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.

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.

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.

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. 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.

Had a great evening down at the Comedy and Magic Club in Hermosa Beach hearing Lewis Black yell about the weather, Janet Jackson's breast, health fads, soy milk, those idiots in Washington, air travel, homeland security and other things worth yelling about. Some of you know Mr. Black from The Daily Show With Jon Stewart where he holds forth every Wednesday with humorous commentaries (like this one). He is also one of the sharpest (if angriest) stand-up comedians working today and I highly recommend prolonged exposure. You can find out where he's playing over at his website and if he's not coming to your neck of the woods, keep your eye on HBO. He's taping a special for them at the end of February which will air God-knows-when. I have been to a lot of comedy clubs in my day and seen most of the all-time greats who've been performing in the last thirty years. Black ranks up there with the best of them.

Here's an interview with Ray Bradbury on the subject of Mars. You can read the print version or click on the audio link and listen. Or do both.

Mark Katz on writing jokes for Bill Clinton's speeches.

A friend of mine who asks that I describe him as "loosely a member of the Washington Press Corps" asks also that I post his prediction: That the Democratic ticket will be John Kerry and Max Cleland. If he's right, remember you heard it here first. If he's not, hell, I didn't think that.

You know what we need? More stories about gay penguins. Thank God that Burgess Meredith didn't live to see this.

Just found out that longtime Vegas comedian Bernie Allen died in mid-January at age 87. The man born Bernard Kleinberg had an amazing life. He was wounded in World War II, about three minutes after he first set foot in the field of battle. Back home in the states, he became a funny diner owner, but one who longed to perform. Once, on a bet from a customer, he went down and crashed the annual telethon that Jerry Lewis (and then-partner Dean Martin) were doing for Muscular Dystrophy. He actually got on the air, made a little speech, then went back and collected on the wager.

Later, after the diner went out of business, he became a funny cab driver. It was while plying this trade in New York that he was "discovered" by Rocky Graziano. He picked up the former prize fighter outside the Stage Deli one night and amused him so much that Graziano, who was becoming a kind of show biz entrepreneur, took him under his wing. Graziano changed Bernie's name and helped him develop an act and start getting booked in clubs. Before long, Bernie Allen became a favorite in night clubs, first in New York and then (at the recommendation of a Mr. Sinatra) in Vegas, though he never forgot his roots as a gate-crasher. He became notorious for showing up at events to which he was not invited and barging in, often as his German general character.

His German character got him a brief film role which he bragged about for the rest of his life. In The Producers, he was the auditioning Hitler who tried to sing "The Little Wooden Boy." Later, he had roles in a number of movies and TV shows, usually playing either a mobster or a Vegas comedian. He played the latter in a quick scene in Raging Bull.

Shortly after filming his role in The Producers, Allen gave up show business for a time and became a private detective. In 1972, after the team of Marty Allen and Steve Rossi broke up, Rossi offered him a partnership. Bernie chucked the detective biz and toured for several years in an act billed as "the real Allen and Rossi." By the time it broke up, he had moved permanently to Vegas and he thereafter became a fixture as a solo act, playing every casino in town, usually in the lounge but also opening for stars and appearing in revues. For the next three decades, Bernie was always playing somewhere in town…even, the last few years, doing "stand-up" from a wheelchair. Whenever I saw him, he always managed to make me laugh.

Almost every day of my life in the last ten years, someone has asked me a question about Jack Kirby. And every day of those ten years, something I see or something that happens in my world causes me to think about Jack and to recall something I was privileged to hear him say. Often, it has nothing to do with comic books, the medium in which he was a declared master. Jack's mind was forever exploding in different directions, few of them predictable and not all immediately understandable. He was unable to drive a car because he could never focus on going in one direction, and conversations with Kirby often went much the same way. He would say something to you that didn't make immediate sense but you'd smile and nod, because Jack was a lovely man and he spoke to everyone, including some gross inferiors, as an equal, and with a great sense of openness and force. In hindsight, some of us came to realize that the bizarre associations and fragments of thought were all coherent and usually brilliant, as well. It just, you know, could take a while to put the pieces in order such that you could see the picture.

What I'm getting at is that today, ten years since he left us, he is still an active, positive force in many lives. Things he said that once seemed overdone are now demonstrably true. Things that seemed true then seem truer today. Time has proven how much of a lead Jack had on mere reality.

I find myself missing Jack while at the same time feeling he is around. His concepts still form the bedrock of so much popular fiction and again, it isn't just limited to comic books. Important authors, artists and filmmakers in a wide array of forms acknowledge his influence, and many of the characters he created or co-created are forever a part of American culture. It's hard to think of a guy like that as dead. Very hard.

At the taping for last night's Late Show With David Letterman, a demonstration went wrong and a snowboarder was injured, apparently not seriously. Nevertheless, the taping was halted and that episode was not completed. If you'd like to know what it was like for those in the studio audience, an attendee posted this message to the Letterman newsgroup. (I hope that link works. Linking to newsgroup messages is an inexact science.)

I mentioned computer viruses earlier. We all have to have a good anti-virus program installed to scan for them (I use Norton) but we also want to keep an eye out for Spyware. These are programs or little files that websites put on our computers in order to find out things about those who surf their sites. Usually, the info they collect is pretty harmless but (1) it's none of their business anyway, (2) sometimes it isn't harmless and (3) Spyware on your computer can reduce its performance level. So we want to keep our computers free of this stuff. The three leading programs that detect and delete Spyware seem to be…

• Ad-Aware – They have a free version and a pay version, and the former will probably be enough for most folks.
• Spybot Search & Destroy – Free but they request donations.
• Pest Patrol – You can download a copy for free that will scan your system and find Spyware. But you have to pay $40 for the version that will remove the intruders it locates.

Now, you're probably wondering which of these you should use. If you want to be truly Spyware-free, the answer is "all of them." I update and run all three about once a week and each finds something the others didn't. In some cases, that's because one program finds out about a given piece of Spyware before the others do. In other cases, the folks behind these detectors simply disagree on how much info a cookie has to gather before they declare it Spyware. I recommend you try at least one…and make sure you update it before each use.

Former president Jimmy Carter is publishing a weblog of his travels.

If you get the MyDoom com computer virus (or any of around 36 of the most popular viruses currently making the rounds), your system can probably be saved by the free Avert Stinger program offered by the McAfee people. It's no substitute for real virus protection but if you catch something, this utility should be able to remove it. Here's the link.