I've been looking some more at the many photographs taken during the Wizard World LA show last weekend, and I've come to a sad and sorry conclusion:
Man, have I become a fat lump.
Maybe it's being around people like Peter David and Joe Quesada, both of whom have dropped a substantial amount of weight within the last year (and let me tell you, it breaks my heart that I can no longer do Quesada fat jokes.) Or maybe it's just that I'm getting old and my metabolism, like everything else, is slowing down. Or perhaps it's just the camera playing tricks and adding dozens of pounds as they say it can (though I wouldn't put any money on this last one.)
It's an unfortunate side-effect of this job, weight-gain. When I started at Marvel, all those years ago, I weighed in the neighborhood of 160 lbs. But sitting behind a desk every day for eight-to-twelve hours will have a cumulative effect on anybody over time. And especially during CIVIL WAR, I would be too wasted from work most nights during the week to do anything very active when I got home.
So this is something that needs some attending to.
More later.
Tom B