Sometimes Getting Called On Something is a Good Thing

One of the things that I thought about when I started writing a column version of Views From The Longbox was that at some point I was going to make a mistake. I am a stickler for getting my facts straight and make every effort to edit myself to avoid them, but I know that there would be a time when for whatever reason (low blood sugar, Manhunter implant going on the blink, I just screwed up) I was going to get something wrong.

And that time has come.

In my most recent column (up now at Comixtreme, and I really should get around to posting here when those go up) I wrote about the various Who's Who series that DC has published over the years. In addition to the various Updates I discussed the loose leaf edition that they began publishing in 1990 and wrote that in addition to Roger Stern and Mark Waid writing a number of entries that writers and editors like Gerard Jones and Paul Dooley also contributed.
Two problems the first being that in looking at the sentence I realize it might seem like Gerard Jones was an editor at DC, which he wasn't. He wrote a good number of books there at the time including The Shadow Strikes, Green Lantern, Green Lantern Mosaic, Justice League Europe/International, El Diablo and a prequel Ford Fairlane mini-series. That bugged me because I should have known better. I mean I could argue that it's just a column about comic books and not an expose on chemical dumping at Love Canal, but I want to come off as someone proficient at writing, so I hold myself to a higher standard.

My second mistake was that it was Kevin Dooley that was an editor at DC at the time and not Paul Dooley. Paul Dooley is an actor who has had a pretty extraordinary career, though when I see him I always think of him as the Dad from Sixteen Candles. Again, I could argue the fact that with as many names that I have crammed in my head it is easy to get some mixed up, but frankly I am cutting myself no slack on this one as well mainly because I stared at Kevin Dooley's name several times when I was looking through my Who's Who in preparation for the article.

Amazingly it was not a fellow fan who called me on this. It was Roger Stern, writer of everything.

In some ways getting called on something like this by a pro is somewhat flattering. I can't really explain why, but it is.

Oh well. Live and learn. I fixed the column. I'll do better next time.