If you have listened to episode 18 of Can't Turn it Off, you know the basic connection between me and Bill Mantlo.
If you don't know, you will in a minute.
And if you don't know who Bill is, Google his name and read an article about him, or listen to my crude attempt to encapsulate his life in the Bill Mantlo episode of my podcast.
When I was contemplating the premise of the podcast more than a year ago, I had no idea who Bill is. The fact that I spent a recent episode sharing the story of his remarkable life is nothing short of serendipity.
I found Bill through his connection to a man I met in the fall of 2016. (Their connection may be indirect, but the two men may have met once upon a time.)
As a newspaper reporter covering Bloomington, Minnesota, I would up writing a story about Ky Michaelson. Known by many as "The Rocketman," Ky is a charismatic, colorful character who has accomplished incredible feats, from setting all sorts of speed records with his rocket-powered contraptions to stunt work in Hollywood films. His role in the recreation of Evel Knievel's failed jump over Snake River Canyon, more than four decades after Knievel tried, connected me to Ky. (The 2016 jump was successful, by the way.)
After meeting Ky and his son Buddy, I wrote a story about their participation in the stunt. (Neither of them flew the rocket, "Evel Spirit," over the canyon.) Ky has a website detailing his career, as well as a YouTube channel dedicated to an odd assortment of clips, including some of his many television appearances. I watched some of those clips, including one simply titled "Human Fly."
I was fascinated by the story of a 1970s daredevil whose identity was intended to be a secret. I soon learned through my research the reason why a 1970s television interview of Human Fly was on Ky's YouTube channel. Ky had been involved in the building of a rocket-powered motorcycle for one of Human Fly's stunts nearly four decades earlier. (It has now been a full four decades since that infamous stunt.)
Through my research I also learned that a deal had been brokered between Human Fly's representatives and Marvel Comics to produce a comic book series about the daredevil. As a former Marvel Comics collector, that series came before my time, and I'm not sure I had ever heard of it. But it was another interesting layer to Human Fly's story, which had fascinated me enough to make it the subject of episode 2 of my podcast.
My fascination with Human Fly could have easily ended following the completion of episode 2. But for some reason I was compelled to scour eBay listings to see what comics were available. I found an auction for a handful of well-read issues and bought them, including a copy of issue No. 1. I read issue No. 1, and in it I read a page explaining the premise of the comic, written by Bill, who happened to be not only the writer of the book, but the brains behind the character's origin in the world of Marvel Comics.
I didn't know Bill's name. While I've known a variety of names from the world of comic book publishing, Bill wasn't among them. I was curious as to what ever happened to the guy who penned the tales of a comic book character I was discovering about 40 years after the comic was first published, and that's when I started to learn the amazing tales from Bill's life.
I soon bought a copy of "Mantlo: A Life in Comics" and read it last summer during a vacation. I didn't have to read the book to know that Bill's story was far too good to pass up. I knew that when season 2 of Can't Turn it Off launched, Bill would be the subject of an episode. Since Human Fly was the second subject during season 1, it seemed appropriate that Bill was the second subject of season 2.
I hope my sharing of Bill's story will bring another ounce of appreciation to Bill's contributions to the comic book industry.
While I don't plan on collecting the complete written works of his career, I will finish assembling a 19-issue run of Human Fly comics this spring, one way or another. And I plan to uncover a few of Bill's books from my disregarded, disorganized comic book collection of yesteryear. I know I have a few of his stories in my collection. I have unearthed my copy of Spectacular Spider-Man 64, featuring Cloak and Dagger's first appearance, and I know I have the Cloak and Dagger mini-series Bill wrote. (Bill was the creator of Cloak and Dagger, by the way.)
I'm not Bill's biggest fan, and I'm far from knowledgeable about the man's career, but I have definitely become a fan, and I look forward to unearthing stories from his incredible career in the years to come.
And I have Ky Michaelson to thank for indirectly introducing me to him.
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