to explain its plot to you. Because Marc telling you the story in person is way better than any comic could ever be.

We’ll gather soon. We’ll tell the story of Batman as Catwoman in the shower. And we’ll tell the tale of Marc’s run in with the cops, who briefly (and we’re talking about for a second here) wanted to question him in connection with a shooting. We have plenty of stories: Marc’s encounter with a man of ill repute who demanded to see his “special money.” And the time he was stalked at a comic convention by a creepy-creep who actually called himself The Collector. And we’ll tell the saddest story of all, about our good friend who went off to Florida and exited our lives forever.

I don’t really want the dance to end. Marc is busting a move. I am popping and, occasionally, locking. It’s just something we do when the big kids are away and we need to blow off steam. Neither of us will assign any meaning to any of it;  a throwaway moment that somehow magically becomes important far too late in the proceedings. Did they catch us? Did we just turn off the music and return to our desks and our editing? In my mind, we blew out the walls.

Marc died a few days ago, and I had to find out about through a friend who had to find out about it through Facebook.

The last time I saw Marc, we were both crazy from the heat. I kept pushing for a movie, but Marc was … not himself. We sat down in a crappy restaurant in Times Square in New York City and I told him to take his medicine, that things would get better.

Vaya con dios, Marc.

My friend.