Tag Archives: Paul Levitz

Talking About DIRECT CONVERSATIONS: TALKS WITH FELLOW DC COMICS BRONZE AGE CREATORS

Quite literally, the first “stories” I ever wrote when I was six and seven years old were comic book stories. I also drew then because obviously a comic book needs pictures to go along with the words. Neither my writing nor pictures from those days pointed to a career in the arts, but I was only just getting started with comics. And writing. But they’ll always be intertwined for me, even now, almost 60 years later when I work primarily in prose.

Writing for DC Comics wasn’t just an idea. It was my goal, my ambition. Even more than that. It was a dream. I didn’t have the easiest childhood and the world of Superman and the Martian Manhunter and the rest of the Justice League was where I went for solace. I wanted to be as close to them as I could get.

In 1975, the dream became a reality. Coming up through the ranks of fandom and fanzines I finally stumbled through the door of DC and never looked back. Until now, in Direct Conversations: Talks With Fellow DC Comics Bronze Age Creators. Nearly 50 years and more than a thousand stories later I sat down with ten old friends and colleagues to talk about those good old Bronze Age days when we were first breaking into the business at a time when the business itself seemed to be on the verge of breaking apart. Another old friend, fellow DC, Weekly World News, and Crazy 8 Press pal Robert Greenberger wrote the introduction.

Included are conversations with: Writer/artist Howard V. Chaykin, writer/editor Jack C. Harris, writer/editor Tony Isabella, writer/editor/former DC president and publisher Paul Levitz, production artist/inker Steve Mitchell, writer/former DC production manager Bob Rozakis, artist Joe Staton, colorist Anthony Tollin, writer Bob Toomey, and writer/Batman film franchise producer Michael Uslan.

The Direct Conversations Kickstarter campaign went on October 5, 2022 at 12 noon ET and will run through October 25. CLICK HERE TO VIEW OR SUPPORT DIRECT CONVERSATIONS ON KICKSTARTER.

I’m offering signed copies of Direct Conversations: Talks With Fellow DC Comics Bronze Age Creators paperback, either by itself or with a PDF e-copy, or in combination with signed copies of one, two, or all three of my previously published books about comics and PDF e-copies: Direct Comments: Comic Book Creators in their Own Words, Paul Kupperberg’s Illustrated Guide to Writing Comics, and I Never Write for the Money But I Always Turn in the Manuscript for a Check. I know backers have come to expect stretch goals and elaborate rewards in Kickstarter campaigns, but from the reaction I’ve been getting to this project’s made me think I don’t need a lot of frills to sell a book of conversations with Bronze Age creators about the history they’ve witnessed, or in a lot of cases, made.

Direct Conversations: Talks With Fellow DC Comics Bronze Age Creators. It’s like eavesdropping on a bunch of old pros over lunch at a comic con!

Books for the Holidays

51Gn70L5MALIt’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

By which I mean, crass commercialism and holiday insanity (pagan cup of Christmas-hating Starbucks Christmas Blend coffee anyone?) are in full bloom, making life, shopping, and social media things to be, if not feared, at least avoided.

And, seeing as I’m at a point in my life where I’ve been trying to divest myself of the endless cartons of stuff I’ve accumulated and have been schlepping around with me for almost fifty years, the thought that this time of year could bring new stuff to replace it is sort of disturbing. (My need to shed that useless tonnage of paper et al found voice, albeit in the extreme, in a short story “Unburdened,” found here.)

But never let it be said I was a holiday…I’m sorry, Christmas (‘cause I don’t want to be accused of waging a war against Christmas in this, a nation that’s about 85% Christian) buzzkill, and, c’mon, seriously, who doesn’t like getting presents? Especially books.

51oqzCTobLSo, in that spirit, and ‘cause that’s the theme of these holiday season posts, here are some books I think readers who have enjoyed my work (which you can check out here…y’know, just to refresh your memory…but, hey, come to think of it, any of ’em would make fine holiday gifts in their own right!) might be pleased to find under their trees, menorahs, or kwanzaa candles:

 

CainI love a mystery, especially the classics of the genre. I can’t recommend highly enough any or all of the works of James M. Cain, author of such classics as The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, and Mildred Pierce (although the last, a fine novel in its own right, was turned into a murder mystery by the studio when it was filmed in 1945 starring Joan Crawford). A great introduction to this masterful writer can be had for about $20.00, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce, and Selected Stories (Everyman’s Library Classic, 2003).

StoutAnother favorite is Rex Stout, author of thirty-three novels and forty novellas starring that rotund epicurean detective, Nero Wolfe and his sidekick, Archie Goodwin. Beautifully written, meticulously plotted, and often hilariously charactered, the Wolfe novels hold up even eighty years after they first began to appear. Get a great big serving of Wolfe and Goodwin in Seven Complete Nero Wolfe Novels (The Silent Speaker / Might as Well Be Dead / If Death Ever Slept / Three at Wolfe’s Door / Gambit / Please Pass the Guilt / A Family Affair), or try them out one at a time, beginning with 1934’s Fer-de-Lance.

EisnerWhen it comes to the comic book side of me, there’s a veritable stack of tomes that I’d like to unwrap on any one of the eight days of Chanukah. Most recently published as I write this is my old friend Paul Levitz’s Will Eisner: Champion of the Graphic Novel, a biography that focuses on The Spirit creator’s contributions to the birth and popularity of the graphic novel form and his impact on creators like Jules Feiffer, Art Spiegelman, Scott McCloud, Denis Kitchen, Neil Gaiman, and others. And while you’re looking, you might also want to check out Paul’s, 75 Years of DC Comics: The Art of Modern Mythmaking (Taschen America, 2010), a massive 720-page coffee table book (actually, buy some table legs at the hardware and you can make into a coffee table!). Or, if you can’t handle wrestling this 16.9 pound behemoth (let’s talk “weighty tomes,” wot?), Taschen has also broken 75 Years up into several smaller books, including The Golden Age of DC Comics, The Silver Age of DC Comics, and The Bronze Age of DC Comics.

WellsTwoMorrows has been publishing the American Comic Book Chronicles for a couple of years now, breaking down the history of the art form decade by decade. The first I read was John Wells’ two-volume American Comic Book Chronicles: 1960-1964 and American Comic Book Chronicles: 1965-1969, an exhaustive look at my comic book decade. John’s also a pal (he supplied the introduction to my The Unpublished Comic Book Scripts of Paul Kupperberg…a book worth having for John’s fine intro alone!), but he’s also one of the most knowledgeable and readable comic historians working today.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t also point you towards the American Comic Book Chronicles: The 1970s, written by Jason Sacks. Jason knows the comics of the 1970s like the back of his hand and takes us all on an enjoyable look at one of the industry’s most explosive decades.

The_Great_Comic_Book_HeroesBut if its comics history you want, the absolute greatest book on the subject ever published is, in my not so humble opinion, Jules Feiffer’s The Great Comic Book Heroes: The Origins and Early Adventures of the Classic Super-Heroes of the Comic Book (The Dial Press, 1965). It’s almost impossible to overstate the importance of this one 189-page hardcover, which consisted mostly of reprints of 1940s comic book stories surrounded by Feiffer’s brilliant essays on growing up with and entering the nascent field during the 40s, considered among the very first critical analysis of the form. Those reprints (at a time when such stories were never reprinted and the internet was still about thirty years in the future) and Feiffer’s personal creative journey through the four color fields awakened the creative instincts and inspired an entire generation of wannabe creators to pursue comics as a career. Between me and a couple of friends, we had it on almost continuous loan from the Utica Avenue branch of the New York Public Library for about two years until we could afford copies of our own. The Great Comic Book Heroes is long out of print, but I still have my original mid-1960s copy as well as a paperback reprint of just the Feiffer essays published by Fantagraphic Books in 2003.

Read on, people! And Happy Whatever!