They say to never meet your idols. I dunno, I’ve had pretty good luck over the years. I especially had good luck with writer, researcher, and historian Will Murray. Sadly, Will passed last week.
In retrospect, it seemed like Will Murray was an author that I always reading. He seemed to know so much about all the cool stuff I loved: pulp heroes (like Doc Savage, the Spider, and The Shadow, old TV shows, comics, famous actors, even old books. I read a zillion of his articles then started diving into his novels.
I even reviewed one, The Sinister Shadow (a Doc Savage + Shadow team-up) here.
How much fun his novels were, and all the better that they written by a fan just “like us”.
Admittedly, a fan with a lot more talent, but still. He was one of us.
I met Will a few times at conventions over the years. As I got more involved, I was over-the-moon thrilled when he accepted my invitations to be a convention panelist once or twice.
But more recently, I’ve become the Editor-in-Chief for RetroFan magazine. I inherited the job from my friend, Michael Eury, and it’s been a joy. Will Murray had long been a contributing writer to RetroFan. His regular feature, Will Murray’s 20th Century Panopticon was always one of my favorite parts. So you can imagine I was eager to work with him as EiC.
His work, and you might imagine, didn’t need much editing. He’d turn in beautiful articles, so thoughtful and well-written. He’d even take subjects I had little interest in, like Nancy Drew, and open up a whole new world for me. (That brilliant article was in RetroFan #41.)
The real joy of working with Will, for me, came in the planning. We’d talk about what he’d want to write about, and then I’d add on a few article ideas that I think he would do a great job with. That push-and-pull was a one-sided tug of war, with equal parts of professional respect and fanboy exuberance on my end. Will was a little more straightforward; he was all about the professionalism.
Will would do a lot writing beyond RetroFan, most noticeably, lately, for an astoundingly good magazine, Peter Normanton’s Cryptology (also published by TwoMorrows). I’d read Will’s monster-focused articles there and dash off a note to hm about how I enjoyed his writing on this one or that one. And then I’d gnash my teeth in jealousy, wishing I had found a way to shoehorn that article or topic into RetroFan.
Will worked ahead so we have few more articles to publish in RetroFan. But I’m so disappointed about the topics that we talked about, and he didn’t get to. Rats. I’ve read so much from Will, but rather than being satiated, I’m still ravenous for more.
Will was always kind and patient. I thoroughly enjoyed working with him. We even talked about getting him to ITHACON this spring. He wrote so much, but his sudden passing leaves me thinking of every article that was right around the corner and how much I would’ve enjoyed it.
So long, Will. Thanks for sharing your talent—and your friendship—with me, with the fans, and with the world. But especially with me.
