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CURRENT: Scroll down for Craig's Brush With Super-Editor PREVIOUS BRUSHES: Mad's DON MARTIN
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CURRENT:
Scroll down for
Craig's Brush With Super-Editor
PREVIOUS BRUSHES:
Mad's DON MARTIN
I recently found a short interview I did with Julie in 1993, for a comic book I created with Howard Bender (my artistic collaborator on my first Superman story), called Mr. Fixitt. The time seems right to dust that interview off. I originally presented it with the following, slightly immodest, introduction:
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CB: "Mr. Fixitt" takes place in a parallel universe, a concept I first learned of in a story called "The Flash Of Two Worlds" [Flash #123]. That turned out to be a landmark story for comics.
JULIE: We never dreamed what we were starting. Gardner Fox came around to plot a story. For the life of me I can't remember why, but we talked about the fact that there was another Flash, the original. So I said wouldn't it be neat if somehow one Flash met another Flash, and we worked out a story from the viewpoint of Barry Allen. He operated out of a city called Central City. He finds himself -- after going through a vibration pattern -- in a city called Keystone City, and he couldn't imagine how he got there. He says, "Keystone City, Keystone City, my gosh -- when I was a kid I read the Flash Comics, and they were about someone named Jay Garrick in Keystone City. I wonder if there really is a Jay Garrick living here?" Gardner says "Yeah, how's he going to find out?" And I said "That's obvious -- " He goes to a telephone booth and finds the address, knocks on the door, and says, "You're Jay Garrick, the Flash," or whatever the sequence was. And that was the beginning of the multiple Earth stories. Carmine [Infantino] did a beautiful cover of the two Flashes about to meet, coming around opposite sides of a collapsing building.
There had appeared a few stories in science fiction that dealt with alternate Earths, but it was just coincidence. To my recollection, I was not aware of other Earths with other "What If"- types of stories.
Incidentally, I made a mistake. When we talked about the Flash who was present in the Silver Age, I called him the Flash of Earth-One. But of course it should have been in reverse; Earth-One should have been the one that the original, Golden Age Flash appeared on. But since I was doing the Silver Age Flash at the time, he became number one so to speak.
CB: What did you have in mind for Earth-Two when you came up with that story?
JULIE: I have no recollection of ever intending to use it again. When monumental things happen, you never know you'll be asked about them years later. I'm still trying to figure out how I got the idea, if I did, to revive the original Flash after five or six years. But I remember clearly this point: In those days, the readership was from eight to twelve, and then they went elsewhere. Now, since the last Flash appeared, roughly 1950, and we were talking Showcase in '55, none of the present-day readers who would go to the newsstand had probably ever heard of the Flash. Once he succeeded in Showcase and we gave him his own comic, I went in to Irwin Donenfeld and asked how we'd number "The Flash" -- #105, picking up from the numbering of the original book, or #1? And he said, "What else would we call it? We're calling it #105!" So I said, Okay -- What is your reasoning behind that? And he says "When the kids go to the newsstand and they see two comic books side-by-side, and one says #105 and one says #1, which one are they going to pick up? If it's been going for a hundred and five issues it must be damned good stuff!" Now, of course, it's exactly the opposite.
CB: The multiple worlds next appeared in an issue of Justice League.
JULIE: Very possibly. It's very possible that I said "Gee, if we can get the Flash of one Earth meeting the Flash of the other Earth, why not get the Justice League to meet the Justice Society, because they're the parallel organization.
CB: How much did this owe to reader response to the Flash story?
JULIE: My guess is there wasn't much reader reaction. I certainly don't recall any barrage of mail saying "We want more stories". All I know is, when I did it in the Justice League, the summer issues, they sold many percentage points higher than any other issues of the year. I think they appeared in the September and October issues. As a sidelight, what I couldn't understand was, when the November issue came out, the issue died. It was explained to me that the November issues went on sale around September. The kids had ail gone back to school, so they didn't have any money or time to read the comics, which explained the circulation. But the sales were high during those summer months.
Since it was a two-part story, I provided a summary on the splash page of what happened before. I was foresighted enough to not assume that every person who bought part two had read part one.
CB: Continued stories were not typical in those days.
JULIE: No. But I made it a seasonal practice to run those kinds of stories. The first [Justice League] story was called "Crisis On Earth One", and the second part was called "Crisis On Earth-Two." So what was the follow-up going to be called? "Crisis On Earth-Three," right! But I pulled a switch! This time, instead of all the people with super powers being heroes, they were all a bunch of crooks and criminals! We took variations of the names. For instance, instead of a Batman, I think we called him the Owl. If there was Superman, we made him Ultraman. I have no idea what the story was about, except it sold very very well.
CB: You didn't stop with Earth-Three.
JULIE: No, we did one with characters from the Fawcett Group,,,
CB: Earth-S, with Captain Marvel and so forth.
JULIE: Then we brought in The Busy Arnold group... The Legion Of Super-Heroes... The Seven Soldiers of Victory... Those stories were not as memorable in my mind as the first stories.
CB: You did do a notable story where the Flash crossed over into the "real" world.
JULIE: As I recall, Cary Bates wrote a story called "The Flash -- Fact Or Fiction?" Since Earth-One is where the Flash existed, and Earth-Two had the other super heroes, how about our Earth? There are no super-heroes. So we called this Earth-Prime. I appeared in the story. It had to do with the cosmic treadmill, which the Flash used to go back and forth in time. But let me tell you a sidelight which had nothing to do with that story. A fourteen-year old kid came into the office once -- this was at a time when we used to have tours of the office. They brought in this boy who was very sad, who said he had to see me. So I said "What can I do for you?" He said, "Can you show me where the cosmic treadmill is? I've got to use it." I said "What's the matter?" He said, "My father died last month and I never told him how much I loved him, and I'd really like to go back and tell him." Can you imagine a thing like that? Many are the things I guess we'd like to go back in time and rectify the things we didn't do right, eh?
I must make mention of "The Last Earth Prime Story", in which Superman comes to Earth-Prime to help me out. DC did that story without my knowledge, and they surprised me with it on my [ 70th ] birthday. And they put me on the cover, and Superman is flying into the scene with a birthday cake to wish me a happy birthday.
CB: You complained that it came in the middle of a continued story and it broke up your sequence.
JULIE: It was a three-part Lex Luthor story. Anyone who went to the newsstand to see part two of the story saw a story about me instead!
CB: I don't think anyone was disappointed.
JULIE: Well, I don't know about that. Not too many people know who the editor is. My wife never even knew the writers of the books she read; she just liked to read the story. People don't read bylines. "The Last Earth-Prime Story" was written by Elliot Maggin, who is working with me on my new project.
Some of these things I've just told you now will be told in detail in my memoirs, called "Memoirs Of A Time Traveler". The title is derived from the fact that Mort Weisinger and I put out the first science-fiction fan magazine, called "The Time Traveler." And since I'm traveling through time in a way, because I'm reliving my youth, it's called "Memoirs Of A Time Traveler." It will appear, starting in the May issue of "Amazing Stories," followed up in the July and September issues [to be followed by publication in book form. It will be illustrated, and I think it will have some interesting stuff. When I talk about people who have been written about before, like Bester and Bradbury, I tell things that have never been told before. I don't tell things everybody knows; I tell things that nobody knows!
Julie's memoirs were finally published in 2000 under the title, "Man Of Two Worlds." It's filled with anecdotes from his twin careers in science-fiction and comics. But it is not exhaustive. Julie told me that, after the book was completed, he kept thinking of additional anecdotes that should have been included; probably enough for a Volume 2.
Super-editor Julie Schwartz passed
away on February 8, 2004, after a long and remarkable life and career. I
wrote Superman stories for him in the mid-'80's. In later years,
whenever Julie introduced me to people, he presented me as "one of
only two writers in my career (the other being Elliot S. Maggin)
from whom I ever bought an unsolicited story."