Huie Library HendersonStateUniversity
Bissette Collection
BIO-1 Box Inventory
Inventory compiled by Hope Warner
Updated 04/28/2006
Bissette Biographical
Items pertaining to Stephen R. Bissette personal and professional history.
[LOTS of files, which I have carefully organized by year, subject, etc. This becomes autobiographical in nature, and provides a snapshot of my economic life as a cartoonist: what I earned, what it cost to live, etc., as well as a progressive view of my adult life taking shape (marriage, building a family, etc.) and such. I hope this makes the material a little more digestible – along with the following notes, which pretty well give you a year-by-year overview of my life, pro and some personal, and its relevance to the records enclosed. – SB]
Folder 1
BIO-01 / 01 / 01[Added 03/09/2006]
Manilafolder with notes on it; 2 bankbooks; 1 processed check; 1 money order receipt; envelope addressed to Stephen R. Bissette from Office of Town Clerk and Treasurer, Grafton, Vermont; checkbook with 5 checks and 1 deposit slip still attached in it; UPS shipping receipt dated 9/30/80; Application for addition to checklist, 1 yellow and 1 blue copy.
[(1) 1980: Where I lived – Though some of this ‘back story’ will be fleshed out once I excavate the remaining 1970s files, this was the key transitional year for me: moving from a shared-living arrangement that was a direct extension of my Kubert School student life, to living alone in Vermont; moving from New Jersey to return to my home state of Vermont; meeting Nancy O’Connor, my wife-to-be; cutting my teeth in my chosen profession; etc. So, bear with me, I’ll try to explain the documents in this file and in doing so what was happening for me:
-BANK BOOK: I banked at the Dover, NJ branch of the National Community Bank of New Jersey during my years in Dover, NJ at the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art, Inc. (Sept. 1976 – May 1978) and my short stay in NJ after (June 1978 – Fall 1979), building the professional contacts necessary to continue working in comics. I kept the NJ bank account open until April of 1980; this was my final bank book from that period. Note my first rental check for my Grafton, VT home (made out to my new landlords Theron and Iva Fisher, $60 a month rent, July 27. 1979; I moved in August 1st, and kept my room at the NJ residence through March of 1980 as a base of operations in NJ) . Note, too, the transfer of funds to my bank in Vermont, First Vermont Bank, on August 7, 1979.
-SAMPLE CHECKS from National Community Bank of NJ: Note the address on these checks, 9 Berkshire Avenue, Dover, NJ, 07801, which our ex-KubertSchool classmate Ken Feduniewicz dubbed the “Flying Dutchman Studios.” Our landlord was Anthony Carraccio, who lived next door to us; Joe Kubert’s oldest son David lived across the street for part of our stay in this abode. This was the house where I lived with fellow XQB (ex-Kubies) RICK VEITCH, JOHN TOTLEBEN, TOM YEATES, and Tom’s partner SUE BALINSKI (originally from Fort Wayne, NJ); my room was on the main floor, facing landlord Carraccio’s house. I lived there from the time of my graduation from the KubertSchool (May 1978) until I moved to Grafton, VT in August 1979; I eventually sublet my room until leaving the house altogether in March of 1980.
-SAMPLE CHECK from First Vermont Bank, VT: Note my new home address, Fisher Hill Road, Grafton, VT05146. I was renting from Theron and Iva Fisher, two sturdy old Vermonters, and my residence was a one-room brick schoolhouse from the 1860s. It lacked electricity (I was the first resident to install electricity, after struggling with battery-powered lighting through the entire ‘1941’ graphic novel job; what prompted the final decision to install electricity was the lack of refrigeration, when my use of the nearby brook to keep food cold was foiled nightly by nocturnal raccoons who seemed able to open any container – I built a stone hollow to protect my food underwater and capped it with a huge flat stone, and that very night there was a flashflood that washed it all away), there was no plumbing (there was a single sink that drained into the crawlspace beneath the stone foundation, and an extension to the building in back: a long hallway past the wood storage area leading to an opulent four-seat outhouse), and was heated only with the woodstove I purchased upon my move into the place. Rent was only $60.00 per month (note receipt also in this file folder); it was pretty Spartan living and working, with my drawing board in the corner facing the road and driveway, my bed in the other corner. I should also note I purchased the first car of my life while living here, sometime in late 1979: a 1970 Mercury Montego from Florida that was hand-painted (you could see the paintbrush strokes!) piss yellow. I bought it for $100 in ’79, and sold it for $100 in 1981 (see 1981 file).
-Application for Addition to Grafton Voter Checklist, dated Oct. 20, 1980 (forms enclosed, with original mailing envelope)
-Shipping receipts: Nancy O’Connor’s move to live with me in Grafton, VT in September, 1980. For the whole story, see my notes (below) for the file 1981: Where I Lived (the bankbook for 1981 features most of the entries for 1980, documenting our life together); also see 1980: Travel folder (below) for details, and note the entries in my bankbook relevant to Jack Venooker (Johnson State College classmate, whom I went to visit in his new abode in Santa Fe, New Mexico) and Nancy O’Connor (whom I met in New Mexico, fell in love with, and spent time with in Santa Fe, paying my share of the rent during those months I visited).—S.B.]
Folder 2
BIO-01 / 02 / 01[Added 03/09/2006]
Manila folder with notes on it; envelope from Johnson State College; check stub from Johnson State College for Cover Art Ref. #145; billing statement from Johnson State College dated 8 Jan 80; letter from Johnson State College to Bissette regarding balance due, dated December 4, 1979; student billing statement from Johnson State College for Spring of 1976, dated 12/15/75; student billing statement from Johnson State College for Spring of 1976, dated 03/22/76.
[(2) 1980: Final Johnson State College bill! – I attended Johnson State College in Johnson, VT from the fall of 1974 through the end of summer 1976 (I tutored at JSC that summer break); began my studies at the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art, Inc. in Sept. 1976. This was the final JSC bill; settled, behind me.—S.B.]
Folder 3
BIO-01 / 03 / 01[Added 03/09/2006]
Manila folder with notes on it; envelope from HEAVY METAL to Bissette; invoice from Bissette to HEAVY METAL for FIRST LOVE, dated 2/4/80; receipt for paymentto Bissette from HEAVY METAL for FIRST LOVE/ MAY 1980, dated 3/13/80.
[(3) 1980: HEAVY METAL job – The color two-page piece “First Love”; editor: Julie Simmons, Art Director: John Workman. This was my final HEAVY METAL sale; it was published much later, as was work I had completed and been paid for in 1979.—S.B.]
Folder 4
BIO-01 / 04/ 01[Added 03/09/2006]
Manila folder with notes on it; envelope with check stub from Marvel Comics Group, dated 10/20/80; envelope with check stub from Marvel Comics Group, dated 8/27/80; envelope with check stub from Marvel Comics Group, dated 4/28/80: envelope with check stub from Marvel Comics Group, dated 6/28/80: envelope with check stub from Marvel Comics Group, dated 11/5/80; shipping receipt from Bissette to Marvel Comics, dated 4/10/80; copies of shipping receipts from Bissette to Marvel Comics, 2 copies, 2 pages, dates are: 5/28/80, 5/29/80, 6/2/80, 6/4/80.
[(4) 1980: Marvel Comics Group jobs – Editors: Lynne Graeme, Ralph Macchio; MARVEL PREVIEW/BIZARRE ADVENTURES magazine (black and white zine). Lynne Graeme was the editor of BIZARRE ADVENTURES in the wake of Marvel’s unceremonious booting of Richard Marshall from the editor’s seat. She was a curious woman to work for; during this period, I proposed a number of stories to her for the zine. If Lynne liked an idea, though, she would decide she should write it – and then never write it, which is what happened to my time-travel heroine Kestrel Falconer, whose story was ballyhooed (complete with two of my four character paintings) in an issue of BIZARRE ADV., but never appeared. Lynne never wrote the script, and the job languished, though I did complete two fully-rendered pages in hopes of jump-starting the gig. Throughout this arduous waste of time, erstwhile Ralph Macchio, who had been Rick Marshall’s assistant during my very first Marvel jobs, remained as Lynne’s assistant – and he remained assistant editor under Lynne’s successor Denny O’Neil. In a way, Ralph was the only constant for me at Marvel. See 1981: Marvel Comics file, below, for the rest of the story.—S.B.]
Folder 5
BIO-01 / 05/ 01[Added 03/09/2006]
Manila folder with notes on it; return receipt for mail sent to James Van Hise, dated 5/14/80; original and copy of invoice statement to James Van Hise from Bissette dated 1/30/80; envelope addressed to Bissette from James Van Hise dated 6/22/80.
[(5) 1980: ROCKET BLAST COMICS COLLECTOR/ James Van Hise job – Van Hise’s RBCC was a venerable comics fanzine, and this was among the work I did for him over about a two-year period.—S.B.]
Folder 6
BIO-01 / 06/ 01[Added 03/13/2006]
Manila folder with notes on it; envelope with check stub from Scholastic Magazines Inc. dated 1/04/80;envelope with check stub from Scholastic Magazines Inc. dated 2/29/80; envelope with check stub from Scholastic Magazines Inc. dated 5/15/80;envelope with check stub from Scholastic Magazines Inc. dated 10/15/80; registered mail receipt and express mail receipt from Bissette to Scholastic Magazines Inc. dated 5/15/80; express mail receipt from Bissette to Scholastic Magazines Inc. dated 11/13/80.
[(6) 1980: Scholastic Magazines jobs – Scholastic was among the best publishers I worked with in the formative years of my comics career: the kindest, most fun, best-paying, best reproduction of my work, and among the best gifts Joe Kubert gave me (he let me take the ‘contract’ with me when I graduated the School, having done a solid job on the couple of Scholastic jobs I did FOR Joe while a student). Editor and writer was “Jovial” Bob Stine, aka R.L. Stine of later GOOSEBUMPS fame, and Art Director was Bob Feldgus.—S.B.]
Folder 7
BIO-01 / 07/ 01[Added 03/13/2006]
Manila folder with notes on it; invoice statement to Larry Shell from Bissette dated 1/17/80.
[(7) 1980: Larry Shell job – January, 1980: completed “Earth Invasion” for Larry Shell’s planned anthology ALIEN ENCOUNTERS; see 1981 for end of story. Larry Shell was among the first publishers I worked with while a student at the JoeKubertSchool. He lived in Irvington, NJ, and though couldn’t afford to pay much, provided a few critical venues for myself and a few classmates – and, as the 1981 files prove, was the bridge to two publishers who were later important to me.—S.B.]
BIO-01 / 07/ 02[Added 03/13/2006]
Manila folder with notes on it; receipt from Snow & Lear Co. Inc. to Bissette dated 11/14/80.
[(8) What I wrote with – evidence of my manual typewriter, long since gone, on which I wrote my first comics scripts and pro jobs. Sentimental writer attachments like this are soooo pathetic, aren’t they?—S.B.]
Folder 8
BIO-01 / 08/ 01[Added 03/13/2006]
Manila folder with notes on it; Conrail train ticket date punched is February 4; Amtrak train ticket date punched is August 25; Greyhound receipt dated 11/10/80; Vermont Transit receipt dated 11/26/80; Vermont Transit receipt dated 9/16/80; Vermont Transit receipt dated 11/03/80; parcel stub no. 500196 no date; flight itinerary envelope from Adventure Travel; Bieber Tourways receipt dated 8/26/80; Western Union telegraphic money order receipt dated 4/18/80; Western Union mailogram dated 4/18/80.
[(9) 1980: Travel – OK, here’s the scoop: I first met Nancy O’Connor during my November 1979 trip to Santa FE, NM (see 1980 file above, my bank books, Nov. 5-9, 1979). We fell for one another at the very end of that visit – I mean, like, the LAST NIGHT I was in Santa Fe! – and I then scrambled for work to afford a return visit. Note the bankbook entries for Jan. 14, 1980; Nancy (later Marlene) got me the plane tickets through a travel agency on her end, and I reimbursed her and rushed back out to Santa Fe in February, 1980, living with her until the money (and return ticket) ran out in April 1980. We fell for each other hard: Nancy moved out to Grafton to live with me by September of 1980. Ah, young love and long-distance romances. Also herein: bus and train trip tickets etc. for work-related trips to New York City and Boston.—S.B.]
Folder 9
BIO-01 / 09/ 01[Added 03/17/2006]
Manila folder with notes on it; 1 bankbook;checkbook with 5 checks and 1 deposit slip still attached in it; receipt for post office box dated 9/02/81; premium notice from State Farm Insurance agency with 2 envelopes dated 11/17/80; 2 Empire Gas notices with envelopes dated 12/02/80 and 2/24/81; statement from Automobile Club of Vermont expiration date 07/01/81.
[(1) 1981: Where I lived – 1981 was also a key transitional year, culminating in marriage to Nancy O’Connor in August before our move to Wilmington, VT, the area of the state in which I was to settle for the rest of my life to date. The documents in this file tell the story, particularly the bankbook, but they do require a bit of back-up to explain the rest of what happened in 1980.—S.B.]
[As noted above (1980: Where I lived file), Nancy moved in September of 1980 to live with me. However, by the time of her arrival, I had arranged for possibly moving our living quarters from the red brick schoolhouse on Fisher Hill Road to the hilltop Grafton rental home built by SteveLake, if Nancy preferred. The Lake rental house was as Spartan as life at the schoolhouse, though it was a very cool structure with two floors, an electrical generator, a real kitchen and dining area, a living room, no running water but plumbing of a sort (a bathtub upstairs one could fill with water heated on the woodstove), and an outhouse a bit more elegant than the schoolhouse four-holer. The barely passable dirt road to the place was drivable in the fall, but unplowed in the winter, necessitating a half-mile trek uphill come winter. Nancy and I spent our first night together in VT at this place in the upstairs bedroom, which had a skylight above the bed; an owl visited us that night, landing above the skylight looking down. She loved the place, and so by October we had moved to the $85-a-month Lake rental while I kept the $60-per-month Fisher Hill schoolhouse as my studio. This pioneer-style idyll faded once winter hit hard, and we ended up literally fleeing the house on December 24th, 1980, when a day-long struggle to fill the bathtub with hot water culminated in the crude plumbing bursting at almost every seam at the moment I climbed into the tub. We packed up and spent Christmas Day at the Fisher Hill schoolhouse, where we subsequently lived together from January 1981 through the end of August of that year. It was cramped living, but we were young and in love; Nancy worked in Springfield, VT (about a half-hour drive away) as a waitress, while my freelance work picked up and I worked at home. We were married atop the hills overlooking our Fisher Hill home in August, 1981, by our landlord Iva, who was also a Justice-of-the-Peace; sadly, her husband Theron had passed away late in 1980.
Seeking work that was of interest, Nancy gravitated to the GreenMeadowsSchool, a structured living facility for autistic children, in Wilmington, VT, south of Grafton. After her successful interview for a position at Green Meadows, we made the decision to move, and bid farewell to the red schoolhouse. We moved to a seasonal rental on Lake Rapona Road in Wilmington, in a rather odd sprawling two-story house owned by Connecticut teachers Tom and Carol Grant; we were there from September 1981 through the end of May 1982. The Wilmington move was definitive, re-orienting my life up to the present (I still live, now with my second wife Marjory, in this part of the state, over the mountain from Wilmington in Marlboro, VT). Note the receipt from the Wilmington post office for opening my PO Box (442) on Sept. 2, 1981; this is to this day my business address, primarily kept for consistent mailing of all DC Comics royalty checks.
Though the Grant house was a great place to live, complete with plumbing and electricity, comfortably heated with wood, and boasting an adjoining lawn across the road that sloped down to the lake itself (the Grants also had a small sailboat and paddle-boat we were free to use), and my freelance career in comics enjoyed a real boost from my work with Marvel (see below), it was a troubled year for us. We endured a tragic miscarriage (what would have been our first child, a son, at about six months) which happened at home, perhaps caused in part by a minor car accident Nancy suffered on Lake Raponda Road; that spring, we scattered the infant’s ashes on the shore of Lake Raponda. Our new car was subsequently totaled in our driveway when Wilmington high school boys joy-riding at about 7:30 AM avoided a rear-end collision with the local school bus by veering into (actually, ONTO) the back end of our vehicle. Luckily, I still owned the piss monster (my 1970 Mercury Montego), which I sold after we could afford a new used car at the end of the year (see below).