It is with a mixture of grief and relief that I note the passing of Marvel Bullpen brother and friend Paul "Big Black-Ass Cowboy" Becton (1952-2026). The relief comes from knowing that his decades of medical suffering and their attended psychological and emotional torment are finally, blessedly over.
Paul was a big guy, and I do mean BIG, as when I met him he stood at around 6'7" and weighed close to 400 pounds. His mirth was as large as he was, and his skills at coloring and pulp magazine-style illustration were quite impressive. We shared deep mutual interest in nearly everything comics, pop culture, and rock 'n' roll-related, and few could geek-out on Paul's level. His knowledge of and love for classic westerns was second to noe, but he refused to check out any Italian westerns, not even those helmed by the great Sergio Leone, because, and I quote, "No one in those stories actually has a job. Just a bunch of assholes wandering around in goddamned ponchos!"
We shared a lot both at Marvel and outside, and as the years went by Paul's physical condition majorly deteriorated. He suffered an injury while playing football during college, an injury that impaired his mobility and no doubt contributed to his weight, and during the years after Marvel, while living in the Staten Island the house that he shared with his utter prick of a brother, Paul fell through the stairs inside the house, due to the wood rotting, injuring his other leg, thus relegating him to a number of physical rehab facilities, where he was forced to live for many years, as the house was condemned and no one was allowed further admittance. The house ended up getting demolished, and Paul was unable to retrieve any of the lifetime of collectible treasures that accumulated on his own and via his career in comics.
I regularly visited Paul in one of the rehab centers on Staten Island, bringing him sketchbooks to draw in and drawing tools, plus occasionally smuggling in requested bottles of his favorite hooch. It was tragic seeing him trapped in the facility, and his soul-deep misery was palpable. Unfortunately I had to stop visiting him when I began my own journey down the path of inescapable medical misery, by which time he had moved out of the facility and began living in a ground-level flat rented from a friend. But not long after he was set free from the rehab facility, Paul suffered a debilitating stroke, and that was pretty much all she wrote, until his recent passing. No one that I asked knew exactly where Paul was living during his final years, and I wish I had known so I could have visited with him one last time.
My memories of Paul and his stories are many, too many to list here, but I will let this story that he told me during our Marvel years serve as an example of his sense of humor:
"When my father and his brother were little kids they used to get harassed by this annoying old lady who lived in the neighborhood and just loved to get into their business. She'd see them on their way home from running errands for my grandmother and she'd call them over, saying 'Whatchoo boys got in that bag? Lemme see!' Since they were kids and they were taught that they had to obey their elders, they had no choice but to comply with the old bitch's request to let her inspect their bag. She never took anything but I guess she just got off on fucking with two kids.
"Anyway, one day they had enough of that bullshit, so my dad and my uncle each took a big shit into a bag and, as per their routine, walked past the old bitch's house. Sure enough, there came the familiar croak of 'Whatchoo boys got in that bag? Lemme see!' The boys handed over the bag and ran like hell. My father said that when the old crow told my grandparents what they had done, he and my uncle got a major ass-whuppin' that night, but it was worth it and that old bat never fucked with them again!"
Rest well, o Big Black-Ass Cowboy. Your trail of woe has finally come to an end. May you enjoy the Last Roundup.
At Library Bar, celebrating my birthday (June, 2006).
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