I just received the sad news that my old pal Al Levine has passed.
Many of you knew him, a fixture at North East conventions for DECADES…
Alan was one of the originals, his ads for comics going back to some of the earliest issues of the Comics Buyers Guide.
He also sold pulps, and perhaps most famously, movie material, and memorabilia. (Al wound up helping to sell the E. Nelson Bridwell collection, and MANY other assortments, over the years!)
There was his store in Bloomfield, New Jersey, for AGES. (And Al was a key figure in the transitioning of Manhattan’s monthly one-day comic book marketplace convention from the auspices of founder Phil Seuling, after he passed, to Fred Greenberg, in the mid-1980s. A few years later, he was also in on the origins of New Jersey’s Chiller Convention!)
And Al was someone I, and so many others, could trust.
And he was FUNNY!
And raised a lovely family, including, a beautiful granddaughter. (Amazing to me now, she’s in her twenties… I can remember cradling her on my shoulder at a Gallagher’s paper show!)
More info to follow, but I wanted to get word out, for anyone who might wish to attend tomorrow’s memorial service, at 12:00 PM, Noon at:
The Jewish Memorial Chapel
841 Allwood Road
Clifton, NJ. 07012
Here’s a nice article about Al, from a little over fourteen years ago, in THE TIMES:
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/17/nyregion/new-jersey-co-up-against-the-wall-semi-hero.html