#mark frank

I’ve always been fascinated by endings.

Not the endings in fiction (though obviously those get a lot of my attention as well), but endings in real life.

One of the most vivid dreams I remember as an adolescent was about ending (oh, you think there’s a contradiction between discussing endings in real life and endings in a dream?  Guess again:  Dreams are the symbols of events and forces that shape our lives and as such, dreams are truer than reality).

Life magazine ran a multi-part series on World War One (a 50 year anniversary retrospective and holy shamolley, we are as far removed from that moment as it was from the war it commemorated).  The issue on the war in the air captivated me, and my dream clearly drew on that for a basis.

In my dream I was a pilot in a squadron that had been fighting the gaudy tri-planes of Baron von Richthofen’s Flying Circus; our airplanes were versions of the Spirit of St. Louis (another one of my manias at that age).

But there was no combat in my dream:  The war was over.  The armies were being disbanded, everybody was going home.

The ground crews packed up their trucks and drove off, and one by one the other pilots in the squadron got in their planes and flew to their homes.

I was the last one left.  I remember the emotional feel of the moment very clearly:  It was like a late Sunday afternoon pick up baseball game when there’s no time to start anything new and you might as well just pack it all in and get ready for Monday. 

In my dream I stayed on the field for quite some time, maybe half an hour or so.  There was an unarticulated feeling inside me that until I left, then it wasn’t really over, that the great endeavor we’d all be involved in -- friend and foe alike -- was still happening, even though the combat was over.

Eventually, I got in my plane and flew off, and when I did, then it truly ended.

Until high school, I never had two consecutive years in the same school when I was growing up.

My family moved a lot (we used to joke we moved once a year just to stay in practice) and so I have no childhood friends that I’m still in touch with.

My life -- and most of my relationships -- was a never ending series of…endings.

Ironic, no?

Indeed, as I’ve posted elsewhere, I grew up more tightly bonded with people I never met face to face, other science fiction fans and monster kids who participated in sci-fi fandom and stayed in contact via mail and through letter columns and fanzines.

Eventually all of those fanzines on pen pal circles changed or faded or dissolved, but I still remember them with great clarity and fondness.

And the feeling holds over for other publications and, yes, even websites.

There’s a certain bittersweet sadness that beckons me whenever I encounter back issues of a fanzine that has run its course, or find a website with lively entries that hasn’t been updated in a decade or more.

I think of Forry Ackerman, the editor of Famous Monsters Of Filmland, the “Acker-monster” as he called himself, and how he put literally thousands of monster kids in touch with one another (and I’m also aware that later he proved to be the Acker-monster in more ways than one, and at best he had a dark side that was very, very creepy and at worst, criminal).

I think of the host of competitors and fanzines that sprang off of Famous Monsters, and I remember how eagerly I awaited the next issue of Mark Frank’s Photon or Gary Svehla’s Gore Creatures or Larry Ivie’s Monsters And Heroes or Frederick S. Clarke’s Cinefantastique.  Gary’s still around, still involved in fantasy film fandom and publishing, and the last I heard Mark felt it was time to move on and became a psychotherapist but Larry died without ever getting a chance to enter the pro ranks and Fred took his own life after battling depression for decades.

I think of Richard E. Geis, the editor / publisher of Science Fiction Review (as well as a host of other virtually identical fanzines with varying titles), and how he managed to make his seat at the table the pivotal point of science fiction for two-going-on-three generations of writers, but age and infirmity worked away at him and he, too, faded then expired…quietly…out of view…

I think of George Caragonne, big goofy lovable lunk George who let his inner demons and unaddressed rage consume him and, tragically, many of those closest to him.  A teddy bear who turned into a monster.

I think of Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter, and how wonderful and supportive he was of everybody in the industry and how when he died all that wonderfulness came to a screeching halt and God, how I miss him.

I think of Steve Gerber and Jack & Roz Kirby and Gordon Kent and John Dorman and Mark McClellan and Jack Enyart and Len Wein and Bill Warren and scores of others.

(The irony among all this is that the physical deaths of people do not affect me as much as the loss of wit and insight. I loved my parents and my grandmother and my aunt, but when they died my mourning was sincere but brief.  I miss them with a warm nostalgia that fond memory fuels.  But when I see unfinished work left behind by compatriots, the pang strikes deeper and sharper.  Maybe that’s because I see my relationship with my relatives as complete, but with my friends and co=creators, unfinished…)

Framed on my wall is a program from the Harlan Ellison memorial panel at San Diego Comic Con…what, two years now?  It quotes Harlan:  “For a brief time I was here, and for a brief time, I mattered.”

As Ram Dass said, “We are all walking each other home.”  One by one we will get to our destinations and we’ll say so long, and the group will move on without us.

If the group is lucky, there will always be some newcomers joining it, going along with the rest for a ways until the next person reaches their destination.

And if the group is really really lucky, it will continue walking newcomers home long after the original members are gone and forgotten, because what those original members stood for will still be uniting others.

It will give them a reason to travel together, and the group will find comfort in that no matter when or where they started their journey.

Endings.

They happen to all of us, eventually.

But we don’t have to forget what brought us together.

 © Buzz Dixon