On newsstands 50 years ago this week.
New Book By Comics Vet Paul Kupperberg Features Interviews with Bronze Age DC Comics Creators
Veteran comics writer Paul Kupperberg is offering a new book via Kickstarter. More info here.
Details:
Where were you in 1975?
I was twenty and in my first year as a comic book professional. After a lifetime of reading comics and an adolescence devoted to collecting them and participating in comics fandom and fanzines, I realized my ambition of breaking into the comic book business. The way some kids wanted to grow up to be actors or baseball players or architects, I dreamt of writing for DC Comics.
And I wasn’t alone.
Between May and August of 2022, I sat down for a series of conversations with ten of my old friends and DC Comics colleagues, many of whom shared my childhood four-color obsession, about their own journeys from fans and readers to professionals during that pivotal time in comics history for DIRECT CONVERSATIONS: TALKS WITH FELLOW DC COMICS BRONZE AGE CREATORS:
- Howard V. Chaykin
- Jack C. Harris
- Tony Isabella
- Paul Levitz
- Steve Mitchell
- Bob Rozakis
- Joe Staton
- Anthony Tollin
- Bob Toomey
- Michael Uslan
Comics was changing. The audience was getting older, readers demanding more sophisticated storytelling and art, and, very soon, the industry’s entire business model would be upended as distribution shifted from newsstands to comics specialty shops. Even the old guard like DC vice president and production manager Sol Harrison, who had been working in the business since comics began in 1935, recognized that the new generation of readers called for a new generation of creators, ones closer to their ages and interests than the 20-, 30-, 40-year veterans than responsible for most of the current output.
At least half the people I spoke with for DIRECT CONVERSATIONS had been hired under the general umbrella of Sol Harrison’s search for young talent, including Michael Uslan, later the producer of the Batman film franchise, inker, production artist, and later documentary filmmaker Steve Mitchell, colorist and production artist Anthony Tollin, writer and production manager Bob Rozakis, and editor and writer Jack C. Harris. Paul Levitz, my cohort in publishing the early-70s fanzines that led to his being temporarily hired in 1972 as legendary artist and editor Joe Orlando’s assistant for a summer, ending in his retirement as DC’s president and publisher in 2009. Tony Isabella took an unusual route, coming to DC after a stint writing and editing for Marvel, while Howard Chaykin, Joe Staton, Bob Toomey, and myself were freelancers who took slightly different routes.
In DIRECT CONVERSATIONS my DC Comics Bronze Age peers and I talk about the good (and some not so good) old days, in the years when comics was still a small enough world where everybody knew everybody else, and where we found ourselves rubbing shoulders with and being mentored by the giants who had created the business over its first 40 years.
Why focus on DC Comics? Because that’s the place I knew. I discovered comics before the Marvel Comics we know today even existed, and characters like Superman and Wonder Woman and Martian Manhunter were indelibly stamped on my psyche as I learned to read from their stories. I got my first glimpse of the world inside the business on one of DC’s weekly office tours in 1968. When I started pitching stories to publishers, I took a couple of practice swings at Gold Key (strike out!) and Charlton (home run!), but once I landed at DC I never looked back. My creative heart, and most of my friends, were at DC.
Coming Up: 'Home to Stay!: The Complete Ray Bradbury EC Stories'
Out from Fantagraphics Books Oct. 18. Order now from Amazon.
Details:
A special companion to our New York Times best-selling classic reprint series, this collection features all the Ray Bradbury stories adapted by EC Comics (including the unauthorized ones!) for the first time in one volume.
Between 1951 and 1954, EC Comics adapted 28 classic Ray Bradbury stories into comics form, scripted by Al Feldstein and interpreted and illustrated by all of EC's top artists: Johnny Craig, Reed Crandall, Jack Davis, Will Elder, George Evans, Frank Frazetta, Graham Ingels, Jack Kamen, Bernard Krigstein, Joe Orlando, John Severin, Angelo Torres, Al Williamson, and Wallace Wood. This special companion collection to our EC Comics Library series features all 28 stories with stunning art reproduced in generously oversized coffee table dimensions!
Highlights in this singular volume include: "Home to Stay"— a clever combination of two Bradbury science fiction stories that Bradbury himself proclaimed topped his originals (available in no other form or medium), masterfully woven together by Al Feldstein and Wallace Wood. "A Sound of Thunder" — the classic time-travel-gone-wrong story brilliantly illustrated by Al Williamson and Angelo Torres. "Touch and Go" — an obsessive psychological thriller tautly executed by Johnny Craig. And many more, including "The Million Year Picnic" (Elder), "I, Rocket" (Williamson and Frazetta), "Zero Hour" (Kamen), "Mars Is Heaven" (Wood), and "There Will Come Soft Rains…" (Wood). Plus three bonus stories inspired by other Bradbury tales.
A superb, sumptuous showcase for these classic comic book masterpieces that have never before been collected together in one volume.
New Comics Collected Editions: Black Panther Masterworks
Our pick this week:
The Mighty Marvel Masterworks are proud to present the early adventures of the Black Panther! In the 1960s, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created one of the most iconic super heroes ever conceived, the regal king of the Wakandas—the Black Panther. Roy Thomas, joined by top artists including John Buscema, brought the Panther into the ranks of the Avengers and delved into his origins and backstory. From T’Challa’s first appearance and his battle with Klaw through his adventures with Captain America and his joining the ranks of the Avengers, each page in this Mighty Marvel Masterworks volume is history in the making!
COLLECTING: Fantastic Four (1961) 52-53, 56; Tales of Suspense (1959) 97-99; Captain America (1968) 100; Avengers (1963) 52, 62, 73-74; Daredevil (1964) 52; material from Fantastic Four (1961) 54
New on Video: "Night of the Living Dead" - The Criterion Collection [4K UHD]
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Order now from Amazon.
Details:
Shot outside Pittsburgh on a shoestring budget, by a band of filmmakers determined to make their mark, Night of the Living Dead, directed by horror master George A. Romero, is a great story of independent cinema: a midnight hit turned box-office smash that became one of the most influential films of all time.
A deceptively simple tale of a group of strangers trapped in a farmhouse who find themselves fending off a horde of recently dead, flesh-eating ghouls, Romero’s claustrophobic vision of a late-1960s America literally tearing itself apart rewrote the rules of the horror genre, combining gruesome gore with acute social commentary and quietly breaking ground by casting a Black actor (Duane Jones) in its lead role.
Special features:
- 4K digital restoration, supervised by director George A. Romero
- "Night of Anubis," a work-print edit of the film
- Two audio commentaries featuring Romero, the film's producer and coscreenwriter, and others
- Program featuring filmmakers Frank Darabont, Guillermo del Toro, and Robert Rodriguez
- And more
Pop Culture Roundup: Spidey Library Card! 'Frasier' Returns! More!
ITEM! Marvel and the New York Public Library have teamed to offer a Spider-Man library card.
ITEM! Former "Buffy" cast member Emma Caulfield will reprise her "WandaVision" role as Wanda's neighbor Dottie in Marvel's spin-off show "Agatha: Coven of Chaos," starring Kathryn Hahn.
ITEM! A new "Frasier" series starring Kelsey Grammer is moving forward.
So Long, Loretta Lynn
The pioneering female country star is dead at age 90.
From The New York Times today:Ms. Lynn built her stardom not only on her music, but also on her image as a symbol of rural pride and determination. Her story was carved out of Kentucky coal country, from hardscrabble beginnings in Butcher Hollow (which her songs made famous as Butcher Holler).
She became a wife at 15, a mother at 16 and a grandmother in her early 30s, married to a womanizing sometime bootlegger who managed her to stardom.
That story made her autobiography, “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” a best seller and the grist for an Oscar-winning movie adaptation of the same name.
Her voice was unmistakable, with its Kentucky drawl, its tensely coiled vibrato and its deep reserves of power.
“She’s louder than most, and she’s gonna sing higher than you think she will,” said John Carter Cash, who produced Ms. Lynn’s final recordings. “With Loretta you just turn on the mic, stand back and hold on.”
Here she is singing one of her classics.
Pop Culture Roundup: Peanuts! Sergio! JSA!
ITEM! The U.S. Postal Service is selling a new array of Peanuts stamps in honor of Charles Schulz's centenary.
ITEM! Washington Posts profiles the great Sergio Aragonés.
ITEM! A look at DC's mid-1960s attempts to revive the Justice Society of America.
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