UNPUBLISHED PAGES Framing Story Beginning Framing Story Ending Alternate Beginning Alternate Ending Original Cover Ad Illustration	It was supposed to be called JIM SHOOTER DESTROYS THE MARVEL UNIVERSE...
Instead, for just about two decades now I've had to live with the notion of FRED HEMBECK DESTROYS THE MARVEL UNIVERSE (hereafter known, mercifully, simply as FH/MU). Not the actual book, though-while announced in 1983, FH/MU didn't hit the nation's newsstands until a full six years later, in 1989. And therein lies a tale. A long, convoluted one. Details to follow.
	As I attempted to explain in this site's introductory essay (you've all read that, haven't you?), by the early eighties I'd gained some small amount of notoriety in the comics field as not only a creator but as a character as well. This odd turn events opened some unusual doors for me, and when the editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics, the afore-mentioned Jim Shooter, decided to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their flagship title with the publication of a one shot entitled FANTASTIC FOUR ROAST, he chose me as The Roastmaster!?! Released in 1982, this fun-filled endeavor consisted of a multitude of Marvel mainstays saluting the group that started the whole ball rolling. My job was to emcee the proceedings, write a story stuffed with as many gags as possible, and layout the art, dividing things up into neat one page segments, which would then be turned over to that particular characters regular artist for the finished illustrations.
Thus, John Byrne handled the F.F group pages, Marshall Rogers the Dr. Strange page, Sal Buscema the Hulk page, Mike Zeck the Captain America page, and so on and so on (as a trivial aside, by providing breakdowns for the Daredevil sequence, I can claim a smidgen of fame as most likely the only artist who ever did layouts for superstar cartoonist and innovator Frank Miller!?! Hey, I'm just happy to help...) Despite the logistics of working with a score of different artists, the project was a joy from start to finish and I was more than happy with the way things turned out. So, apparently, was Marvel. Enough copies were sold to warrant them asking me to come up with a follow up. But it wouldn't be anything so simple as, say, SPIDER-MAN ROAST. Uh uh. That would be too easy...
Mulling over possible concepts on the phone one afternoon, Jim Shooter and I independently but simultaneously came up with the same idea. Actually, he was the first one to say it out loud-it had crossed my mind, but I was afraid it might be a bit too tacky to bring up. Y'see, way back when, news leaked out slowly, there being no Internet to dispense the latest scoops-or rumors-in the rapid manner we've all become accustomed to these days.
Everyone in the field looked to Cat Yronwode's "Fit to Print" column in "The Buyer's Guide To Comics Fandom" weekly paper for the up to the minute headlines, and when she came out with a startling set of accusations from Doug Moench, a long tenured but now departing Marvel writer, she soon had most of comics Fandom up in arms. The unhappy Mr. Moench alluded to some radical plans about to be set in motion by head ed Shooter : the destruction of the Norse Gods Asgard home, a replacement inside the Iron Man armor, a revamped Fantastic Four lineup, a new look for Spider-Man -- in short, the kinda stuff that would get a dyed-in-the-wool comics geek's knickers in a twist!?! And being one at the time, I could certainly sympathize with the angst everyone from Cat on down felt. We'd all grown up-or, at least, grown OLDER-with these characters, and we certainly didn't cotton to the idea of someone coming in, trashing Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko's creations and remaking the Marvel Universe in their own image.
	Sensing the mounting outrage, Shooter was quick to issue a series of denials, pretty much laying the blame for the uproar on the misinterpretations of some previous discussions by a now disgruntled ex-employee, Mr. Moench. The so-called "Big Bang"? Wasn't gonna happen, Big Jim assured me, and here he was, offering me more work. I wasn't gonna broach the subject, but when he himself suggested I spoof the brouhaha over his supposed scheme to destroy the Marvel Universe, well, it sounded too good to pass up. If only...
(Oh, and for those of you totally unfamiliar with the situation, guess what? Everything that was reported to happen eventually did happen, just maybe not as soon as it would originally have had word not leaked out. Thus, a trend of radically rewriting comics history was established, and most older fans have become so inured to the revamping their childhood icons have had to endure over the past two decades that most can't muster up enough energy to care, myself definitely included. But in 1983 the idea was so outrageous that it merited an all out spoof...) Time to talk specifics with my employers. The F.F.ROAST was 32 pages with no ads, but aside from scribbling in good ol' Fred on the various pages, I only got to pencil the covers. Howsabout we make this new tome a 48 pager-no ads, of course-and I get to pencil it as well as write it? Let's try and get Terry Austin to ink it-after all, he is the best there is and he did a splendid job embellishing the wraparound cover of the ROAST? Jim agreed. Wonderful. And howsabout we call it what it is, JIM SHOOTER DESTROYS THE MARVEL UNIVERSE? On this point, Jim was a bit tentative, but he went along with me, at least for the time being. By our next conversation, though, he respectively explained why he had to decline title character status: his bosses told him to. Seems they felt that, as a Marvel executive, it would somehow be bad form for him to plaster his name across the top of a Marvel comic. He could still be an integral part of the storyline-the star, even-but we had to find another moniker to attach to the title. Hmm? What to do? YOU'RE a comics character, Fred-howsabout we call the book FRED HEMBECK DESTROYS THE MARVEL UNIVERSE? So sayeth Jim-and who am I to argue with the head honcho of Marvel Comics? And besides, if you haven't picked up on it by now, I can be a bit of a ham. So, after a few mild protestations-false modesty is a hard habit to break, y'understand-I acceded to popular (?) demand and took the mantle of mayhem upon my head. Who knew the headaches that lay ahead?... Despite the billing, it was always my intention merely to play a supporting role in the newly christened FH/MU. As I plotted it, about half of my 48 pagers would be taken up by a framing story that would concern itself with the circumstances under which editor-in-chief Jim Shooter would hire me, freelance cartoonist Fred Hembeck, to destroy the Marvel Universe for him. This portion of the tale was a hoot to come up with, and flowed out quick and easy. I opted against any sort of true representation of the Marvel Bullpen, instead inventing three fictitious foils for Shooter, the suspiciously named Bruce, Clark and Diana. The meat of the book, the selling point of the whole project, the deaths of the Marvel multitudes was another thing altogether. The object was to kill as many characters as I could, all in as funny a way as possible. While it seemed like a good idea while yacking on the phone with Jim, when I actually sat down to perform the task as clearly spelled out in the previous sentence, I realized just how contradictory the concept was! Laughs! Death! More laughs! And more death! Hey, I have as much an appreciation for so-called black humor as anyone, but that doesn't mean I can produce it. Still, I took this job on, and I was gonna see it through. So, I wrote up a plot-the office antics highly detailed, the dying laffing section far more sketchy-and sent it in for my star's approval. Which I received. Remember that. It'll be important later…
I was settling down to the task when disaster struck. My mom took suddenly ill, was hospitalized, and just as she was about to have surgery, she died of congestive heart failure at the age of 69. From start to finish, this whole sad sorry sequence of events took a mere two weeks. Losing a parent is always a tragic event in a person's life-and save for my grandma's passing when I was 14, this was my first real brush with the Grim Reaper-but when it occurs during a period when one is attempting to have fun with the concept of death, well, let's just say the timing couldn't have been worse.
The folks at Marvel were very understanding and sympathetic when I explained my circumstances, and allowed me to back burner the project while doing some other work in it's stead, specifically penciling an issue of SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN during the infamous Assistant Editors Month stunt. Life must go on, however, and eventually I got back into the swing of things, easing into the framing sequences first, but ultimately doing the best I could muster with the demise-oriented section. And it seemed to be going okay, too, until I sent in the first 12 pages. A trip to the post office was followed by the shocking news that a good friend had died...
	Raoul Vezina was an extremely talented cartoonist who never really got his due, and now sadly, probably never would. I'd met him when we both worked for the Albany, N.Y. based Fantaco Enterprises, even sharing work on a comic several times. He was too good a guy and too young a guy to die, but those were the facts-- he was gone. And the next time I sent in 12 pages? I got a frantic call from my mother-in-law. Lynn's dad was being rushed to the emergency room and we were to meet at the local hospital. It looked like his time was up for sure, but he managed to stave off the big sleep, if only for a little while. A few short years later, long before FH/MU would see print, he was gone.
And during this period as well, one of our cats was hit by a car, and a close friend had his auto totaled on a long trip. Thankfully, both survived their particular brushes with the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, but it had me wondering-was this project somehow cursed? I mean, I'm not superstitious or anything, but pile up enough coincidences and you'll definitely get me to thinking. Not that I'm egotistical enough to think that this series of unfortunate events somehow revolved around ME, but c'mon-it had to cross my mind!?! And the obvious question being, was I going to survive the book's publication? (Stay tuned for the answer to THAT one...) Okay, okay, I won't keep you in suspense-I wasn't the one the one that was doomed, the book was. Y'see, while Shooter himself had guided the F.F. ROAST, by the time I'd turned in all 48 pages of FH/MU (plus 4 covers, inside and out), he'd become to busy to shepherd this project to completion. So, he told me he was turning it over to another editor, Larry Hama. That was the last time we would speak about FH/MU. Now it was Larry's baby-and if it hadn't already been born, metaphorically speaking, I'm sure he would've aborted it...
My work was done, and now I was anxious for the book to be inked, lettered and colored-stapled too, for that matter-so it could be issued to a panting public, primed by pulse pounding press releases and the quizzical sounding title. Still, I'm no nudge, so at first I only occasionally called Larry asking for updates on the progress made towards the book's completion. Whether I spoke with him or his assistant, neither seemed particularly interested in talking with me about it, and usually hustled me off the phone by telling me Terry Austin was inking it. After this answer was repeated often enough to qualify as a mantra, I began to question the sincerity of it. That's when Larry chose to lay the blame at Mr. Austin's feet. He's got the pages all right, but he's not working on them! Why, it pretty much amounts to him holding them hostage-what's my poor editor to do? Well, I'll tell you what I did. I called Terry Austin.
I'd met the amiable Mr. A on several previous occasions, generally at comics conventions, and had struck up a friendly rapport. In years hence, we'd become even better buddies when he moved himself into my neck of the woods, but I valued his word more than I did that of a seemingly disinterested editor I'd never met even at that early date. I told him what was relayed to me, the bit about him hoarding the pages. Wasn't true, it turned out (not a big surprise at this point). Sure, Larry had waved the pages at him in the Marvel hallways one afternoon, but though he'd enjoyed inking my F.F ROAST cover, he didn't feel he had the time in his schedule that would permit him to take on FH/MU. As I've learned over the years, Terry was the rare freelancer who never over committed his time (the better to do an excellent job, baby bear!). I just wish somebody had told me this about Terry before I had to hear it from Terry himself, like Jim. Or Larry... It was time to call back Mr. Hama with this new found information. As I recall, he was reasonably nonplussed, and immediately shifted to a brand new story-my pages had fallen behind the filing cabinet and gotten wedged there. How this jibed with the supposed conversations pleading with Terry to, if not finish the work, at least return it so someone else could, I for the life of me was at a loss to figure out. What had finally sunk in was that I was being repeatedly lied to. And the only thing I could think to do was to tell the Big Guy. Fearing my emotions would get the best of me on the phone, I chose instead to detail my grievances in a letter prepared especially for the editor-in-chief. A few days later, emotions were boiling all over the phone lines, but they weren't coming from me... Larry Hama called up, and he was pretty upset. That's putting it mildly. Shooter had apparently given him what for after perusing my epistle. Larry seemed to think it was bad form for me to go over his head and get him in hot water with his boss. I kept my composure during our…discussion, and apologized if I'd taken the wrong route to getting my problems solved, but I never backed down from the facts, which were clearly on my side. I'd tried numerous times to hash things out with Larry's office-I didn't see how going to that particular well one more time was going to help in any way. Eventually, by admitting to the possibility of bad form regarding my tattling (never mind that there really was nothing else I could've done), Larry calmed down, and after being aligned on this project for nigh onto several months, we had our first real discussion. We spoke for another 15 or 20 minutes, and it evolved into a surprisingly pleasant chat. About the only sticking point that remained was the matter of inkers. Terry was clearly out, and another top choice of mine, Al Milgrom, was also unavailable. Larry utilized a fair share of old-timers in his stable, and he suggested Vinny Colletta! Arrgh!?! I'd always HATED Vinny Colletta's inks, even those THOR jobs he did over Kirby that everybody else likes. And it didn't help that the one time I'd met the man, he, in his capacity as art director of DC Comics, told me in no uncertain terms that I'd never make it in the comics biz?!? I guess the joke would be on him, cuz now he'd be inking my pencils-except, now the joke would be on me CUZ NOW HE'D BE INKING MY PENCILS?!? I tried desperately to gently cajole and sweet talk my new best friend, Larry Hama, into relenting on his decision. If you want to use a veteran brush-man, why not Chic Stone? He was working for Marvel at the time. I loved Chic Stone on Kirby when I was a kid, and while he was no Terry Austin, he sure wasn't any Vinny Colletta either!! Chic Stone-PLEASE!?! But no. I'm not sure if he was just committed to using Vinny as much as possible, or if this was his sly way of giving me the business, but turning Mr. Colletta loose on my pencils was far more jarring than a little yelling on the telephone could ever be!? And so the book was inked. Over the weekend, from the looks of it. Given copies of the completed pages to proofread, I cringed to see eyeballs missing and other obvious elements overlooked. Really, folks, I don't want to come off as some sort of spoiled whiner ("Too late!!"), but there really was only one artist in the entire comics field whose work I couldn't stand, and there he was, all over my pencils!?! By no means does FH/MU feature some of my strongest drawing-just the opposite, to be frank-but in no way was I helped along by Colletta's scratchy scrawls.
	The only good thing was that now the book was finally done and ready to go to press. But, as they say in those newspaper movies on late night TV, "Hold the presses!"...
Remember that framing story? The one starring Shooter? Well, as Larry informed me in a frantic phone call, Jim had finally gotten around to reading it and he was very disturbed about something he'd found in it. Specifically, the reason I gave toward the tale's conclusion regarding cartoon Jim's motivation for wanting to destroy the Marvel Universe. While never coming out and naming names, I allude to Jim being planted at Marvel as a sort of sleeper agent by his old mentor, the man who first hired him to write comic books when he was a mere teenager from Pittsburgh, Superman's editor at DC Comics, Mort Weisinger. It was all in good fun, and was in fact a key point included in my original proposal, but here was Larry being called on the carpet for letting such a potentially libelous suggestion get by. I assured him this plot point was there from the get go, and he soon located my initial notes and could see for himself that I was once again in the right. I remember him commenting that we'd somehow ironically wound up on the same side of an argument, but it did us little good. Unless we changed the ending, Marvel refused to release the book. What happened? I'll never know for sure, but my best guess is that AVENGERS VS. JLA happened. Or rather, didn't... Commencing with the SUPERMAN VS.SPIDER-MAN edition in the mid-seventies, Marvel and DC Comics had successfully published a handful of joint ventures, all relatively trouble free-until they decided to match up the premier super-teams of each company. Too many people wanted control, company politics became involved, and the whole thing became one great big ugly mess. George Perez was stuck with a score of pencilled pages that'd never be published, since this even more highly anticipated project (imagine!) was ignominiously yanked from the schedule too!! When I submitted my original plot, the two companies were buddy-buddy. By the time Jim had a make-ready in his hands, the two comics corporations were at war. YOU figure out what happened. Sigh...
The closest we got to having any of this published was in the cover feature of a 1985 issue of David Anthony Kraft's COMICS INTERVIEW, #22. The interview had been conducted before any of this messiness had come to the fore, but DAK granted me a Freditorial (clever, huh? Hey, I'm always on!...) up front to deal with the matter of the missing book. Briefly explaining the circumstances behind it's AWOL status-however unlikely that may seem at this point to you, my haggard but faithful readers-I then go on to take the artistic high road and declare how, in a moment of self-righteousness, I turned down the opportunity to revise the ending, which would've allowed for the issuance of FH/MU. It wouldn't be right to besmirch the integrity of the finale, I sniffed. Actually, I just couldn't think of a new ending. Once I did, integrity went out the window!...
But first, a few more words about Larry Hama. Ironically, the day that issue of COMICS INTERVIEW was released, I was a guest a comics convention in Detroit-as was Larry Hama! We'd still never met, though I was aware of what he looked like, and I immediately recognized him as he approached the table I was sitting behind. Before I could say anything, he barreled right on by, setting up shop several tables down. Certain I was being dissed one further time, I was happily proven wrong not long after when he came over to chat, explaining he didn't realize who I was when he first arrived. We talked a bit about the FH/MU fiasco, now over a year in our pasts, and a bit about our plans for the future. All in all, he seemed like a nice guy. I've probably come across as pretty hard on the guy, but I'm just documenting the events as they unfolded. To tell you the truth, I can't fault the guy for anything he did, not really. Look at it from his point of view-he gets this book, this oddball book, foisted on him, into which he's had absolutely zero creative input. Turns out several years later I learn something interesting about him in a short profile feature that ran in a Marvel Bullpen Bulletins Page-unlike many of his editorial peers, who were big time comics fans before turning professional, Larry makes a few remarks that would indicate that he considers a slavish interest in comics to be somewhat…silly, maybe? I forget the exact quote, but the guy ain't sitting up nights, cross referencing his BATMAN and DETECTIVE COMICS, I'll guarantee you that much!?! So, with that sort of outlook on the field, what gets dumped in his lap?? The ultimate Mr. Fanboy and his goofy little nonsense!?! Or so it would seem on the face of it. After we finally managed to iron out all our differences I was pleased to hear him say that he felt the book read very smoothly once he sat down to read it, even if he did sound a bit surprised at himself for saying it. And all that lying? Hey, show me three editors in the entire history of comics who never lied at one time or another, and I'll bet you've overestimated by at least two! That doesn't make it right, but it happens. Freelancers have been known to tell a fib or two, too, you know! Not myself, of course, but others. So please don't think this is pile on Larry Hama time. The guy's had a long, distinguished career in the biz, and if a recent interview in COMIC BOOK ARTIST magazine can be believed, he seems to have mellowed a whole bunch on the comics fan thing. But Larry -- I still think you should've used Chic Stone!?!...
	A few years later, somebody got the bright idea to assign Jim Salicrup the task of rescuing FH/MU from limbo. An excellent notion, seeing as how Jim and I had already worked for years on MARVEL AGE MAGAZINE. As it's editor, he enlisted me to provide a monthly two page feature, an assignment that eventually lasted over 100 issues. No disrespect to Larry, but Salicrup and I were a simpatico team. When he proposed we give it another shot, I really didn't know where to go with it, but somehow just putting our two heads together sparked some new solutions to old problems; i.e., what to do about cartoon Shooter's motivation?
At this late date, I have no clue as to who first suggested it, but it occurred to us that we could get some laughs by playing off Jim's excessive height, a characteristic known well to industry folk and Marvel readers of the day alike. What if he had a twin, an evil twin, a jealous evil twin, a jealous evil twin who resented Jim because he was shorter than his brother, a whole half inch shorter, and who had to go through life being mocked as Tiny Tim Shooter?? That's it! We had our new ending! Of course, to properly set it up, several early pages would need to be at least partially changed, but in all, less than half a dozen of the original pages would have to be modified. I'd lose my cute inside joke ending, but I rather liked this one as well, so all in all, I was pleased. I drew up the new stuff, Vinny inked it on his lunch hour, and we were all set to go.
Then disaster struck-Marvel Comics Destroyed Jim Shooter!! Yup, they fired the big fella. The likelihood of them publishing a book starring their now ex-employee? Like I said earlier, YOU figure it out...
That was it as far as I was concerned. The book was never coming out. I resigned myself to fielding questions about it's non-appearance at comics conventions for the rest of my life (maybe not such a bad thing-after all, look at the revered stature the Beach Boys "Smile" disc has attained while having never actually been released. Fans would just think the world of this piece of unattainable Marvel ephemera, especially if they couldn't actually see it!). Then new ed-in-chief Tom DeFalco spoiled THAT little fantasy by ordering Salicrup to take another pass at it. How would such a thing be possible, you ask?
	Simple-we reduce the book from 48 pages to the more standard 32, cut out the framing sequence and just keep the blood, gore and gags (actually, there was no actual blood and gore, but you get what I'm saying). By utilizing the inside front and back covers, that left us 7 pages to devise an entirely NEW framing sequence, one depicting yours truly down on his luck, haunting back alleys, and being grilled mercilessly by the Punisher (a VERY hot item at the time) as to the story behind this by now somewhat mythical destruction of the Marvel Universe book. I allude to as many of the old jokes as I can salvage, add a few new twists, and voila!
Marvel finally has a book they're willing to publish! (oh yeah-I should mention that the newest of the new pages were inked, at my request, by my friend and neighbor, Joe Staton, and very nicely, too. Vinny, you see, had passed away by this time, with this book being, along with an INHUMANS special, one of the last two jobs of his published by Marvel! The curse you say? Perhaps. Even more eerily -- and I've never mentioned this to anyone save Lynn -- but on the day I mailed off the final batch of pages from the final go-round, I got word that a close friend's father had taken a fatal fall earlier that day. Coincidence, no doubt, but I was more than happy to put this albatross of a concept to rest once and for all...)
FH/MU was released in the summer of 1989. It's been my everlasting regret that my favorite part of the whole crazy thing would never be seen. Oh, there's a couple of bits in the happy death section that I like, specifically Ant-Man in the microwave oven, the Kingpin and the Juggernaut in the canoes, and my salute to Jack Benny and Mel Blanc via the Daredevil sequence, but although I feel the rest of it reads okay, it's just not full of the massive yuk-yuks, y'know? But now, thanks to the miracle of the everlovin' Internet, you can finally see the long lost pages of FH/MU-and I can take a long, long time explaining why they were lost in the first place!! You'll find the first sequence first, natch, followed by the evil twin revisions. If you have a copy of FH/MU, you may want to get it out and try reading along. If not, this stuff pretty much stands on it's own. Be advised that towards the end of the middle story, the Marvel characters gather together in the Beyond as ghostly wraiths and put in motion events that'll return them happily to the land of the living in the latter portions of the framing story. And that fellow featured on the inside back cover of the initial attempt was Crackers, Clown Prince of Death, the jolly joker called upon to do the dirty work. I'm also sharing an illo for an ad that may or may not have actually run-who can remember after all these years-as well as the original cover. Oh, the artwork is the same as the one eventually published-though the UPC symbol totally obliterates Spider-Man's head on the final copy-but note that they followed my guide lettering a mite too closely, and produced a pretty crappy looking logo!! Salicrup's gang really did it up nicely! Thanks Jim!
	So that's the story. I should point out that I didn't get Marvel's permission to post this material here at the site, but let's get real-do you actually think they have ANY need whatsoever of a couple dozen pages starring an employee they cut lose over a decade ago now? Doubtful, highly doubtful. With that disclaimer in mind, please, enjoy it for what it is-a parenthetical aside on a footnote of Marvel Comics history!
(Written on Stan Lee's 80th birthday! Hang loose, true believer!!! -- December 28th, 2002)

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