Sunday, February 8, 2004

Julie, Julie, Julie...

There's plenty to be read about Julius Schwartz on the Internet. Marv Wolfman has posted a tribute to the man and so has Mike Grell. Here's a link to Don Markstein's biographical sketch and here's a link to an interview Roy Thomas conducted with him.

To answer the two most-asked questions in my mail: Yes, there is an address to which donations can be made in Julie's name and I'll post it here as soon as I get it. And yes, there will be tributes and memorials at conventions all year and probably in New York in a few weeks. All that will be reported in this space.

A couple of folks have written to remind me that not only was Julie the first agent for Ray Bradbury but he sold several of H.P. Lovecraft's first stories, as well. Actually, Julie did a lot of things that I haven't had space to report. If you really want to know about this man, seek out a copy of his recent autobiography, Man of Two Worlds: My Life in Science Fiction and Comics. It may be slow-going but Amazon can probably get you a copy.

Lastly, to the readers of this site who have little or no interest in comics: Sorry if this baffles you but this man was important. I'll be back to the normal mix of topics here tomorrow.

• Posted at 11:08 PM · LINK

Still More Schwartz

A number of fine writers worked with Julius Schwartz over the years. One was Elliot S. Maggin (often written out as Elliot S! Maggin), who I believe sold his first professional script to Julie, then followed it with hundreds more. Elliot just sent me this and asked that I post it here, and I am delighted to comply...

Probably my favorite moment with Julie was kind of a typical one: he was showing off like a kid. Sometime not long after Jean died — I guess it had to be maybe 20 or 25 years ago or so — I invited him over to my parents' house for their Passover Seder, the annual ritual dinner where you tell long stories about freedom and adventuring before you eat.

My father is a little bit younger than Julie, but not much. The way he runs a Seder is to assign things to people to read on the fly, while he pages forward through the book looking for things to leave out that he supposes no one would miss. That way we can eat sooner. Jewish holidays, in my limited religious education, are usually about eating — sooner if possible. Apparently Julie had not been to a Seder in a number of years. Jean was always the spiritual one in the family; she went to church regularly and I guess he had always depended on her to cover him in the area of grace.

There's a crucial point at the beginning of the Seder ceremony when the youngest person at the table reads a short but rather difficult paragraph in Hebrew called "The Four Questions." It's the kickoff for the storytelling part. My nephew Mitchell was not yet one year old, and my wife Pam, the next youngest, is generic Protestant and doesn't do Hebrew. So it fell to my youngest sister Robin to read the questions, and she never particularly enjoyed the role. First, she complained in her ritual manner about how long it had been since Hebrew school, and it turned out she didn't get to go through all the other caveats that generally preceded Robin's reluctant performance.

"I haven't been to Hebrew school since 1928," Julie barked. "And watch this."

And he read the Four Questions in perfect Hebrew, beginning to end, without tripping over a syllable. So it was that the oldest person at the table asked the Four Questions this time.

My father was thrilled. It brought us an entire whining-session closer to the food.

Julie was very proud of himself over this, of course. He generally was. A few days later, back at work, he showed me a gold watch he'd gotten for being the smartest kid in the Hebrew school he attended. It had Hebrew letters for the numbers, and I suggested it ought to run counter-clockwise, but it didn't.

"The Governor's wife came and gave this to me," he said. And he waited for me to realize something, which I didn't. He got impatient quickly.

"So who was the Governor's wife in 1928?" he asked me.

Then I realized who the Governor of New York was in the late 1920's — and that the watch was presented to him by Eleanor Roosevelt.

Julie was impish and wide-eyed and always suffered a little from a touch of arrested development — even into his eighties, but the thing most people who knew him never really thought about much was how incredibly bright he always was. He had a mind that kept working and didn't stop, I suspect, until early this morning.

Eleanor Roosevelt noticed, though — and my little sister did. When we remember how it was that he could make so many of us happy, we might remember that a guy who knew as much as he knew, and understood as much as he understood, doesn't do much by accident.

• Posted at 4:40 PM · LINK

More Schwartz

First time I met Julie Schwartz was 1970 in the DC offices, which were then located at 909 Third Avenue in New York. That was a scary building, more appropriate for an investment firm than a maker of comic books, and the halls were austere and very corporate. You either wore a tie there or felt like you should be wearing one. Julie shared a tiny cubicle with fellow editor Dick Giordano and they each had one chair for a guest. If one of them had two visitors at the same time, he had to borrow the other guy's chair. Julie did this to accommodate my then-partner Steve Sherman and me, then he began pulling out photos to show us...mostly group shots of old-time science-fiction writers. He seemed a bit miffed that I couldn't identify Henry Kuttner or Edmond Hamilton from their pictures, but he invited us to lunch. With the same commanding authority with which he assigned deadlines, he told us to "be back here at 12:30 on the dot." Then he went off to conduct his duties, which seemed then to consist of striding through the DC corridors, rattling change in his pockets and making curt remarks to everyone he encountered.

12:30 on the dot, we were back at his door and by 12:31, he was leading us through a labyrinth of underground tunnels and subway paths to what he kept telling us was his favorite place to eat. I wrongly assumed that this might have something to do with the food there but instead, it had everything to do with the legs of the waitresses. The meal (I had roast beef and rice that I'm still digesting) was mediocre but the servers were all young, cute and dressed in perky little maid's outfits. To Julie, this was the essential purpose of lunch...and lest he sound like a Dirty Old Man here, I hasten to add: The waitresses loved him. They flirted, they hugged him, and one in particular put on a little show, bending over way more than necessary when she cleared dishes around the man. In later years, no matter how old he got, you'd see this charm in action. If you wanted to find the best-looking woman at any comic or science-fiction convention, just locate Schwartz and look who had his arm.

In later years whenever I went back to Manhattan, I'd always make time to visit the DC offices and go out to lunch with Julie. This meant he would take me to some nearby restaurant where the food was terrible but a lot of good-looking waitresses knew him and would flirt unmercifully. Usually, it was the Star Diner on 54th and 7th, but the last time I was back, I experienced a truly impressive example of the old Schwartz Magic. He was having trouble walking and felt he shouldn't leave the office so I said, "Okay, I'll go out and get us lunch." I hiked over to the Carnegie Deli on 7th and got us chicken soup, potato salad, soft drinks and a couple of corned beef sandwiches the size of Pontiacs. While waiting for the order, I ran into another DC editor and we got to talking. A very attractive hostess overheard me say, "I'm taking lunch back to Julie Schwartz" and she asked, "Is that the cute bald man who gives out the Superman pins all the time?" I told her it was and she said, "Give him a big kiss from me, smack on the lips."

I did not do this. I loved the guy but not that much.

• Posted at 4:30 PM · LINK

Beginning a New Feature...

In the mid-fifties, nothing was selling well at DC Comics. The marketplace was so fragile that Publisher Jack Liebowitz was afraid of launching new comics for fear that they might all flop and further injure retailer confidence. The solution, conceived by Editorial Director Irwin Donenfeld, was a new book called Showcase wherein they could try out concepts before perhaps launching them as full-fledged, ongoing books. The task of filling this book rotated between the various DC editors, and a kind of competition erupted among them. It was most intense between Mort Weisinger, who edited the Superman titles, and Jack Schiff, who helmed the Batman books. DC then had no editor-in-chief and the two men both coveted the post. Each sought to prove his commercial skills by midwifing the first Showcase feature that proved worthy of graduating to a regular book. As it happened, Weisinger's first Showcase effort (Fire Fighters) flopped but he got DC to okay a regular book of his second, Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane, the same month they also launched Schiff's new acquisition, Challengers of the Unknown. Partly because they'd more-or-less tied, and partly because one would have quit if the other got the job, DC never did name an editor-in-chief that decade or the next.

But in hindsight, the guy who really won that contest was Julius Schwartz. His contender, The Flash, was the third Showcase feature to get its own book but it was the one that demonstrated the most editorial savvy. Lois Lane was just an extension of a book that was already DC's top, and Challengers was a book Joe Simon and Jack Kirby had created outside of DC and just handed to Schiff. Schwartz had actually worked with writers and artists to develop The Flash out of a then-worthless property. More to the point, The Flash gave DC a new franchise and a new direction. There were no spin-offs from Challengers, and Lois Lane — though successful — actually seemed to be drawing some of its sales from the Superman title. Schwartz's Flash, however, outlasted both books and pointed the way to DC's future. Which may explain why Julius Schwartz's tenure as a DC editor far outlasted both Weisinger's and Schiff's.

• Posted at 1:14 PM · LINK

Julius Schwartz, R.I.P.

He was one of the founding fathers of science-fiction fandom and later of comic book fandom. For a time, he was an agent for science-fiction authors where among other accomplishments, he sold the first stories by a kid named Ray Bradbury. But you could only go so far in that field so when he heard about an opening as an editor of comic books, he grabbed it, figuring it might be good for a few years of increased income. On his way to the job interview, he later claimed, he read the first comic book he'd ever read. He apparently gleaned enough of the form because for the rest of his life, Julius Schwartz was not only an employee of DC Comics but, some said, the best comic book editor there ever was. His background as science-fiction fan and editor served him when he helmed comics like Strange Adventures and Mystery in Space, but he really distinguished himself as an editor of super-hero comics. Whatever the "Silver Age of Comics" was, it more or less commenced with Showcase #4, which revived The Flash in a new form and figure. Super-hero comics had been in decline before Schwartz edited that book, supervising and steering the reinvention of an entire genre. It led to more revivals: Green Lantern, Hawkman, Atom and (best of all) The Justice League of America. And then, at another company across town, came The Fantastic Four and all the Marvel heroes — all born or reborn because Julie had paved the route.

Later, when sales on Batman were sinking, DC turned to Schwartz to institute a "new look" and bolster the character, which he did. And when Superman was in need of an editor who knew what he was doing, Julie came to the rescue. How many people in this world could say honestly that they saved both Superman and Batman?

But the main beneficiaries of Schwartz being on this Earth (as distinguished from the others he presided over) were not comic book characters, and they fell into two groups. First, you had your writers and artists who loved working with the man. They found him encouraging, stimulating and devoutly intent on producing the best comic books humanly possible at the moment. And yes, they sometimes found him maddening to deal with. But despite all the years I've been around comics and Julie Schwartz, I've only known of one writer who did not love the man and their association, and it was the kind of writer you'd be proud to not have like you. Given Julie's years and position, that is a truly amazing accomplishment: To do so much hiring and firing and rewriting and critiquing...and to be almost completely undespised.

And the other group that profited from the existence of Schwartz was the readers...those of us who got to buy and read and savor all those fine comics. We loved Schwartz and he loved us, possibly because he had been one of us. He and his boyhood friend Mort Weisinger had published one of the first, if not the first science-fiction fanzine. Julie loved fanzines. He loved conventions. The last few years, nothing depressed him more than the fear that some physical ailment would keep him from the annual San Diego gathering. (Quick Story: Last year, Julie was reticent to come out because he was having trouble walking and didn't want to be rolled about in a wheelchair. I asked him why not and he said, "Because old men are in wheelchairs." I told him, "Julie, you're 88 years old. You are an old man." He still balked so I said, "Tell you what. Come out, sit in the wheelchair and I'll arrange for a woman with large breasts to push you around in it." He said, "In that case, okay.")

Perhaps the greatest thing about Julie was that there was so much overlap in the above two groups. He gave many readers the opportunity to become writers and even artists. And he stood on no ceremony: Anyone who met him at the conventions can attest to how friendly and accessible he was. He got annoyed with you if you didn't ask him questions. It's going to be sad going to conventions without him.

Julie died this morning at Winthrop Hospital in New York — around 2:30 AM. It was not a surprise and it was one of those deaths that, and everyone reading this will understand what I mean, provides a certain amount of relief. He had been in terrible shape the last few weeks. His hearing was almost gone and I had to shout to be heard in our last phone conversation. He had been proud and fiercely independent in his apartment but he had begun falling down and had come to the very sad realization that he could no longer live alone. He'd been in and out of Winthrop, staying with his granddaughter during the "out" parts, and plans were underway to move him to a senior home. The last thing I said to him about a week ago was to promise, because he was afraid he'd never see his friends again, that I'd round up half the comic book biz and come see him in his new digs.

I first knew Julie like most of you did — as a reader. I had letters printed in a lot of his comics and we corresponded, and once I started writing comic books, I politely declined his invitations to submit ideas to him. Frankly, he scared the hell out of me. (I wrote about it in these columns.) When I finally did work for him, I found it a delightful experience and after two assignments, opted to quit while I was ahead. I liked writing for Julie but I liked being his friend even more...and perhaps foolishly, didn't want to jeopardize that friendship.

It is sad to lose the man we called, only half-jokingly, The Living Legend but there's a positive way to view our loss: Like one of the Challengers of the Unknown (a comic he never edited), Julius Schwartz sometimes seemed to be living on Borrowed Time. Close to twenty years ago, his wife Jean passed away. They were one of those couples that are practically inseparable. Each day when he went to work, he would phone her on the odd-numbered hours (9:00, 11:00, 1:00, etc.) and she would phone him on the even. When she died, everyone who knew them said, "Oh, poor Julie. He'll go to pieces. He won't last six months without her." You've all seen that happen with older married folks but in this case, it didn't. After a suitable period of mourning, Julie was at conventions, partying 'til dawn, charming the ladies and displaying more energy than guys half his age. I always thought there was a wonderful symmetry there: Schwartz had helped create fandom and now fandom was embracing him and providing him with a place to be in his senior years.

I'll think of more things to write about him here later today. Right now, I just want to sit here and think how wonderful it was to have him around for so long. What a great, great man.

• Posted at 10:33 AM · LINK