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.Continue reading
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.
I 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).
When 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.
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.
But 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.
