![\"\"](\"http:\/\/stallonezone.com\/zone\/2017\/z063017jimivey_breakfast.png\")
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What a fun morning! \u00a0About every six months I try to pull together a group of folks to get with our buddy Jim Ivey for a marathon breakfast session. \u00a0This time we belatedly celebrated Jim’s 92nd birthday! \u00a0That’s Jim Ivey to the far right, me, Mike Sikes, Bill Black, John Beatty, Cliff Weikal and Jim (missed his last name). Taking the photo was Steven Martinez.<\/p>\n
Jim Ivey is one of my oldest [as in been a friend the longest], oldest [as in age] and dearest friends. I first met Jim in the mid 1970\u2019s when he was running The Cartoon Museum in Orlando, Florida. At the same time Jim was working as a syndicated cartoonist [The Thoughts of Man], a political cartoonist [The Orlando Sentinel], a publisher [CartooNews], teacher [UCF cartooning class] and even a comic book convention organizer [OrlandoCon]. I was just graduating high school and into collecting comic books and later original art. Jim\u2019s shop was like heaven.<\/p>\n
Going to The Cartoon Museum became a weekly trip [almost always accompanied by my best friend, John Beatty]. When I moved to Orlando to attend UCF, my trips to Jim\u2019s Cartoon Museum became even more frequent. We\u2019d spend the day shooting the breeze and playing cards [blackjack, gin, hearts, poker] and would occasionally stop for lunch or Jim to make a sale. Jim hated it when business got in the way of fun!<\/p>\n
You never knew who would come through the store. Sometimes it was other buddies like Bill Black [pictured in the photo above with Jim and I], Mike Kott, Rafael Kayanan, or Robert Smith. Sometimes it was established artists like Mike Zeck, Bob McLeod, Bruce Stark or so many others.<\/p>\n
As the years have gone by and we\u2019ve all gone in different directions. \u00a0Many of us correspond via e-mail, but Jim doesn\u2019t mess with computers. So it\u2019s snail mail correspondence for us. I love getting my letters from Jim. Just like when we\u2019d go to his shop and you\u2019d never know what would be waiting; it\u2019s the same experience opening an envelope from Jim.<\/p>\n
Getting back to today’s breakfast…<\/p>\n
John Beatty, Cliff and I went in on stogies for Jim — got him some really nice cigars individually rolled ones from a specialty shop. \u00a0Other gifts included a nice Prince Valiant book, a Bill Black movie, a homemade carrot cake and more. \u00a0Jim was truly touched that so many old friends made the trip to honor him. \u00a0Old stories followed faster that our ice tea refills. \u00a0It was a wonderful time for all. \u00a0My guess is that our next get-together will be more of the same. \u00a0How could it not be when old friends make a point to re-connect?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What a fun morning! \u00a0About every six months I try to pull together a group of folks to get with<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[58,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-comics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/912"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18282"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18283,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18282\/revisions\/18283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}