Philip Nutman died October 7 in Atlanta after being taken off life support.
His novel Wet Work (1993) received a Bram Stoker Award nomination. Two shorter works “Full Throttle” and “Churches Of Desire” were included by Karl Edward Wagner in The Year’s Best Horror Stories XIX (1991) and XX (1992).
He was Fangoria’s first British Correspondent and wrote over 120 feature articles during his 10 years with them. He was the first reporter to interview Clive Barker for a national American magazine.
“Clive was the first successful published author I met who took a serious interest in my initial fumbling attempts at fiction, and who gave me an enormous amount of advice and encouragement. He really was a mentor at the time I needed one the most,” Nutman wrote.
As a freelance media journalist Nutman sold over a thousand articles to magazines including Penthouse, Spin, Twilight Zone, The Comic Buyer’s Guide and Gorezone. He wrote and edited over fifty comic books, had a number of screenplays under option, and once was even cast as the villain in a horror movie.
[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]
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I knew I knew the name when I saw the headline, and I braced myself.
We’ve long reached the point where folks I met pleasantly–
Or that YOU encountered happily!
–At some convention, or gathering, or even someone’s office, suddenly pass unexpectedly, or way too young.
As soon as I read the first few sentences, I knew exactly where I had met Philip (and the many times I had seen, of course, his byline).
It was at one of Fred Greenberg’s (Great Eastern Conventions) first BIG comic conventions, in New York, at the Penta (aka Statler Hilton) Hotel, a two-or-three day affair in the second floor’s Grand Ballroom. (This, after years of Fred’s having taken over the late Phil Seuling’s once-a-month, one day comic shows, back in late 1985.)
This was in 1990, or 1991 (and ask me sometime, how in the same era, one of the gal bookdealers who did the Creation Conventions circuit, and I use to be able to, on the hotel’s EIGTHTEENTH FLOOR, walk out that ballroom’s windows, and take a long walk along the veranda that circles the hotel, and didn’t really seem designed for such strolls. You can see it, from Seventh Avenue, but nowadays, the windows are locked.)
Saturday, at the end of the comics con, I was hanging out with Dave Miley, my longtime friend (since 1976). Dave should be legendary, really, one of the first managers of a comics shop in America, circa 1968, on St. Mark’s Place, in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, who later managed, for YEARS, Bill Morse’s Village Comics Art Shop, next to the Waverly, and ultimately owned his own book store. (Dave’s been on New York’s fantasy scene for nearly half-a-century!)
We passed a small room near the western part of the hotel, right across from where the escalators then were, where some group–a publisher?–was holding a small party.
We checked it out, and pretty soon, as we sipped our wne, a nice young gentleman, with a very pretty girlfriend, was introducing himself, asking us who we were.
Philip seemed more excited by my horror media mag credentials, than I ever had been!
😉
He looked like a young British rocker back then, or rather someone still enjoying the New Wave era, whom you might well meet at a British club, or downtown, at
CBGB’S.
But all these years later, the memory of Nutman’s extraordinary enthusiasm for the fantasy genres has remained strong with me.
He just seemed so excited (and polite!), and happy, about all the things he was hoping to do.
I’m glad his journey proved so fruitful, if not nearly as long as anyone would have liked.
James H. Burns
@ James ~ I didn’t know Philip, but I do remember Dave Miley, and any information about his whereabouts would be appreciated, even just an email address or general whereabouts. I used to spend untold hours at his various comic shops…
Hey, Neil M, Shoot me an email:
[email protected]