Found among late my late sister-in-law Ellen Vartanoff’s papers — two scripts written by Jack Miller for Young Love #82 (October 1970).

Miller wrote comics from the ’40s through the ’60s, including such titles as Deadman, Batman, Aquaman, Blackhawk, Jimmy Olsen, and many others. (more…)

The chat on which you’re going to eavesdrop this time around is unique for multiple reasons, but the one most important to listeners is that this is the first time in the history of this podcast I broke bread with a comic book guest who did not come from my personal generation of creators. Those you’ve heard me talk to before from that particular branch of the fantastic — such as Marv Wolfman, Gerry Conway, Paul Levitz, Don McGregor, and others — were all people I worked either with or beside during the mid-’70s and into the early ‘80s. But this episode’s guest, writer Tom King, is different. There’s no overlap to our comics careers, because his didn’t begin until long after mine had ended.

Tom started out in comics by interning for both DC and Marvel, where he was an assistant to X-Men writer Chris Claremont. After his comics-inspired debut novel A Once Crowded Sky was published in 2013, and after a stint in the CIA, he went on to write Batman and Mister Miracle for DC, The Vision for Marvel, and many other projects, which won him an Eisner Award in 2018 for Best Writer. Plus — and I only realized this while taking note of comic artist Joe Giella’s recent 93rd birthday — we’ve both written Supergirl stories — 43 years apart! But that’s not the only commonality to our comics careers, as you’ll soon hear.

We discussed the two questions no one in comics can answer, his attempt at age 11 to get a job at Archie Comics, how he goes back to the beginning when writing a classic character such as Supergirl, whether Alan Moore would have had the impetus to create Watchmen in today’s environment, our dealings with comic book censorship, the weird way Monica Lewinsky caused him not to get hired by MAD magazine, the differences we discovered early on between Marvel and DC, what he learned as an intern to the legendary Chris Claremont, the Black Knight pitch he got paid for which was never published, the way comic book people are like circus folk, why the current state of Krypto proves I could never go back to writing comics, and much more.

Here’s how you can take a seat at the table with us — (more…)

During the same deep dive into my archives that turned up a never-used plot for Marvel’s The Scarecrow #2, I also found a plot written on March 7, 1978 for an adventure of Supergirl meant to appear in an issue of DC’s mega-comic Superman Family.

I’d previously scripted a Supergirl story Gerry Conway had plotted for Superman Family #193 (February 1979), and wrote one entirely on my own which appeared in Superman Family #194 (April 1979).

That last one was inspired by the infamous Stanley Milgram experiments—

—but was also tied in with the mysterious energy being which had tormented Supergirl for many, many issues.

I no longer own a copy of Superman Family #194, so I’m not sure what kind of cliffhanger I used to end that story, but apparently, I’d planned for the next installment to begin moments later.

And here we go … (more…)

Seeing Carol Tilley lecture at the National Archives on the letters kids wrote to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Special Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency in 1954 defending comics books turned out not to be the only comics-related thing in my life this afternoon. Because as I was heading back to Union Station for my train home, I came upon the following street art which made political statements by tweaking actual covers from old comic books.

Here are the four I saw, accompanied by the original covers I tracked down.

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Have you ever wanted to own a page—or perhaps two—of rare original DC Comics art from the ’60s? Now’s your chance!

My wife has decided to part with the following pages which have been in her collection for more than 50 years.

First up—this beautiful Joe Kubert art from the Hawkman and Hawkgirl story “The Men Who Moved the World,” which appeared in Brave and Bold #44 (October-November 1962).

Place your bids here. (more…)

Oliver Willis and Kurt Busiek have been posting some wonderful PSAs which DC Comics ran back in the ’60s and into the ’70s, and I couldn’t resist sharing a few of them here. Based on the current state of our country, they seem to have as much relevance today as they did then.

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Mike Grell was born 68 years ago. So happy birthday!

Also, a little more than 42 years ago, when I was but a fanboy wandering conventions with a pad under one arm, begging artists for sketches, he drew me this. So add a thanks to those birthday wishes!

Based on the date—July 6, 1973—Grell would have been 26 and I would have been 18 when I approached him the Friday of one of Phil Seuling’s famed July 4th weekend comic conventions at the Statler Hilton Hotel.

I can no longer tell, from this distance of more than four decades, whether that’s supposed to be Green Arrow or Warlord, neither of which he had yet drawn professionally.

Warlord wouldn’t appear until two years later, in 1st Issue Special #8 (Nov. 1975), and I don’t think he had a chance to tackle Green Arrow until 1987.

Based on that beard and mustache, it could be either of them. But I’ll choose to believe Grell was giving me a glimpse of Warlord, long before the rest of you got to see him.

Hope you’re enjoying your birthday, Mike! And thanks again for putting up with the annoying fan I most certainly was.

A couple of weeks ago, I tweeted mysteriously about a new DC Comics cover featuring Superboy, the Legion of Super-Heroes, and the Atomic Knights, hinting that its existence was meaningful to me. Many wondered if I was implying I’d be writing comics again, but for reasons alluded to in this recent interview, that’s unlikely to ever happen.

To those who asked over on Twitter and Facebook what I could possibly have meant, your answer can be summed up with another DC comic book cover, one from a long, long time ago.

1962, to be precise. (more…)

Unlike Mark Evanier, I never met Marcia Strassman, who portrayed Julie Kotter, the wife of Gabe Kaplan’s character on Welcome Back, Kotter. Strangely, though, I felt as if I had, because I wrote two issues of the DC Comics series based on that TV show, and so got paid to put words into the mouth of an actress who never actually got to speak them.

As I’ve mentioned here before, I believe I was given the chance to script that comic because I was a Sweathog. (Don’t believe me? Just listen to what I sounded like back then.) Which meant that I had far more in common with guys from Brooklyn than those who would marry them after they grew up. (Or, to put it more accurately, after they didn’t grow up.) But still, I did my best to channel the character she embodied.

In my first issue, that consisted primarily of her reacting to the antics of those around her …

… which while accurate to the show, was also what, according to Evanier, had her dissatisfied with it. (more…)

The New York Times ran an article today about how artist John Romita Jr. was jumping from Marvel Comics over to DC to draw Superman, calling it “the equivalent of Derek Jeter leaving the Yankees to play for the Mets.”

I was touched to see that John mentioned me by name in the piece, repeating a comment of mine which he’s shared many times before. (more…)