The Corner Box S1Ep26 - The Paul Kupperberg Interview: Comic Creativity

[00:00] Intro Welcome to The Corner Box, where we talk about comics as an industry and an art form. You never know where the discussion will go or who will show up to join host David Hedgecock and John Barber. Between them, they've spent decades writing, drawing, lettering, coloring, editing, editor-in-chiefing, and publishing comics. If you want to know the behind-the-scenes secrets, the highs and lows, the ins and outs of the best artistic medium in the world, then listen in and join us on The Corner Box.

[00:30] David Hedgecock: Hi, everybody. Welcome back to The Corner Box. I'm David Hedgecock, and with me as always, is my good friend,

[00:37] John Barber: John Barber.

[00:38] David: John, I'm very excited today.

[00:40] John: Me too.

[00:41] David: Yeah, we're going to talk to comic book legend, Paul Kupperberg. With a career spanning decades, Paul's contributed an astonishing number of stories to the comic book world, primarily within the halls of DC Comics. His pen has brought to life The Adventures of Superman, Supergirl, Superboy, he revitalized the Doom Patrol, launched Checkmate, notably co-created the Arion character with Jen Duursema, and spearheaded the Daring New Adventures of Supergirl with Carmine Infantino. Kupperberg’s innovative spirit led to the first comic miniseries, World of Krypton, back in 1979, setting a new standard for storytelling in the medium. During his time, he's worked the likes of Mike Mignola, Jack Kirby, Keith Giffen, Steve Lightle, P. Craig Russell, and so many more. More recently, Paul has been producing a series of interviews with other titans of the comic industry, in his books, Direct Conversations, Direct Comments, and the latest, Direct Creativity, on Kickstarter as we speak. Paul, welcome to the show.

[01:37] Paul Kupperberg: All right. Nice to be here. Well, we'll see about that.

[01:42] David: Yeah, you should definitely reserve judgment. Direct Creativity, like I said, is your new book, and the question you asked all the creators that you're interviewing in this new book, guys like Mark Waid, Mike Thomas, Mark Miller, to name a few, is similar to a question we always first ask people who join us on the podcast, and that is, who or what inspired you most in your development as a comic book creator?

[02:06] Paul: That is correct. Would you like me to answer that?

[02:09] David: We would love that.

[02:12] Paul: Oh, well, if I had to pick one comic book, it would have to be the Flash #123, which is the Flash of Two Worlds, cover dated June 1961. I first read it when I was about 10 or 11. It was reprinted in the 1965 Flash Annual, and I read it in there. I mean, just conceptually, it was just, “What the hell is this?” But beyond that, when Flash runs across the bridge and vibrates into the other dimension, and finds himself in the Keystone City, he goes to a newsstand and picks up the newspaper, and the date on the newspaper is June 14 1961, which was is my birthday. I was already aware of the multiverse, but it was born on my birthday, and that just locked me in and cemented me as a fan. It was just, there was no going back.

[03:09] David: That wasn't the first comic book you read, though. That one just really locked you in. 

[03:14] Paul: I've been reading them before I could read. I mean, they were always around. I had a brother, two years older, and an uncle, who lived in the next building over to us in Brooklyn, who was 10 years older. So, when I was four, he was 14. So, he was still reading comic books. He was a real J.D, juvenile delinquent. We actually had a term for it back in those days. So, they were there. They were just around. I was looking at them before I could read them, and this is 1960 I'm talking about, during the second Eisenhower administration, that I first saw the Superman cartoons, the 1940 Superman cartoons, on a kids’ show, and it was the TV show I watched before I went to bed every night. So, there I was, seeing Superman for the first time. It was in black and white, and on a 13-inch screen, but still, I immediately hooked onto him, and then in the candy store around the corner, one day I came over and there's the same guy, but in color and on the comic book rack. So, I got through with that, and again, there were comics in the house. I remember a lot of the early Disney stuff, which I wasn't really crazy about, but a lot of Wonder Woman. In 1960, Wonder Woman was just a very odd comic. It was written by Robert Kanigher, with art by Ross Andru and Mike Esposito, and it was a girl's book. I mean, it was a 1960 girls’ book. There were dragons and genies and myrrh boys and bird boys, and that's where Wonder Tot came in and Wonder Girl and all that stuff. It was just an insane time, but it was cool. It was big and colorful, and the Andru and Esposito art is always great. So, they were always there, and I had been reading them all along. I've been picking them up to seeing them. There was an old bookstore down the street from us, we moved away when I was about six, that had two for a nickel coverless comics. So, I picked up a lot of stuff there. 

[05:33] David: That probably wasn't legal. They were stripping those covers and then sell them.

[05:38] Paul: Oh, yeah, they were stripping the covers and buying them. The guy's name was Dave Solomon, and he had this little Is it a bookstore, and then years later, he moved and reopened in another neighborhood and I found him, and he was no longer selling strip comics, but he was one of my early sources of back issues, but yeah, I'll never forget Dave Solomon. What a rumpled human being.

[06:04] David: Man, so you had the liquor store, you had an old US bookstore, and you had two older siblings? Well, essentially siblings, that were all. You were in it.

[06:16] Paul: I wasn't allowed to touch my brother's comics.

[06:23] David: We were talking to Chris Ryall a couple of weeks ago, or maybe a couple months ago. I can't remember. His brother made Chris buy his own comics, and Chris could not buy any of the comics that his brother bought, and his brother could read any of Chris's comics, but he wasn't allowed to read any of his brother’s comics. So, Chris was stuck buying a bunch of comic books and then only allowed to read his while his brother read both. I thought that was a very big brother moment.

[06:52] Paul: Well, I don't know about his big brother. Mine was a fucking psychopath.

[07:00] David: Don't hold back, Paul.

[07:03] Paul: I seldom do.

[07:06] John: Both of you wound up in comics, though. 

[07:10] Paul: Well, I imagined, at some point, he was my older brother, and until years later, when it was finally at the disturbing breaking point of abuse, you emulate your big brother. He was reading comic books. He was interested in comic books. He would draw his own comic books. I would sit there and draw mine, poorly. He was much better at that than I was, but I don't think he'd write worth his shit. So, it evened out. I met Paul Levitz in middle school, in ninth grade.

[07:42] David: Oh, that's right, Paul, and then you and Paul, well, within a few years, you're doing fanzines. Well, the first one was Etcetera.

[07:53] Paul: No. It was about the fourth one we did. The first one you heard about was Etcetera. We did a few crappy amateur zines. Avengers checklists and things like that. Really, Xerox, maybe 10 copies, but that's what you did. You practiced and rehearsed, and then we saw an opportunity in 1971. Well, late 1970, when Don and Maggie Thompson, who had the premiere news fanzine at the time, a monthly thing called Newfangles, mimeographed fanzine. They were going to be retiring the fanzine to lead lives and have children and stuff like that. Don and Maggie were always odd. We decided, since we were in New York, and Paul was going to high school in Manhattan, we lived in Brooklyn, but he was going to a specialized high school. Stuyvesant High School. It was a science, especially high school, you had to take a test to get into art and design, and is the science equivalent of High School of Art Design. So, we scraped together 20 bucks so we could print up this thing, photo offset, went up to DC, and got some news, and yadda, yadda, yadda.

[09:11] David: Wait a minute, wait a minute. You just roll into the DC offices at 16? They’re like, “Hey, we're going to interview you guys”?

[09:17] Paul: Well, kind of. I mean, the doors were a lot more open in those days. It wasn't my first time. It was neither of our first time up there. They had a weekly tour in those days, in the late 1960s, and throughout the 60s, I guess. I don't remember what day it was, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. One day a week, there was a tour. You lined up at whatever it was, 3:30/4 o'clock, and somebody came through and walked you through the offices, and there's Julius Schwartz editing a script, and Murphy Anderson inking a cover, and there's the production department, this guy's coloring, and blah, blah, blah, and as you were walking out, there'd be a guy standing at the door, handing a piece of original art, “thanks for coming.”

[10:06] David: They were like, “here's a page of Murphy Anderson stuff”?

[10:10] Paul: Whatever. Yeah.

[10:14] David: I don't even know what to do with that, John. That makes my head explode.

[10:18] Paul: The truth is, original art, until the last few years, was worthless. Back in the 20s and 30s, and 40s, and 50s, and 60s, newspaper syndicates, there are stories about them using them as drop cloths, when the place would get painted, put up some of the Hal Foster pages so it doesn't drip on the desk, or using them on rainy days as floor mats. It was literally worthless stuff. Most of the artists didn't want them back because “what am I going to do with this stuff?”

[10:48] David: This is upsetting my stomach. I hear about these things, and it makes me want to throw up.

[10:54] Paul: Have you ever heard the story of how Len and Marv Wolfman, when they were fans, they would hang out at the office, and they’d put them to work. One of the jobs they were put to work doing was chopping up original art to throw in the dumpster so it could be burned downstairs.

[11:12] David: God, oh, we might have to pause. I might need to take five minutes to recover from this. This is more than I think my brain is going to be able to handle. I just don't even know what to do with this information. That's killing me in ways I'm not sure I'm going to recover from. You hear about these things. 

[11:35] Paul: Bob Haney used to use them as rolling papers for his dope. Get out. I don't know if Bob smoked, though, but if anybody did.

[11:44] David: Alright, so you're 15 years old, you've got it sounds like pretty easy access to the DC offices, you've been through the tour a couple times, they know who you are, you're a kid that's hanging around. So, when you go up there, now you're here on official business. You're like, “hey, we're going to interview you for this thing,” and they're like, “Yeah, sure. It will take 10 minutes to talk to you, kid.”

[12:10] Paul: Yeah. We didn't get as far into the office on official business as we did as fans. Nelson Bridwell was sent out to the lobby to talk to us, and listen, you could do worse than Nelson, if anybody knew what was going on, and he gave us some independent news, fliers that had covers reproduced in them so we could clip them and put them in the fanzine. He spoke to us 15/20 minutes, gave us whatever he could. That was it. Back in those days, fans were friendly. Fans were there in support of comics. It was supporting the companies, these fanzines were boosters of the stuff that was being done. The 1960s, that we were just coming out of, what an exciting time that was for comic books. I mean, it was a transitional decade, and the stuff that went on there, and the people who started coming in. Everybody from Neal Adams and Roy Thomas, and Jerry Conway, and all these people. Man, the magic was starting to happen. So, fans were an asset. I think there was some recognition, although I don't think there was. I think Sol Harrison got it. Sol was the president of the company. He was also the production manager. Sol understood on some level that the children are the future, because he created apprentice programs for writers and artists early on. David Michelinie came in through that. He was hiring young guys like Bob Rozakis and Michael Uslan, and Jeff Rovin. These guys were aging. We were in 1970, the business was 35 years old, which meant that the crazy original creators were, what, in their 50s and 60s. Who's going to replace them? Well, it was going to be us schmuck fans, because we were the first generation who wanted to get in the door. We weren't doing this because we couldn't get a syndicated strip, or we couldn't write movies, or television. We were doing this because that's what we wanted to do.

[14:10] David: I think this comes through a little bit in some of the interviews that you're doing in your books, where this generation really is the first fandom. You guys were fans of comic books, specifically, and were looking to enter into comic books as a profession because that's exactly specifically what you were wanting to do. Whereas, maybe before the 70s, that wasn't necessarily the case. You were an illustrator, and you fell into the comic books, but you were maybe still trying to do other things or were doing other things.

[14:42] Paul: Bob Kanigher, who was a brilliant comic book writer, despite he wrote a lot of clunkers, and he wrote a lot of crazy stuff, because Bob was a lot of crazy, but he was a brilliant writer, but he had nothing but contempt for what he did. He would still remind me, in 1980, he’s still reminding me that when he was in high school, he won a story writing contest that was judged by Pearl S. Buck in 1940, in 1938, or whatever it was. So, he talked more about being a painter. He painted. Paint on canvas, does abstract stuff, but he talked more about that than he did about writing comics.

[15:20] David: You have, here's an interesting quote in the Direct Comments book from Carmine Infantino that I actually wrote down because I thought it was interesting. He says, “I went in one day, and Julie Schwartz said to me, ‘we want to do superheroes again,’ and I said, ‘Oh, Christ, not those again.’” That's very much of that moment.

[15:38] Paul: No question. I will tell you, Carmine, I don't think gave a crap what he was drawing. Just keep the work coming. “Carmen, you want to?” ‘I don't care. Just give me the script.

[15:48] David: It's wild to me.

[15:52] Paul: And it was so good. It was so good. I tried to talk to him about the Supergirl book. “Just give me what you're going to give me.” He didn't care.

[16:04] David: How does that much talent come from somebody who doesn't care?

[16:09] Paul: He once did care. He was also a fan. He was a fan of the comic strips and the very early comic books. He came in as a kid himself. Him and Gil Kane and a bunch of other guys. So, he once had the spark, but I think, I’ve got to tell you, a lifetime a corporate comics, man, that's brutal.

[16:33] David: Look at John. John's only 40 years old, and look at him.

[16:38] Paul: Look at me. I’m 26. No, I'm hitting on 50 years here. It's not a friendly environment, for the most part. We were interchangeable, way more so even than today, and I think there's still that factor. Man, I'll still say, it beats having to have to work for a living. I love what I got an opportunity to do. I've written my comic book memoir, which I'm going to be publishing later this year. It wasn't always fun.

[17:14] David: It ends up being work at a certain point. It is still a job.

[17:18] Paul: It's a job. You’ve still got an asshole boss. It doesn't matter that that asshole boss is Sol Harrison, who did the color separations on Famous Funnies #1. He’s still your asshole boss. My asshole boss is a legend.

[17:38] David: All right, John, I feel like I'm hogging it. You got questions?

[17:41] John: During that time, there obviously were a lot of changes. The influx of the fans coming up, people coming in. One, were you all located in New York? Were you guys all hanging out? Was there a group? Was it a more, I don't know if more social than today, but was it a thing? So, just a couple weeks ago, I re-read that Denny O’Neill and Neal Adams story where they go to the parade, the Halloween parade upstate, and there was an Avengers also, and you can see all the Marvel and DC, not only characters, but Dick Grayson’s hanging out with people that are really people.

[18:14] Paul: Yeah, there were constantly parties. Everybody attended. Whatever Marvel, DC division there was, from the older guys, the young guys didn't give a crap. They all read it. They all read all the books, and they all wanted to work on all the books eventually. So, nobody cared. It was very social, even at the office. Most people were located in New York, because this was pre-fax, pre-internet, you had to physically deliver a stack of papers with words or pictures on them, and you didn't want to trust that to the US Mail all the time, because they were excellent, they were very good, but stuff happens, but then other stuff happens, like Neal Adams falling asleep on the subway and having his portfolio ripped off. So, that was less likely, but anyway, we all lived in New York, and people who wanted to get into the business moved to New York. I was friends with guys like Tony Tollin, who’s the colorist production person who was from Minnesota, Carl Gafford, who was from Connecticut, Tony Isabella, who was from Cleveland, Jack Harris from Philadelphia. So, they all came to New York. A lot of them settled near where Levitz was living, which is where I lived as well. So, we had that little tight group, but you went up to the office, everybody was always there, because you got paid twice a week.

[19:53] David: Twice a week?

[19:55] Paul: If you turn the invoice in by Monday, you'd get paid on Wednesday. If you turn the invoice in by Wednesday, there'd be a check down by Friday.

[20:02] David: Nice. Yeah, that’d keep me hanging around, too.

[20:06] Paul: Yeah, we were all vultures, circling the administration.

[20:12] John: I just want to throw that in there, computers really sped up that process. No, they didn't. How is it infinitely slower now to get paid?

[20:22] Paul: Now, I do something for DC and a month later, I get a direct deposit.

[20:31] David: So, you're doing the fanzine with Levitz. Do you go to college? Do you get picked up to work for DC right away? Was it DC at first? What was your transition there?

[20:41] Paul: I did go to college. I graduated high school, barely, and then got accepted into Brooklyn College, which was part of the City University of New York system, which had to take me because I was a graduate of a New York City High School. So, I went in as an English Lit major with an education minor. I think I took one education course before I dropped out. I didn't know what I was going to do. I knew I wanted to be a writer. I didn't think that likely. I thought more likely I was going to be a miserable teacher, but we continued the fanzine throughout high school. We were doing Double Duty there. At the same time, we would also do program books for the New York Comic Art convention, Phil Seuling’s conventions over the July 4 weekend. We did these 100-page square-bound books. One year, we had Joe Simon's original watercolor sketch of Captain America as the cover. That got delivered to us, so we could shoot it.

[21:53] David: What?

[21:54] Paul: Phil got it from Joe. Phil dropped it off at that the comic reader office. Actually, it was a basement, but it was still where we made the comic reader, and it was rolled up, and you’d unroll it, and there's the original watercolor sketch of Captain America by Joe Simon. I don't see any sign of Jack Kirby there, but anyway, that's a whole other story.

[22:21] David: You guys are putting together a 100-page book on top of doing the fanzine? Just the two of you?

[22:26] Paul: And we had a budget on that sucker. So, we did typesetting and we used to publish the comic reader on a typewriter.

[22:33] David: At this point, all this stuff's basically been done. It's all cut and paste, typing stuff out by hand. Are you having to add zip tone to pictures to try to get specific

[22:48] Paul: A lot of press type for headlines. I had my own burnisher.

[22:54] David: Nice.

[22:57] Paul: I was serious about my burnishing.

[23:01] David: Okay, so you go to college, and then how do you get into comics from there?

[23:04] Paul: Well, all around me, my friends were doing that. All these guys who would come in to New York to get into the business were actually doing that. Paul himself, he was hired by Joe Orlando first as a summer replacement, and then as a full-time assistant editor, or as Paul points out, I'm sure you read the interviews, at 16 years old, totally illegally being paid per diem, but that was the company back then, man. You could actually, “let's hire this kid and just pay him under the table.” I don't know if it was under the table, but we actually used to have working papers back in those days. You actually had to apply with the New York State Employment, whatever it is, for working papers, if you were under 16 and employed. The police state. You used to have to have permission to be an entertainer and work in saloons. You actually had to have a license to be a stand-up comedian or saloon singer.

[24:07] David: Really? In the 70s?

[24:10] Paul: It was probably gone by the 70s, but yeah, that's why Lenny Bruce kept getting in trouble, because he would break those rules. So, I just decided it was time to buckle down. I'd been writing all my life, and I started working up some stories and some scripts, and all that, when I finally had something I thought was readable, although I'll debate you on that now, but I sent it off first to Wally Green at Gold Key comics. Wally was a sweetheart and a gentleman. He actually invited me up to the office and sat with me for half an hour and told me why he wasn't buying a single one of my stories, and I left that place feeling like I just gotten a back rub. He was so nice about it.

[25:01] David: That's incredible, for him to take that much time to explain to you.

[25:05] Paul: It's just like, “they're not bad. They're just not right for us and please try again.” So, I took that same stuff, called up Nick Cardy, who was the assistant editor at Charlton Comics at the time, and I knew him through the fanzines, and just alerted him that I was sending him stuff, and he responded a few weeks later, and bought a few of the stories, and told me to go ahead and write up the scripts for the other plots I had sent him, and there I go.

[25:35] David: So, how long were you at Charlton?

[25:38] Paul: I did half a dozen stories for them, and then I started writing for DC. I got a call from DC for, there was a World of Krypton story.

[25:48] David: The same submission samples or with a different with a new set?

[25:52] Paul: No samples. By then, Paul was up there as an assistant editor, and he knew what I could do. He had been reading my stuff, and despite that, called me and he was assisting on the Superman family book, Denny was editing, I don't know if it was just the feature or the entire book, but anyway, it was a World of Krypton story. So, I went up, and I plotted my first story at DC, I have to plot with Denny O'Neil.

[26:27] David: You did that in person? You went over to the offices and you guys just were hanging out in his office and kicking back and forth a plot? With Denny O'Neill?

[26:35] Paul: That's how we used to do it.

[26:37] David: With the legend, Denny O'Neill? That's the first DC thing you did? Just want to get real clear on what we're talking about here.

[26:45] Paul: Yeah.

[26:46] David: Damn it. That's so awesome.

[26:52] John: What year was that?

[26:53] Paul: ‘75.

[26:55] John: Okay, yeah. So, he was already Denny O’Neil.

[26:59] Paul: I mean, Batman was behind him. I had proper respect for the writer and the man. Denny went through some hard times and came out of them the other end stronger than he went in, and I've always admired him for the way he handled his life, and of course, he's a brilliant writer.

[27:24] David: You're sitting in the room with Denny O'Neill.

[27:28] Paul: I'm 19 years old.

[27:30] David: and you're 19.

[27:33] Paul: And I’m too stupid to know I should be intimidated.

[27:36] John: That's probably the only thing that got you through that.

[27:41] Paul: No question. I didn't know what I didn't know. I knew what a great writer Denny was, and I didn't think I was anything. I mean, I was just learning my way, but I started to pitch him some ideas, some typical, old school, Julie Schwartz, World of Krypton stories. He went, “No, no, this is one of the issues coming out around Christmas. So, we want a Christmas on Krypton.” I said, “do they have Christmas on Krypton?” And he said, “I don't know, hold on,” and he got out of the seat, went out to Nelson's office, and he came back two minutes later, he goes “Nelson says no. There is no Christmas on Krypton.” I said, “but what about the Kryptonian Jesus? Can we have one of those?” And Denny, a lapsed Catholic said, “that's interesting.” That's pretty much what I did.

[28:39] David: You made Krypton Jesus?

[28:41] Paul: Yeah.

[28:43] David: At 19, you created Krypton Jesus?

[28:46] Paul: Yes.

[28:47] David: That's fantastic.

[28:48] Paul: I think his Kryptonian name was G-Sus.

[28:54] David: Very original. Your foot’s in the door, you’ve got your buddy, Paul, who's an associate editor there, which is very helpful, I'm sure, but now you're sitting with Denny O'Neill, and he's impressed by how you're thinking outside the box a little bit. So, now is that it? You're working regular from there?

[29:17] Paul: I mean, it's not a flood, but it's a nice trickle. I was doing a lot of text pages, letter columns. Those paid page rate.

[29:28] David: Was that as freelance writing or?

[29:34] Paul: Yeah. We were paid freelance for it, as a freelance job. When I was an editor up there, I was still getting paid to write the letter columns freelance, although I always wrote them on staff time.

[29:46] David: You were pretty instrumental for DC Currents for a long time, too, just skipping ahead a little bit.

[29:52] Paul: Yeah, I wrote that for years. I did a bunch of them between the 70s and then I did 90-some-odd-issue run that ran through the early 90s or something.

[30:04] David: Heavy times

[30:06] Paul: Yeah, no I got a book out of it. I was doing a lot of columns, introductory pages for House of Mystery and House of Secrets. Those Cain and Abel things, Cain going “Welcome to the House of Mystery. We're going to make you go ooh, scary stuff boys and girls.” That was Count Floyd everybody. If you don't know who that is, look him up. So, yeah, all that stuff. I mean, I don't know, most of it was 1/2/3/5/6/8-pagers.

[30:36] David: What would you say was the big breakout, the first chance you got to really sink your teeth into something, really do something, a meteor story? What was that for you?

[30:46] Paul: Oh, that was years later.

[30:49] David: What would that be though?

[30:50] Paul: I think it wasn't until I got on Vigilante in the 80s, a decade later. I came out of that whole Mort Weisinger, Julie Schwartz era. Those were my comics, and I didn't want to write those comics, but I think I was still affected by them for the first decade or so, especially winding up working with Julie Schwartz, who I loved and admired, and people say, they're trendy in the 1960s was Lee Kirby and Ditko. For me, it was Schwartz, Infantino, and Kane. So, Julie was still having me do stories, like the Great Toyman Trivia Contest, which was about the Toyman trying to find the kid who stole his first toy when he was six years old to get revenge. It holds you back a little. I looked at some of the meteor stuff that other people were doing, Superman, and I tried to do that, and Julie would go, “no, no, let's do that.” So, I could have pushed harder, and later on I did, but by then it was getting too late, because his time on the title was ending.

[31:59] John: I've been more or less by chance reading a lot of comics from around that time period, and it's fascinating to see these things that seemed like they're from two different eras colliding together. Sometimes, in the same magazine, when they were doing the 100-pagers, and there's so much stuff.

[32:15] Paul: Yeah. Or on Superman, you'd have Marv. Marv was doing those stories with Gil Kane. Awesome stories with Gil Kane at that time, and in between, you'd have the silly shit by me and Cary Bates, and all that. So, dependent, it was a crapshoot.

[32:34] John: I also feel like there was a lot of talking about the creators in the comics, in ways that were unusual now, in the sense that you might have Cary Bates or Elliot S. Maggin show up in an ad for that issue of Superman or something.

[32:50] Paul: Or in the story itself.

[32:52] John: Certainly, in the story.

[32:55] Paul: Superman stories where you’ve got Elliot or Cary.

[32:59] John: You have both. You'd have the ad for the story, advertising in this issue. Cary Bates. Is that a part of, I don't know, lunatics taking over the asylum? The kids that grew up with this stuff, getting to make some of these decisions.

[33:15] Paul: Nothing went into a comic book that the editor didn't approve. Whatever was done, you can't blame them for pitching it.

[33:26] John: No, I love it.

[33:28] Paul: No, no, no, I'm saying it's on the editor. They make the decision about what's going to be in that book.

[33:34] David: We all know how the editors are. “That’s 22 pages. Good enough.”

[33:40] Paul: But they're all blank. It's in a snowstorm.

[33:43] David: It has to be, because Neal Adams lost his portfolio on the train. So, it's 22 pages of snow storm this month.

[33:49] Paul: There's a story that Steve Mitchell tells in Direct Conversations that he's watching Sol Harrison look over Neal's art for the Superman Muhammad Ali book, and he's standing, he's flipping through these pages. It's a gorgeous book. It's probably the top of Neal's peak at that period, and he gets to the end, and he looks at Neal and he goes, “Adams, it's the best thing you've ever done, and not worth the wait,” because Sol was production manager and president, he knew how friggin’ late that book was, and in retrospect, historically, we can look at it and go, “boy, aren't we glad that Neal took his time?”

[34:32] David: Yeah, it was definitely worth the wait. I bought that thing. Literally, in the last 12 months, I bought another version of that thing. So, I think that DC did okay with that book.

[34:40] Paul: Yeah. Well, I'm on the cover.

[34:43] David: Wait, what?

[34:45] Paul: I'm on the cover. Yeah.

[34:45] David: You're in the crowd?

[34:46] Paul: I'm in the crowd, yeah.

[34:48] David: Damn. I didn't know that. That's fantastic.

[34:51] John: What was Howard Cosell like?

[34:53] Paul: He was chatty. I was walking down the hall one day, minding my own business, when suddenly Neal Adams comes charging out of an office. He's got a portfolio in one hand, he's got a Polaroid camera around his neck, and he actually goes past me, stops, looks back, and goes, “have I taken your picture yet?” And I go, “were you supposed to?” and he said, “shut up, stand against the wall,” and I did, because Neal told me to shut up and stand against the wall, and he took a Polaroid of me, and he said, “All right,” and he ran off.

[35:33] David: Oh, man. I'm having a rollercoaster of emotions with this interview, John. I'm up and down all over the place.

[35:42] Paul: Here's another Neal Adams story. I'm waiting in line to get into one of the Warner showings of Superman movie. They were on 42nd street waiting in the line, big theater, massive crowd. I'm on the rope side of the sidewalk, and I see Neal and his wife, and whoever coming up the sidewalk, and I go, “hey, Neal, how’re you doing?” And he looks over, he goes, “it's the not evil Kupperberg brother.”

[36:16] David: Not evil.

[36:18] Paul: My brother worked with Continuity, and I don't know, I've been trying to find out for years, they had a falling out, and I'd love to know what it was. I'm sure it was my brother's fault.

[36:35] David: Tell us about Direct Comments and Direct Conversations, and then I'd love to hear the pitch for Direct Creativity, which again, is on Kickstarter right now. So, I think the easy way to do this on Kickstarter is just, I typed in your last name, and it popped right up. So, in terms of links and stuff, we'll also put them on the website, but anyway, I'd love to hear, how did those projects come about?

[36:55] Paul: Direct Comments was first. That was me cleaning up, I found a bunch of floppy disks and a floppy drive in a box, and I decided to check to see if there was anything live on them, and fortunately, whatever computer I was running at the time could still read this floppy drive from, must have been in the 90s. There was a disk that had a whole bunch of files. One disk just got the raw transcripts of about 20/21 of the interviews I had done in the 80s for Direct Currents, the DC monthly comic shop giveaway magazine. Another disk had a whole bunch of the interviews that I had written, that were published in Direct Currents. So, those I didn't feel they were mine to use because they'd been published in a DC publication, but I thought the raw transcripts were fair game. I don't know if you have a Mac, but if you open up old files, sometimes you just get this black box. I went in through the text edit function, retrieved everything through that. So, I was able to salvage these 20/21 interviews and edit them into shape. I just took out my questions and just made it entirely a monologue by people talking about their careers, and as I was doing it, what year was this? 2019, I think it was, 18 or 19 that I did the book, and I realized that I was writing about conversations that took place 30 years ago, talking about stuff that took place 10/20/30/40 years before that. So, I wound up heavily annotating lots of footnotes.

[38:44] David: I love that, by the way. I'm so grateful to you for the footnoting that you did in Direct Comments, in particular. It really does add a lot to the piece overall. It's a fantastic piece, but I was really grateful for those footnotes. I'm glad you took the extra time for those.

[39:03] Paul: Yeah, they needed them. I mean, otherwise, even I was looking at it going, “I barely remember what they're talking about.”

[39:11] David: It’s a fascinating piece, and I wanted to call out a couple of things. There's tons of stuff in here and I didn't even know, but a couple of things I thought were fascinating. One, you're talking to all these giants in the industry, basically, and Keith Giffen tells a story about the first person to ever hold him as a baby is Whitey Ford, the baseball player. I thought that was fantastic, and you're never going to know that. You're never going to hear that, but thank God that you put that in the book because now I know, and I love it, and then the Kyle Baker interview is exactly what you would hope a Kyle Baker interview is, where a paragraph into his interview, he goes, he says, “I used crayons and stuff, and then when I got older, I stopped using crayons. It was another 20 years before I went back to using crayons,” and I was like, “oh my god. I love Kyle Baker so much,” and I couldn't possibly love him more, and there's stuff like this, John, peppered throughout the entire book, and that's just Direct Comments. So, anyway, I had to throw that in there, Paul.

[40:21] Paul: Good. Yes, because these are available on amazon.com or from me at Paulkupperberg.net.

[40:28] David: Paul, the other thing, I'm so glad that you have chosen the printed medium to put these things in, because we lose so much of this stuff because it's just online somewhere and then it disappears. I really do think that. I'm so glad that it's printed.

[40:50] Paul: Oh, well, thank you. Yes, and that's why I did it. I mean, this stuff does need to be preserved on my website and online and stuff. I'm always posting. I'm digging up all this weird, here's the pay stubs from the checks for my World of Krypton miniseries, so, I'll post that. It's interesting. Direct Comments, by the way, also features a Murphy Anderson interview that I did for a fanzine in the 70s, and another conversation that Paul Levitz and I did in 1971 with Jim Warren, where Jim abuses us.

[41:26] David: So, the second book that you did then was Direct Conversations. How did that one come about?

[41:31] Paul: Well, that was people saying, “Oh, that was great. Direct Comments was great. You got more?” and well, no, I don't, but at some point, I literally had a slapping myself in the forehead moment going, “well, then just do new interviews. It’s not like you don't know these people, and even if you don't know them personally, they've probably heard your name and will at least respond to you,” and that's exactly what happened. I decided for Conversations to stick with friends. The people, it’s talks with fellow DC Comics Bronze Age Creators, and I talk with the guys I got into the business with in 1975. So, I'm talking to Howard Chaykin, Jack Harris, Tony Isabella, Paul Levitz, Steve Mitchell, Bob Rezakis, Joe Staten, Anthony Tollin, Bob Tumi, and Michael Uslan.

[42:31] David: As somebody who's a fan of comic books, I hear names like Paul Levitz and Joe Staten, and Howard Chaykin, and immediately, of course, I'm interested. I know those guys. I want to hear what they have to say, but it really for me, the interviews with somebody like Steve Mitchell is the one that's really compelling and fascinating. Yes, because that's a guy who's just in the trenches. To get that perspective was so great. That was the stuff in the second book, in Direct Conversations, that was really coming up as just incredibly fascinating for me. The big pictures stuff, like Paul Levitz, your conversation with Paul Levitz also was just great, because you can tell that there's a familiarity there, and not that I think Paul was saying anything that he wouldn’t normally say, but there was some great conversation happening. It felt really good and natural, and really were able to dig in with him in a way that I don't think you would normally see.

[43:25] Paul: I’ve got to say, I expected the interview with Paul to be good because of who he is and what he knows, and what we've been through together, but like every single one of these conversations, it did not go anywhere near where I thought it was going to go. Paul started going into the whole background on the business at DC in the 70s, when he was a 17/18/19-year-old kid coming in and taking over the business from these retiring businessmen. These guys who have been working for Warner's and Independent or whatever, for decades. It's just interesting to see him come in as this wide-eyed kid, going, “Well, why don't we do this?” And “well, we've never done it before.” “We're going to start doing it now,” and I found that fascinating. I was like, “Holy shit. Now, you're telling me stuff you've never told me before.”

[44:13] David: Yeah, hearing how Paul and Jeanette, reading between the lines a little bit, Paul is Jeanette’s right-hand man, a lot of ways, but just reading that conversation, you could see how “this is how things evolved from the end of the 70s and into the first half of the 80s, and then when you think about what those two put together, the whole Frank Miller deal, to pull Frank Miller out of Marvel, give him Ronin, and then move him over to Dark Knight, and basically let him do what he's going to do. Those two were making some heavy-hitting business decisions and heavy-hitting moves, and to see it play out in the conversation a little bit was really cool to read.

[45:07] John: You wrote the World of Krypton limited series, which was the first ever comic book limited series.

[45:12] Paul: First intentional comic book miniseries. Lots of shit got cancelled after three issues, but none ever intentionally.

[45:21] John: I mean, that was during the direct market time period, but that wasn't a direct market book.

[45:25] Paul: No, it was a newsstand book. They may have been. I don't know if there was a direct addition to that one. I mean, this was 1979/80. So, I don't know. I don't remember, but yeah, it was originally done as a three-issue for Showcase, which had been brought back, but then the Superman movie, which it wasn't any direct adaptation of the Superman movie, because we couldn't do those, because there was contractual problems between Mario Puzo and Warner Brothers about the script. So, you couldn't do anything from the movie in the comics. The closest we did was the movie edition tabloid, but that wasn't the comic. So, we had this thing ready to go, but then no place to publish it, and then because Showcase got canceled, and then the movie got pushed back. So, when the movie finally got put on the schedule, and they had this in the draw up, it was like, “Well, we either put it out the way it is, or start planning #4. So, yeah, they took a chance, and I guess it did well enough, because they followed it up with the Legend of Batman by Len and Byrne and Aparo, and then I did a Legion of Superheroes, Secrets of the Legion of Superheroes after that, and then, miniseries all over the place. I mean, there's a house ad showing it as a limited, “here are the three issues that are coming, and here's the dates they'll be out.”

[46:53] John: I mean, it's hard for me to wrap my mind around, but I think especially for young people now imagining this, it's hard for young people to imagine a world where that isn't normal on TV, let alone normal in comic books.

[47:02] Paul: I mean, we had Roots, we had Rich Man, Poor Man, and those weren't even dragged out. They were miniseries but they were all on in one week. It's not like, “you’ve got to wait a week for the next episode to drop.” It was all a very special week on ABC.

[47:22] John: What I wanted to ask you about, I think you wrote two Marvel prose novels that I know of, but I know you wrote one of them in that series, but I was actually surprised looking through stuff, how they didn't write a lot of Marvel Comics. I didn't piece together how much of your career was at DC, in terms of the comic books.

[47:40] Paul: Most of it. Other than Crazy Magazine, I think I wrote two stories for Marvel.

[47:45] John: How did the prose one come about? Did you know those guys and you know how to write prose?

[47:49] Paul: Yeah, I knew Len and Marv. I mean, Paul Levitz had a poker game at his place in the city, and they were frequent attendees, as was I, and we just knew each other. I was up at Marvel, doing a job for Crazy Magazine, movie parodies and TV parodies and some other stuff for Paul Laikin, and then Larry Hama when he took over. I was up there. Very rare that I was up there. Maybe once a month to drop off a script, and suddenly Len comes charging around a corner and he sees me, he goes, “Do you want to write a novel?” That was it, and I don't know how much of my stuff he's ever read. I know for myself in prose, well, I had started hundreds of stories. I don't think I ever finished anything other than school assignments, but “do you want to write a 50-70,000-word prose novel?” Sure.

[48:48] John: This is my reading from a couple of weeks ago.

[48:50] David: John, what did you hold up, for listeners?

[48:54] John: Yeah, this is the Marvel FF Doomsday. Stolen from Chris Ryall, and then when I told him about it, he told me he probably stole it from Ted Adams because he has a copy at home.

[49:06] David: Nice. Stan Lee presents The Amazing Spider Man and Crime Campaign. The Hawk and Spiderman: Murder Moon.

[49:14] Paul: Again, I had never written anything of any substance or length, still haven’t written anything of substance after those, but still it was interesting, and tight deadlines, little money. Everything you could want a first book to be.

[49:34] John: Before it turns into the Chris Farley show and just name stuff that I like, but from 1930s through the present day, there have been a lot of comics. I don't know that any of them have ever had an ending the way you ended Vigilante. I'm sure you've talked about this before. How did that come about? Was it your idea? Did people try and was there resistance? Did people love it? How did that happen?

[50:00] Paul: It's how the story evolved. I took over writing the book around issue 20 from Marv, and Marv created a great character, but I took it over, and I'm looking at this going, “this is a criminal court judge who, when he can't get the ruling he likes, puts on a costume and a gun and goes out and shoots people. This guy's crazy. I don't care what his rationalization is. He's insane.” This is really the first time I'm working in a non-superhero world. I'm dealing with a guy who's down, he’s street level. Most of what he deals with is street level. I mean, Marv had more superheroics in it than I did, but I try to stay away from that stuff, because I was dealing with topics of abuse and kidnapping, and drugs, and terrorism, and stuff. I started writing him under the assumption that he was insane, and that's where the character went, eventually shooting a cop, and going totally off the rails, until he finally sees for himself that he's left himself no way out. So, I guess sales were okay, but the writing was on the wall for the book. So, we decided, “let's go out with the literal bang.” It's disingenuous to leave the character standing after all he’s done, because if you leave him alive, some idiot writer after me is going to come along and redeem him, and that's the last thing I want anybody to ever do to Adrian Chase. Leave him alone. I gave a perfect ending. Don't mess with it, but we didn't see any other way the character could go but to take his own life, and we treated it seriously, and with the gravity. The text pages were very covered, talked about, to discuss the situation, and dealt with it. I don't think we treated it lightly in any way. It was the first time in my life where I ever went, “the character made me do it.”

[52:16] John: Despite that definitive ending on it, I don't know if that character would still be appearing in stuff today, if you hadn't ended it that way. There's other vigilantes that would have supplanted him.

[52:27] Paul: I wrote a Peacemaker miniseries in the 80s. Despite the popularity of the TV show, and the Suicide Squad, and all this stuff, DC has not reprinted that miniseries, because you can't. It's of the time. It's mid-80s, the politics, I mean, my politics are to the left of Mao, but the guy I'm writing is a maniac right-winger, he's pre-MAGA, and there's terrorism, I use Dr. Tzin-Tzin, the Asian Batman villain. That alone is enough. Fortunately, in France, they have no such scruples. So, they did a nice collected edition.

[53:26] David: Viva la France.

[53:27] John: The last time I checked, list of things I can not talk about on here, I was a day-one subscriber to Checkmate. I subscribed and got the free poster. Of course. That's right. The poster was up on my wall for a long time. Big fan of that series. I really, really enjoyed that. You and Steve Erwin continuing, very sadly died.

[53:53] Paul: Last year, I think it was.

[53:57] John: Yeah. I’ve got his Danger series that he did too on my pile to read.

[54:02] Paul: I'm afraid to log on every day, because somebody else is dead.

[54:07] John: I had my head down working and I didn't see that José Delbo died until yesterday. Really briefly worked with him on a Transformers thing at one point, because there was the other thing he did besides everything else.

[54:23] Paul: I did a lot of stuff with him over the years. Jimmy Olsen in Superman Family. We worked on, he was on the Superman newspaper strip for a few years, writing it. Jose was a sweet guy, but again, we've reached that time with my contemporaries. Not me, of course.

[54:46] David: You look fantastic. Yeah, I'm looking at John, looking at you.

[54:51] John: Yeah, no, there's no question which one of us is in better shape.

[54:55] Paul: I don't know, John, but I'm worried about him. After we went off the air, I was going to suggest he sees someone.

[55:05] David: This is him cleaned up, too. Keep that in mind. Come on, John. He's a handsome devil. He's fine. He looks good.

[55:15] John: I've got two kids. They're doing this to me.

[55:23] David: I want to hit this Direct Creativity. I'd love to hear about it.

[55:26] Paul: Well, Direct Conversations was very successful. It got great feedback, and people wanted more, and I wanted more, because I discovered it's a lot of fun doing this project. I mean, it's a lot of work, but I get to spend hours talking to old friends or people whose work I've admired but never met before, and it's great. It's been a hoot. So, I decided to do it again, and after some pondering, I decided to just talk about the creative process and about the people and things that inspired a bunch of people. So, I started making lists, and these are the first people who said “Yes.” But I talked to Dan Chichester, Mike Collins, Jerry Conway, Mike DeCarlo, J.M. DeMatteis, Dan DiDio, Marc Guggenheim, Joe Illidge, Barbara Kaalberg, Tom King, Mark Miller, Mindy Newell, Mike Avon Oeming, Chuck Patton, Christopher J. Priest, Rick Stacy, Roy Thomas, and Mark Waid. So, if that don't do it for you.

[56:32] David: Then get out of comics. That is a murderer's row, man. I cannot wait. I've already pledged for this one. 100% in. You had me hooked from the other two books already, but this list is. This list of new conversations, I can't wait. Paul, thanks so much for your time. Thanks for everything you have done and continue to do. Really appreciate it. This was a delight for me. What a roller coaster. I don't know what I'm going to do about some of the stuff that you said. Original art on the floor and getting cut up. I don't know what to do, but thanks. Thanks, again, for your time.

[57:10] Paul: I didn’t even tell you my Murray Boltinoff stories. No, I'm sorry.

[57:16] David: But yeah, I think we did a good business. John, what do you think?

[57:18] John: Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

[57:19] David: Thanks again, Paul. Thanks, everybody, for coming. We'll do this again next week, I guess.

[57:23] Paul: Not me.

[57:24] John: Welcome to. Wouldn't be the first time we just kept somebody when they stayed on. You're welcome back anytime.

[57:32] Paul: That means by force.

[57:36] John: I don't change the zoom link. You can literally log on whenever.

[57:43] David: Alright. Thanks, everybody. See you next time on The Corner Box. That's the name of it, John?

[57:49] John: Yeah. Something like that.

[57:50] David: I should probably start recording now.

[57:52] John: Alright.

Thanks for joining us, and please subscribe, tell your friends about us, leave a review and comments. Check out www.cornerbox.club for updates, and come back and join us next week for another episode of The Corner Box with John and David.