The Corner Box

Welcome to The Corner Box, where we talk about comic books as an industry and an art form. You never know where the discussion will go, or who’ll show up to join hosts 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, listen in and join the club at The Corner Box!

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The Corner Box

Paul Kupperberg talks !MPACT Comics on The Corner Box - S4Ep3

October 27, 2026 • David & John • Season 4 • Episode 3

0:00 | 45:59

What happens when DC Comics licenses Archie's forgotten superheroes, assembles a powerhouse creative team, and then seemingly does everything possible to sabotage its own success? Legendary writer and editor Paul Kupperberg returns to The Corner Box to take David and John behind the curtain of Impact Comics, revealing the editorial infighting, marketing resistance, and ambitious relaunch that never made it past Crucible. Things get especially interesting when an abandoned superhero registration storyline starts looking remarkably familiar to anyone who's read Marvel's Civil War, raising questions about where comic book ideas really come from. Paul also shares the heartbreaking circumstances behind firing legendary artist Gil Kane, defends deadline-saving industry veterans, and explains why comic book covers have lost some of their old-school magic. From unpublished Gene Ha and Dave Cockrum artwork to creator interviews, forgotten superhero history, and the brutal economics of publishing, this episode is packed with the kind of industry stories you won't find in a press release.

Captions:

[03:48] — A Comedy of Sabotage — "I was gonna say comedy of errors, but it was mostly comedy of sabotage." — Paul Kupperberg. Paul sets the tone for his account of Impact Comics' failed relaunch, where internal resistance may have been a bigger obstacle than the comics themselves.

[05:07] — Captain America Wasn't First — "The Shield was actually the first flag-themed comic book superhero. Predates Captain America by almost a year." — Paul Kupperberg. A reminder that Archie's superhero universe has roots stretching back to the Golden Age, including a patriotic hero who beat Marvel's most famous super-soldier to the punch.

[13:54] — All That Work for Nothing — "If there's one thing you gotta know about Christopher Priest, he loves to format his documents." — Paul Kupperberg. After describing an ambitious editorial proposal that went absolutely nowhere, Paul finds the humor in the enormous amount of work Christopher Priest put into making it look good.

[17:01] — Rooting Against Their Own Comics — "They would rather sell something that's gonna sell rather than attempt to sell something that's different." — Paul Kupperberg. Paul recounts an allegation from an internal memo suggesting that members of DC's marketing department were already anticipating the Impact relaunch's failure.

[25:31] — The Problem Nobody Wants to Solve — "You can do all the great comics you want for kids. Where are they gonna see them?" — Paul Kupperberg. A sharp observation about the industry's struggle to reach younger readers when the places where previous generations discovered comics have largely disappeared.

[28:23] — The Civil War Coincidence — "I'm sure it's a total coincidence that Joe Quesada, who read that document and was part of this relaunch from the beginning..." — Paul Kupperberg. An abandoned Impact Comics storyline involving superhero registration bears a striking resemblance to Marvel's later Civil War, prompting a fascinating discussion about creative influence, coincidence, and recycled ideas.

[36:31] — The Day Paul Fired a Legend — "And I had to fire Gil Kane." — Paul Kupperberg. One of the episode's most revealing moments takes a heartbreaking turn as Paul explains the circumstances surrounding his decision to replace the legendary artist on The Life Story of the Flash.

Splash Page:

[00:57] — The Forgotten Superheroes of Impact Comics: David and John welcome Paul Kupperberg for a look back at DC's early-'90s attempt to reinvent Archie's superhero universe, tracing the characters from MLJ and Mighty Comics through Red Circle and into the Impact era.

[08:35] — Great Talent, Failed Comics & Lost Stories: Why did Red Circle struggle despite artists like Steve Ditko, Gray Morrow, and Alex Toth? Paul discusses inconsistent creative direction, canceled projects, unpublished artwork, and the curious decision to license existing superheroes instead of creating new ones.

[13:11] — Behind DC's Editorial Civil War: Internal memos, Christopher Priest's leadership, editorial politics, and marketing resistance reveal how Impact Comics' attempted resurrection became a battle inside its own publisher.

[19:25] — The Impact Lineup & the Relaunch That Never Happened: Paul revisits The Fly, Black Hood, The Comet, and the remarkable creative teams behind Impact Comics before revealing details about Crucible, abandoned relaunch titles, and unpublished artwork from Dave Cockrum and Gene Ha.

[24:56] — Whatever Happened to Covers That Sold Comics?: From disappearing newsstands to uninspired modern cover designs, Paul explains why reaching young readers requires more than simply publishing comics for them.

[27:41] — Did Impact Comics Predict Marvel's Civil War?: An abandoned superhero registration storyline sparks a provocative discussion about Joe Quesada, Marvel's Civil War, creative coincidences, and the industry's long history of recycling ideas.

[31:13] — Gil Kane, Comic Book Legends & the Price of Making Art: The conversation moves from Stan Lee's early Marvel Universe to Gil Kane's extraordinary artwork, the painful circumstances behind Paul's decision to fire him, and the business realities that force editors to make difficult choices.

[40:08] — Paul Kupperberg's Next Chapter: Paul discusses his Direct interview books, upcoming Direct Storytelling project, Kickstarter experiences, pulp fiction, Crazy Eight Press, and the independent creative work keeping him busy.

Support the Corner Box:

David Hedgecock (https://funtimego.com) - The Corner Box Co-Host

John Barber (https://www.pugworldwide.com) - The Corner Box Co-Host

The Corner Box (https://www.thecornerbox.club) - Official Website

Dive Deeper Into the Back Issue Bin:

Paul Kupperberg (https://www.paulkupperberg.net/) - Veteran writer, editor, and returning Corner Box guest whose firsthand experience editing The Fly and Black Hood provides the backbone of this episode. Paul discusses Impact Comics' troubled relaunch, unpublished stories, working with industry legends, and his ongoing interview books and independent fiction projects.

Christopher Priest (Jim Owsley) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Priest_(comics)) - Writer and editor who helped lead Impact Comics' attempted relaunch. Paul discusses Priest's ambitious editorial proposals, willingness to confront uncomfortable publishing realities, and memorable enthusiasm for document formatting.

Mark Waid (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Waid) - Prolific writer involved with The Comet, Legend of the Shield, and Crucible. His role in developing Impact's superhero universe makes him central to the discussion of the line's creative strengths and abandoned future.

Brian Augustyn (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Augustyn) - Writer and editor who helped develop the Impact Comics relaunch alongside Mark Waid and Christopher Priest. His work on Crucible represents the final published chapter of DC's experiment.

Joe Quesada (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Quesada) - Artist who contributed to Crucible before becoming Marvel's editor-in-chief. His involvement in Impact's relaunch becomes particularly interesting when David discovers similarities between an abandoned superhero registration storyline and Marvel's later Civil War.

Gil Kane (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gil_Kane) - Legendary artist celebrated for his storytelling, figure work, and influential runs on Green Lantern and The Atom. Paul shares a deeply personal account of working with Kane, the circumstances surrounding his dismissal from The Life Story of the Flash, and the health issues that complicated the situation.

Gene Ha (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Ha) - Acclaimed artist whose unpublished Steel Sterling backup story, written by Paul Kupperberg, was intended for the abandoned Impact Comics relaunch. David and Paul discuss surviving artwork from the project.

Dave Cockrum (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Cockrum) - Influential superhero artist associated with the X-Men and Legion of Super-Heroes. Paul reveals that Cockrum contributed artwork to an unpublished Comet relaunch, offering another tantalizing glimpse of what Impact Comics might have become.

Mike Parobeck (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Parobeck) - Artist whose work on The Fly helped give Impact Comics its accessible, classic superhero energy. Paul praises the title's early S

Intro 00:01
Welcome to the Corner Box, the podcast equivalent of your favorite comic shop. The racks are packed The energy's high, and every wall has something worth discovering. Longtime industry professionals, David Hedgecock, John Barber, and their guests are here to show you around, digging into the stories, the craft, and the wonderful absurdity of the greatest.

John 00:27
Hello and welcome to the Corner Box. I'm One host whose voice is still a little rough from New York Comic Con, John Barber. With me as always, my good friend, David Hedgecock.

David 00:37
Hi everybody.

John 00:38
And with us to uh I believe talk about the effects on uh uh the canonosity of Boruto, now that uh Naruto uh Shadow Rising has been announced, is Mr. Paul Kupperberg. Paul, do you want to get us up to date on that? situation.

Paul Kupperberg 00:53
Yeah, it's uh it's rising.

John 00:57
Oh, we're actually here to talk about along with anything else Paul would like to. is the impact comics line of comics from DC and the uh circa 1990-ish.

David 01:07
We've been talking this last season, season three, about you found these digest comics, these archie digest comic books. And there was the collections of the Archie superhero stuff from like the fifties and sixties, as far as you could tell. And there was two of them that were printed and published and you got your hands on both of them and you were reading them and you've been talking about it on the show and Your like description of these books created like a burning desire in my head to find this stuff and read some of it because It sounds completely amazing. And so instead of grabbing the RG Digest though, I thought, well, I'll sample the red circle comics that were published in the early 80s. Like I saw some of the names that were attached, it was like Starenko and Ditko. Yeah, Toth and Buckler. And I was like, man. I think I'm gonna start there because that looks awesome. So I grabbed a bunch of number ones. I think I might have grabbed the number ones of like the entire line. There was like seven uh different books published. Uh The Mighty Crusaders, the Fly, Blue Ribbon Comics, Black Hood the original shield, which I think, and the Lancelot Strong shield, which turned into steel sterling, and we'll get back to that. And then the Comet. So anyway, I read the first issue of all those. completely loved them, just uh adored all of it. And at about the time I was finishing those, and we talked about those a little bit on the show, about the time I was finishing reading those, Paul, in his infinite somehow uh knowledge of everything happening in the universe, chose to post on his website, paulcooperberg. net. A article that he wrote for back issue number 118, February 2020. Paul published on his website an article that he wrote about impact comics. Now impact comics. for those who don't know, is the line of comic books that DC Comics printed or published in the early 90s. from ninety one to about ninety three ish, I guess. And that was all of the Archie comic group superheroes, D BA, Red Circle superheroes, but now sort of reimagined for D C comics. And so the article that Paul wrote was fascinating. Paul, I loved the article. I thought it was great to have somebody writing an article who was there on the ground for parts of it, largely all of it, except for maybe the initial phase, as I understood your article.

Paul Kupperberg 03:31
Yeah, I came in uh after the line had been launched. and took over editing uh The Fly and uh Black Hood. Ran those until the end. And then the idea was to relaunch the series. The whole impact line. And uh that's mainly what the article is about. King he failed attempt at a relaunch, a comedy of Uh I was gonna say comedy of errors, but it was mostly comedy of sabotage. Yeah.

David 03:59
The question I I want to start with you Paul, and and if you don't have answers to some of the stuff, it's totally okay.

Paul Kupperberg 04:04
I'll make it up.

David 04:05
Um That's exactly what we're hoping for. Going back to the i uh like launch phase and I and I understand that you weren't uh totally in on that, but uh you were working at DC as an editor at the time.

Paul Kupperberg 04:16
I came in to that group that was doing the uh books. It had been launched like I don't know, six or seven months before I got there. But the whole idea was to do a line of kid friendly books, you know, all ages comics. I think ideally they wanted to kind of recreate that early Marvel magic. Only The Fly did that. I think I think The Fly was the best book of that run. of that uh time, but it was to y do kid friendly comics. It didn't get all the marketing support it could have used. Yeah, it was a licensed property. Marketing liked to market things that they knew would sell So the relaunch did not go well. But I also I'd like to go back to the uh origins of these characters, because you keep referring to them as the red circle characters or the impact characters. They were actually the the mighty comics characters, the MLJ characters back in the nineteen forties. The Shield was actually the first flag-themed comic book superhero. predates Captain America by almost a year. And by the way, Irv Novic, who was drawing that strip back in 1939 and still drawing Batman back, you know, in the in the seventies and eighties. So he was around a long time. So those characters had a long run published by Archie Comics in the forties. And again, it was MLJ comics back in those days. And they started publishing Archie comics. That became popular and took over and and then the whole, you know, superhero craze died down. after World War Two anyway, and people started pulling back on the number of superhero books they published. The reason Fawcett finally settled the lawsuit with DC was like, well, we don't want to publish this crap anymore anyway So we might as well just, you know, pull the plug and get this expensive lawsuit off the books. That's what happened to those characters and they kinda languished. Uh in the late fifties, Archie tried to publish a f uh the fly, I think they called it the Fly Man and Fly Girl. They tried a few books with that. And then in the sixties, when the whole Batman craze and Marvel superheroes craze and and 65, 66, 67, they came out again with the uh MLJ characters. They're pretty much all written by Jerry Siegel, the creator of co-creator of Superman. and drawn by Paul Reinman, who is primarily known as an Incert at Marvel. I love that stuff. Back in nineteen sixty six, I was buying them off the stands. And I loved it. I loved the Webb w who was one of the characters. The way they portrayed him back then, he was a hen pecked husband whose wife was yelling at him for go for putting on the costume and going out and fighting crime, you know. It's what he was hiding from his wife was being a superhero. So, yeah, it was really wacky stuff. And, you know, Jerry Siegel was kind of trying to emulate, you know, Stan and Marvel and and He was not that kind of writer. I love his stuff. He he created the he co-created the greatest superhero ever, but um you know.

John 07:02
He means Superman, uh Captain Carrot, by the way.

Paul Kupperberg 07:04
Yeah

John 07:05
David.

David 07:05
Oh thanks for clarifying.

John 07:07
That is the stuff I was reading and I Also just found it utterly delightful as an adult. It's interesting to hear about see what Siegel is was going for. Because yeah, the the impact husband, uh, the the fly is such a uh like delightful character to me and those stories are I don't know. I just I I I fully enjoy it. The art's beautiful, uh I I think I mean Reinmann's art's really nice.

Paul Kupperberg 07:27
He's considered you know, people put him down and and uh And he's not a great artist. He's in that that realm with like dick Ayers and and stuff. Yeah, I love that stuff. I I I love these guys. Sal Trapani was another one of those artists who did a lot of work for uh uh a gold key and stuff. People put down these artists, but they were not hacking it out. You know, I I'm convinced that these guys were just doing the best they could and whatever it was it worked.

David 07:53
It definitely worked. There's no doubt that it worked. These are long-lasting, long-enduring characters. Much like uh Chip from Green Lantern. Long-lasting, long-enduring. Yeah. You buried that uh in our last two interviews, Paul. I did not know you were the you're the co-creator of one of the greatest Green Lanterns, Chip.

Paul Kupperberg 08:11
He was uh uh a Green Lantern core story that I wrote that Don Newton drew. I did two stories with him and then they took him in put him in Green Lantern and fucked him up completely.

David 08:21
Wow, you don't sound bitter at all.

Paul Kupperberg 08:26
Oh yeah, let's put him into overalls and make him into a funny animal. That's not too obvious, is it?

David 08:35
Thank you for that background, Paul. That's lovely, beautiful. So Red Circle Comic, from what I'm seeing of that material, it's like, how did this fail? Because it's very good superhero comic book material, the Red Circle stuff. And it seems to have a basis as you are laying out for us. It's has a history of like really good creative talent around. Like this stuff has a pedigree. So it's always fascinating to me when stuff like this that seems like why does this not work?

Paul Kupperberg 09:00
I think that in the eighties it was just a lack of consistency if you've looked at those books. They were kind of changing every issue or two. Uh, you know, you had Gray Morrow and then you had Steve Ditko and then you had not that it was bad stuff. But readers didn't know what they were going to get from issue to issue and that may have turned them off and they stopped picking it up after one or two. Again, it was great stuff. I mean, geez, you know, Gray Morrow did a an issue of Black Hood. That's gorgeous

David 09:26
It 's gorgeous.

Paul Kupperberg 09:28
Yeah. Uh there was an Alex Toth job in there somewhere, I think, and Ditko and and all these all these great artists, but uh the stories were kind of lackluster. Everybody was trying to do Marvel They weren't playing to the characters, they were playing to the marketplace, to the types of characters that they thought would be popular.

David 09:46
That totally tracks. That makes sense.

Paul Kupperberg 09:48
The the eighties stuff, I wrote an issue for Blue Ribbon Comics It was for Blue Ribbon Comics number 15 and the last issue published was number 14.

David 09:57
Yeah, I was gonna say uh there's like 14 issues with that.

Paul Kupperberg 10:00
I had written a couple of commercial comics for Archie for uh the Radio Shock comics. The uh TRS eighty uh uh computer comics. They did a series of guys. DC had done a few of 'em, then Archie picked up the license, um, and I had written the last one for DC, so when Archie picked up the license, they called me to continue it. So that was a f eighty or eighty one. What else you got? This uh Capker, who was uh uh nineteen forties you know, MLJ character, but they wanted her reimagined as kind of a Sheena the jungle thing. It was drawn by Pat Boyet.

David 10:36
Nice.

Paul Kupperberg 10:36
Oh yeah, yeah, it had the or drawn And uh lettered you because, you know, Boyette did it his own lettering as well. And then the book was canceled. I happen to have Xeroxes of of the story and I guess around 2017 I finally uh I got it published I was doing uh Charlton Neo Comics with uh Mortad and Roger McKenzie. We did it as an issue of that.

David 10:58
Oh wow. That's cool.

Paul Kupperberg 11:00
Yeah.

David 11:00
Man, that doesn't always get to happen, right?

Paul Kupperberg 11:03
No, I have several unpublished stories. I mean I have pre-part Green Lantern story. Uh that was intended for legends of the DCU. Drawn lettered, never published. So

David 11:13
that's gotta be frustrating as a creator to have that happen.

Paul Kupperberg 11:16
Yeah it is.

David 11:19
So I think from the modicum of research that I did, uh DC Congress is like, hey, we want to get reinvested in bringing new readers, young readers into the audience. particularly into the newsstand audience. So instead of creating a bunch of new characters that DC owned, which is wild to me that they didn't do this, they decide to go out and go after this Archie Comics Group set of superheroes. Although I did read somewhere, and I'm wondering if you knew anything about this, they did get the funder agent. They were going after some of the funder agents line of stuff, but it fell through because ownership wasn't clear.

Paul Kupperberg 11:55
Yeah, the the ownership was kinda wacky. Yeah, I don't remember the exact details, but yeah, it was it was murky territory, so they went with I I don't know why they thought, you know, even the Thunder agents uh the market they were going for. New readers aren't gonna hear have heard of Thunder Agents, right? Mighty Crusaders. I don't know what difference it made. Yeah, I agree. It should have been new characters could have failed just as easily as pre-existing characters. And they'd own 'em.

John 12:22
Yeah.

David 12:22
Yeah. That was the thing that's wild to me is like even in like nineteen ninety, I would think that the powers that be would recognize that that it's far more lucrative to own the property than to license it. Because at this point, I don't think they're doing Star Trek anymore, right? Like by the early 90s, they're not they're not doing any license a lot of licensed stuff anymore, right?

Paul Kupperberg 12:42
No, not really.

David 12:43
What was the thinking behind that? Why would they choose that path? Do you know?

Paul Kupperberg 12:47
I really don't know. I mean again, like I say, it makes more sense to me to create new and and own it. I don't know why they they went in that direction. I mean I have I'm a bit of a pack rat and I saved like all the memos and proposals and stuff for the Impact Comics line and and all that stuff. I I haven't read them in detail because frankly there's just too much. And, you know, most of it never happened. You make these grandiose plans. There was a point after the impact line failed and the relaunch didn't didn't go beyond the Crucible miniseries, they, you know, looked at the group Our group editor had been moved elsewhere. We were kind of left to ourselves. It was me and Christopher Priest and Kim Yale. And uh Alan Gold, you know, is like, well, what do we do now? And they go, Well, just keep editing your books and you guys get together, decide, you know, what you think you could contribute to the company. We started with, you know, we'll publish a few comic books and then we'll boom do this and this and this and we turn in the pitch, we wait, we get called into the boss's office and it so we read your proposal and what's gonna happen is You go there and you go and nothing. Nothing. There you go. There's none of it. So if there's one thing you gotta know about Christopher Priest, he loves to format his documents. He loves his formatting. And there was a lot of formatting going into those documents. All for nothing. Jim just loves to format.

David 14:09
Okay. Fantastic. So in your article, that was something that I wasn't super clear on. 'Cause it seemed like you were pulling from like sources in that article and but there wasn't really any citation of the sources. But did you're basically pulling from the material that you personally uh own and have also

Paul Kupperberg 14:26
yeah this is company memos uh this is you know uh memos uh uh uh from Dick Giordano and from marketing and from us To them and and and all that stuff, yeah.

David 14:37
It's gold. It's it's such a great article because it it really does allow you behind the curtain in a meaningful way Reading how Owlesley in particular, because he's sort of your main character in the article that you write.

Paul Kupperberg 14:48
He had seniority in the group when the group editor was was shifted. So he, you know, kind of became our our fearless leader.

David 14:55
Yeah. You characterize it that way, and I feel like you paint Jim in a very positive light.

Paul Kupperberg 15:00
I love Jim. I think he's one of the best writers working in comics. We're friends and I I you know I love him as an individual and I love him as a writer. So yeah.

David 15:08
Yeah, yeah. That comes across in your writing. Uh but the thing that I'm fascinated by is Jim's really explicit candor in how he's portraying this line and how he's trying to get it set up with all of you in tow. You talk a little bit about that, what that was like for you. It feels like there was a lot of managing of expectations as the line after the line launch. And also it feels like there was a lot of contention, and I think you've already mentioned it, between the editorial group and And basically everyone else in the company. What was that like for you?

Paul Kupperberg 15:40
The group had a uh a bit of a reputation because of its leadership. I name no names because I really hate to give 'em any any kind of publicity But yeah, he was not popular. We essentially had a revolt against him. So, you know, I write about this meeting at the editorial retreat in the article. This was a guy who when we got up and told the truth attacking him for it, he turned around and had to believe that what we were doing was basically supporting him by pretending we weren't supporting him. So the the group had credibility problems to begin with, even though he was already out of the loop by the time we we did the relaunch, it was still the development group and you know those assholes. But I was kind of on the fringes of that It was basically uh uh I was a priest, uh Brian Augustine and Mark Wade, and I was sitting there. I w I was sat in on the plotting conferences, but I was kibbitson. I was in there to kind of, you know, keep track of what's going on and and add my two cents when I thought I had something. But, you know, it was interesting to watch what was going on because again, I was gonna be affected by the outcome of of this situation. If the relaunch had worked there was a chance that the plans we came up with as a group would have been implemented. We could have possibly gotten some credibility, but I don't think they were interested in the relaunch working. At least on the marketing end. Jim has a had a a a a memo where he passed guys in in the hall in marketing who were chuckling over the fact that the line was gonna fail. They would rather sell something that's gonna sell rather than attempt to sell something that's different.

David 17:20
you've got people rooting against yourself. Like that is wild, but I know exactly what that is.

Paul Kupperberg 17:27
It's corporate bullshit. It's inter-office politics. you know, if everybody stopped and took a step back and realized what they were doing, it's like, what are they doing? They're rooting against their their own company and their own success.

David 17:38
It it makes zero sense to me, but I've seen it unfortunately.

Paul Kupperberg 17:42
If you work in any corporate environment, there's gonna be people against you in the background. I worked at WWE for a a brief while and I saw that kind of same bullshit going on. In the editorial office.

David 17:55
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Paul Kupperberg 19:27
Fly and black hood.

David 19:28
And black hood. And I think you start writing some of those fairly soon after that as well, right?

Paul Kupperberg 19:34
Yeah, I did Mighty Crusaders, two or three issues of that.

David 19:37
When you got onto the fly, was the original creative team still on?

Paul Kupperberg 19:41
Yeah.

David 19:41
Did those guys stay on for the whole run?

Paul Kupperberg 19:43
Len did, because the writer did. I think there were fill-ins for Parabek a couple of times.

David 19:48
For me as a younger kid, that stuff was close to targeted for me. I think I was aged out maybe a little bit for at least how the marketing of it seemed to be going. But I was all in the Tom Lyle stuff on the comet I could not get enough of that stuff. That Tom Lyell art was so good. I think this is before he does Starman.

Paul Kupperberg 20:06
He wasn't happy on on the uh impact books. I think he was promised to write or something like that and that never came through, so he he left the book. I think the fly and and again not because I was editing it, I I had nothing to do with coming up with the direction and stuff, but I think the fly was the strongest of the of the lot. I think it really had that Spider-Man Peter Parker vibe of the early Ditko issues. I thought it was a really charming book. I love Black Hood too. I love what Rick Burchette was doing and Mark Wheatley was writing some kick-ass stuff.

David 20:35
Yeah, so let's go through it. There were eight titles, uh well seven titles, I think, that originally came out. There was Legend of the Shield, that was Mark Wade and Grant. Meme. Comet was Mark Wade and Tom Lyle.

Paul Kupperberg 20:47
Right.

David 20:47
Jaguar was William Esner Lowe, Bill Loebs, David Antoine Williams, and Jose Morzon Jr. Fly was Lynn Strazucsky, Mike Parabek. Webb was Strazucki, Tom Artis, and Bill Ray. Black Hood, Mark Wheatley, and Rick Burchette. Crusaders was Brian Augustine and Rags Morales. Reading these names off is like a murderous row of talent. Like I don't know if Mike Perabeck is quite Mike Parabeck yet, because I don't think he's been doing my Batman Adventures yet, but

Paul Kupperberg 21:13
have you already done the JSA stuff? Oh is that that afternoon? Oh

John 21:16
right. Oh

Paul Kupperberg 21:18
then did the JSA stuff after that. And fine little issues, yeah.

David 21:22
Yeah, and Rags Morales is just like, I mean, one an all-timer. Tom Lyle also like

Paul Kupperberg 21:27
We had an Impact Comics retreat during the original run of the books, Chicago. Actually it was a big scam. There was no reason for a stupid ass retreat. It was just a big scam to get a trip to Chicago. So we could eat Italian beef and get some Red Hots. That was it. But we're we're at this hotel and we're all sitting there. And this is when things are on the downside with the impact books. And we're supposed to be coming up with ideas. Rags just just went. He just like he went on a rant. I don't even remember what it was, but I just remember it was great. And I was probably pretty high at the time. So I was just like, you know, I'm just gonna enjoy this. Well you gotta be high because eating a lot of Italian beef, you know.

David 22:09
Store the winds.

Paul Kupperberg 22:11
No other way. Gotta have it. It w it was fun.

David 22:14
So you have a retreat, it's on the d second half of the series. Is the plan to like shutter things down with the way you guys sort of end The original series before you go into the crucible, was that planned at that time?

Paul Kupperberg 22:25
It wasn't planned per se. It was, you know, it was like, all right, you guys are finished with this. Do you think there's anything you can do to salvage it? So Yeah, let's try a let's try a a reboot, a relaunch. Yeah. I I mean there was some pretty strong material there. Crucible was was what was a good series. And and the relaunch stuff, you know, the first issues were written and mostly drawn. And we had like Dave Cochram on on the comet, bunch of good people. Now I'm blanking, but it was Augustine and Wade writing. It was gonna be three books to relaunch. I also wrote a backup feature. Uh

David 22:57
yeah, you had a backup feature that was gonna run in each individual issue.

Paul Kupperberg 23:06
I wrote the first three parter. It was uh Steel Sterling and it was drawn by Gene Ha.

David 23:11
Yeah. That was something that blew my mind. I was like, oh wow, I didn't I didn't actually realize Gene Ha was that early

Paul Kupperberg 23:17
gorgeous stuff yeah

David 23:18
on your website you actually showed a page of the Dave Cochran 's comet stuff which I thought was fantastic and then you showed a page of the Gene Os stuff too also looked great.

Paul Kupperberg 23:27
Yeah.

David 23:28
Real bummer that all that stuff got done and never got seen. Was there a plan to like have the comet become the villain like that?

Paul Kupperberg 23:34
I think that was something they came up with for the relaunch.

David 23:37
Oh, when I was studying up on it was been

Paul Kupperberg 23:40
thirty years since I've read it, so

David 23:41
Yeah. My association with the stuff is that I read and really enjoyed the comet. Fly, Black Hood. I wanted to like Jaguar, but I didn't like Jaguar. And so I didn't stick around for the ends of the series. I'm only for the first time learning about the way that the all those first series wrapped up And then went into Crucible. I didn't even know Crucible was a thing, but I don't know why I didn't know because Joe Cosada you had Joe Casada doing breakdowns on at least the first four issues of Crucible and I was a huge Casada fan at that point. At that point he had already done Azrael. He was about to be on Move Over to Marvel, but he had done what else did he do? It was Azrael and Yeah, the Ray, which I loved. I loved his work on the Ray.

John 24:22
By that relaunch in was that ninety -two-ish?

Paul Kupperberg 24:27
I think it was over ninety three.

John 24:29
I mean that's a crowded marketplace to be coming into at that point. point. Like that's something we've kind of come up with a couple times is just looking through like any Marvel comic from that time and the bullpen bulletins and the the 40 comics that came out that week.

Paul Kupperberg 24:41
Yeah.

John 24:41
38 of them featuring characters I've never heard of. Featuring Death Wreck.

Paul Kupperberg 24:45
Fool Killer, what?

John 24:47
Yeah. Well Fool Killer, at least know who that is. It's all the UK ones. It's all the weird.

Paul Kupperberg 24:51
Wow, shit. Um Yeah, Death

John 24:53
Rec was a real thing.

Paul Kupperberg 24:56
It was a crowded market. All these attempts to try to get into uh younger readers, it's problematic because they don't have access to comic books. Like when I was growing up, every place I went into there was a rack of comic books. The drugstore, the grocery store, the candy store, the newsstand on the corner. Comic books were everywhere. I couldn't avoid them. Not every kid read them, of course. Me and two other kids in my junior high school read comics that I knew of, or at least were hardcore fans like like I was. That was Yeah, one of them was Paul Levitz, that's where we met. But y you can do all the great comics you want for kids. Where are they gonna see them? Where are they gonna have access to them? Where you know, I vividly remember comics that When I walked into a store, when I walked into the candy store, the lunchonette, and I saw this particular comic on the rack, I remember literally leaping for the newsstand to grab it because I had to see what was going on. You know? I that doesn't happen anymore. First of all, the covers are just like, oh look, another poster shot. The one that got me at what, eight, nine years old. There's a detective comics cover, 324, I think it was. There's a giant robot head filling the cover and Batman is behind one of its eyes. And Robin behind the other, and they're filling up with gas. And, you know, it's like doom of the giant robot head. And it was like, holy crap. I leapt for that and I grabbed that comic. I had to find out what this was about. I don't see that happening much anymore. You know, I I look at the the covers in the comic shop and very few stand out You know, very few of them jump out at you.

David 26:38
They're very slick. There's certainly craft there. There's certainly skills in in in those covers. Yeah. They're not as interesting. They're not trying to sell you the insides the way They used to. Now they're trying to sell themselves.

Paul Kupperberg 26:53
Yeah, covers used to be an advertisement. Now everybody knows what's coming three months in advance.

John 26:58
Yeah.

David 26:59
Yeah. Yeah, there's that. Oh

Paul Kupperberg 27:00
you don't need a what the fuck in it they've already read the catalog.

David 27:04
Right.

John 27:04
Yeah.

David 27:07
Any final words on the Impact Comic Line? Again, I really thank you for being willing to come on and chat with us about it. I really highly recommend if anybody's been following John and I's journey on this Archie comic superhero stuff. Go go over to Paul Cooperberg. net in he's also got some amazing. You've been putting up Superman dailies lately, and I'm loving that stuff too. He's got a great two-part article on Impact Comics, which I highly recommend everybody should check it out. Oh, there is one thing actually that you mentioned in the article that I want to bring up. I'm gonna read this because John, I want to get this right. An interesting story element in Crucible, this is your words, Paul. I'm gonna read them back to you, was described in the relaunch document in the year that followed Evergreen's devastation at the hands of the comet. Evergreen's the city that the comet blows up and when he becomes a villain. The US Congress enacts the Superhero Registration Act, the SHRA. Essentially a monitoring provision, the law provides any individual carrying out civilian police actions must be licensed by their local governments. Project SHIELD becomes the official SHRA enforcement arm of the US Justice Department. This provides friction between the shield and the hood who refuses to comply with the legislation. John, does that sound familiar to you at all?

Paul Kupperberg 28:23
I'm sure it's a Total coincidence that Joe Cassada, who read that document and was part of this relaunch from the beginning, just a coincidence that they wound up doing that at Marvel.

David 28:34
Complete coincidence that twelve years later, Marvel Comics under editor-in-chief Joe Cosada bases the 2006 -2007 company-wide crossover. Civil War on the conflict between heroes and the more we 've got to be. Just like the General

Paul Kupperberg 28:47
and the Extra

David 28:48
Registration Act. My God, I doubt when I read that my jaw dropped. I couldn't believe that.

John 28:54
I'm literally trying to remember that like I I I just to you brought up Engelhart. Like I I brought up Millennium, the the crossover thing that he did that was the uh with Staten I believe, right?

Paul Kupperberg 29:03
Uh yeah I think so yeah.

John 29:05
That came out the same year if I remember it right, as the evolutionary war that Inglehart was also involved in at Marvel and both of those were like opposing topics. You know what I mean? Like one of them was the the heroes were trying to create the next stage of evolution, the other one the the heroes were trying to stop the next stage of evolution.

Paul Kupperberg 29:22
Totally different stories, sure.

John 29:23
It made a more interesting story if they were one story, you know, and you had heroes doing both doing both things. I remember talking about that at the retreat about civil war, so we were talking about certain things. I was literally after I read that article trying to remember did that ever come up? You know I mean like is is there something I could confirm or or whatever. The only devil's advocatey thing I have is that there was the mutant registration act in the Marvel universe in the mid-80s or or whatever. That definitely came up as the referencing those particular ads and stuff that they had before that. Obviously Joe was there, so I mean yeah it's a fascinating

Paul Kupperberg 29:55
Yeah, there no there are no new ideas and there's you know, there there's no problem with doing that stuff. Uh I actually in um I wrote at an online mini series for Archie Comics. And I ripped off a uh I mean I borrowed uh an element from No, I took an element from the Impact Relaunch for one of my characters.

David 30:15
I think all that stuff's very innocent. I don't think I I don't think there's anything untoward. But at that level of coincidence and Joe was in the room, it's like, oh, you know, superhero. Like like I could totally see a a a world where Casada is like, oh, we should call it the Superhero Registration Act, completely not remembering that he had hurt read that somewhere 12 years ago.

Paul Kupperberg 30:34
And even if he did, it's like, you know what? Ideas are hard.

David 30:39
Like

Paul Kupperberg 30:40
if if you got one that doesn't get used, recycle it. It's okay. In fact, there is a a story I that I reuse for like three or four different times. for um uh humor ca characters. I did it for Bart Simpson, I did it for Johnny Bravo, I did it for, you know, I just took the same bit. And just, you know, like every time I did a character, like, oh, I am writing I am weasel? Okay, you know. So I just reused that same story like three or four times.

David 31:13
Paul, any last thoughts on the Impact Comic Line? Anything uh

Paul Kupperberg 31:16
It was a a noble experiment that I think was probably doomed to failure to begin with. just because uh of the way it was positioned. As I said before, you're shooting for an audience that's not looking for you and you are not doing anything to bring them in. So, you know, kids don't want to read con even in the nineties Kids were did not want to read comics. When I was a kid growing up, you could sell a million copies of Superman. You know, now I've seen sales numbers from the, you know 50s and 60s, the adventures of Jerry Lewis were selling 350,000 copies. Honest. Stanley and his monster would sell, you know, 310. And that was even like, uh, we may have to cancel that.

John 31:58
It was tough though, 'cause the kids that were reading them, like the kids that you knew, even at your time, were you and Paul Levitz. I bet when you were eleven years old, you weren't reading the comics aimed at eleven year olds Even if if somebody was

Paul Kupperberg 32:09
years old in nineteen sixty-six.

John 32:11
Right. Well, I guess they all were. Okay.

Paul Kupperberg 32:12
That was all that was available. Marvel was, you know, hadn't even really started like, you know, the Starenko stuff still hadn't come up yet. People rhapsodize about how advanced and mature Marvel was. Not so much.

John 32:26
Right.

Paul Kupperberg 32:26
This whole idea that that Stan was creating a unified universe, that's a retrofit. Stan was just trying to fill pages say oh shit all right he'll have Spider-Man as a guest star jump to Bill Pages you know and only in retrospect did somebody go you know we have a thing here So it's a different market. You know, those early issues of Fantastic Four are painful. They are painful in some cases. And again, I, you know Loved it at the time, but I I started a reread and I read through like nineteen or twenty and it was uh in number nineteen there's a Starts with reading his lab and they're going and he's saying, you know, if this oh this proves that there's a life in the universe and it's like, well yeah, you've already met the impossible man and the scroll. It's only twenty issues Can't you keep this straight? You know. Oh, there was no big plan. It just that that that happened later. Yeah.

David 33:20
Yeah.

John 33:20
Yeah.

David 33:20
You can't deny though, by the time they get to it to hit issue forty-eight Holy moly. What a

Paul Kupperberg 33:25
some awesome stuff. I was a DC kid my whole life. So these guys, you know, everybody has Stan and Jack and Steve Ditko as their Trinity. And for me it was, you know, Carmen Infantino, Gardner Fox, and Gil Kane. Those were my guys. Like Jack Kirby never even made my top ten favorite artists.

David 33:42
That's wild. I have to say that I think I'm on the verge of a big Gil Kane deep dive because I've been looking at some of his stuff lately and I'm just like, man, he's so good.

Paul Kupperberg 33:53
In the 70s, for a while, he was Marvel's cover artist. Right. Some of those things are amazing. And then in the eighties, he did a run of covers on on some of my books, like Superboy and Supergirl and Checkmate and all that. I think Gill is probably one of the most underrated uh guy, you know, I I hate the term underrated because he was a brilliant fucking artist, but he doesn't get the do because, you know, his long runs on things like Green Lantern and and The Atom Are kind of like, well that's you know, old time comic booky, you know, stuff. But his ability to tell a story and and his figure work, it's just astonishing. Incredible. I've always loved this stuff. In fact, I just got asked to write a uh a piece for the uh an upcoming Green Lantern Omnibus, you know, uh an essay. for that as I good I'll get to rhapsodize about Gil. Yeah, I think he's he's just one of the the the underappreciated talents of this business. His stuff I you ever see his like black mark

John 34:46
Uh oh yeah.

Paul Kupperberg 34:47
Yeah, I I bought it originally, you know, I I remember buying it in the bookstore. Yeah, when it came out in what seventy something, whatever. Uh his name is Savage was another incredible piece of work. Just brilliant.

John 34:59
Yeah, I randomly bought a copy of The Spirit Magazine from when Kitchen Sink was doing it and it has the first shop talk that Eisner did in it, it's issue twenty-eight, that's with Gil Kane, so I was just spending last night reading his interview with Gil Kane. Interesting talk. Is that New York Comic Con? Uh I was looking at some art and it was uh it was art from uh Death of Captain Marvel, Starlin's Death of Captain Marvel. And you can see that the the art was all like it looked kind of purplish. And then the guy's like, Yeah, that's the marker that he used to draw it. He was using these there's two kinds of markers. The other one's the yellow kind. And uh we we've got the gill cane cover where it's Superman with the sword, you know, standing on the thing.

Paul Kupperberg 35:36
Yeah.

John 35:36
And Superman is no longer on that cover.

Paul Kupperberg 35:38
I mean.

John 35:39
He's completely faded away.

Paul Kupperberg 35:40
He started using felt-tip pens. Yeah. Clares and there were some people uh production sometimes got so pissed at him

John 35:48
because

Paul Kupperberg 35:49
you know trying to do corrections on on felt tip pen are so sometimes they would just go across a piece of art after it was, you know, shot and everything. And

David 36:00
Oh my God. That's criminal.

Paul Kupperberg 36:03
He was a difficult guy. I I read that same interview. Shop talk kind of inspired me to do my books of interviews. Yeah. Oh, yeah, sure. So I love that book. I reread it recently when I, you know, before I embarked on the latest round for the next book. You know, Howard Shaken started out as Gil's assistant, and he has stories to tell.

John 36:23
Yeah.

Paul Kupperberg 36:24
He worked for me. I assigned him to do the life story of the flash graphic novel that Mark Wade and Diet Augustine wrote.

John 36:31
Right.

Paul Kupperberg 36:31
And I had to fire Gil Kane.

John 36:34
Jeez.

David 36:35
Oh man, that doesn't feel great.

Paul Kupperberg 36:36
It did not feel great at all. I fired two legends in my time. I fired him and I fired Frank Jacobs. From a mad project.

David 36:44
Oh man.

Paul Kupperberg 36:46
It was tough calls to make. But you know, he was just screwing up and not, you know, not doing it and missing deadlines and uh finally, you know, I was like, Gil, I you know, what can I do? Finally that he left me no choice. I got Joe Staten to come in and finish it. And Joe had also been an assistant to Gill for a while, so he, you know, was familiar with his own.

David 37:06
Yeah, that's a great choice, actually, Paul.

Paul Kupperberg 37:09
Turned out he had had a relapse uh of his cancer and he wasn't well. But he didn't want to tell us because he was afraid we'd fire him. So he wound up getting fired because he wouldn't tell us that he was sick. Which if he had told me, I would have gotten Joe to come in anyway and help him to assist him as opposed to take over for him.

David 37:27
Right. And

Paul Kupperberg 37:28
DC took care of him. I mean, when they found out what was going on They took care of his insurance and, you know, made sure he was he was covered and all that. DC was always great about that. I don't know what it's like these days because it ain't DC anymore.

David 37:40
Yeah, it's a big corporation.

Paul Kupperberg 37:42
Yeah.

David 37:43
Um that's good to hear. Uh it's also fascinating to hear that comic books don't change in terms of like it is art as commerce, and that is the it is the dumbest. and hardest way to make money in the history of mankind. Like, what were we all thinking when we were like, hey, art is commerce sounds like a good idea. Because you think like you're working with people who are complete professionals who have d demonstrated on literally thousands of pages of art that they know what they're doing and that they can turn stuff in, they can get stuff done on time and on a deadline and follow instruction and understand a script and great storytelling and all that. And then the artist version of them shows up to the project instead of the instead of the business version. And it's just like, oh man, I really want The other guy.

Paul Kupperberg 38:34
I consider myself very fortunate in that very early on I started working on staff on the business side of things. In nineteen seventy-six I was hired as the assistant to the PR director. So I was on staff until the um uh implosion when I got laid off. I was one of the there were four people laid off and I was like the last hired and and an assistant, so I I was let go. Then the next time I was on staff I came back to head up PR uh for a while. So I I got a really good look at the business side of things. I was in the marketing meetings and I was talking about the scheduling and things like that. It was a good education. It taught me that this is the comic book business. And there were you know, certainly in those days, you know, a book missing shipping could cost D C like, you know, ten thousand dollars Press time was scheduled and you know if they missed shipping. Vinny Coletta, Vinny was there to save everybody's ass, and everybody hated him for it. But, you know, I'm I'm a vin uh I'm a Vinnie Coletta fan and apologist, you know? It's like you say he ruined it, I say he got that book published

David 39:43
Yeah.

Paul Kupperberg 39:43
You can never forget that what you're doing is commerce. You're in a a a sales position. You're selling yourself, you're selling your work. Don't get too precious.

David 39:52
Yeah, that is that's the frustrating thing is when You're not being precious, but people you're working with certainly certainly are What do you been up to? What do you got coming up, Paul? Let's hear what you've been up to.

Paul Kupperberg 40:08
Well, I'd been uh you know, uh publishing um uh books of interviews with a lot of people uh in in the comic book business. I've done three of them so far, and I've got the next book, uh, which is going to be called uh direct storytelling, and I'm gonna talk to people about various aspects of storytelling and what they do and how they do it.

David 40:25
I think the last two books that you did, you were pulling interviews from existing material. No, no, no. If I remember the first one was DC direct comments.

Paul Kupperberg 40:33
Yeah, this one was um interviews that I had uh done in around nineteen ninety for uh uh DC Direct Currents, which was a uh the monthly comic shop giveaway.

David 40:44
Yeah, and you kick started that. I think that was that the first book your own.

Paul Kupperberg 40:48
That I did not kickstart. That I published on my own.

David 40:50
How did I get that?

Paul Kupperberg 40:51
Well I did kickstart that.

David 40:53
That's the one. Okay, directly.

Paul Kupperberg 40:55
This is the one where I talked to um the people I got into the business with in the uh in the uh mid-70s. Chaikin, Jacksie Harris, Tony Isabella, Paul Levitz, Steve Mitchell, Barbara Zakis, Joe Staten, Anthony Tollin, Bob Toomey, and Michael Euslin.

David 41:10
Yeah, so that's direct conversations. That's a fascinating read. I really enjoyed that. And I like the DC occurrence one too. This is the new one?

Paul Kupperberg 41:18
No, this is the uh the the third one.

David 41:20
So direct creativity is Book number three, when did that come out?

Paul Kupperberg 41:24
Twenty four.

David 41:24
Direct creativity. And tell us a little bit about that one. Oh yeah, no, I do have that one.

Paul Kupperberg 41:29
I talked to you know various people about uh their creative process. The subtitles The Creators Who Inspire the Creators So I talked to uh DG Chichester , Mike Collins, Jerry Conway, Mike DiCarlo, uh JM DeMatis, Dan DeDio, Mark Guggenheim, Joe Illich. Barbara Kahlberg, Tom King, Mark Dillar, Mindy Newell, Mike A. Von Oeming, Chuck Patton, Christopher J. Priest, Rick Stacy, Roy Thomas, and Mark Wade.

David 41:53
Yeah, that was a great book. Interesting because DG Chichester, uh, after reading his interview in your book, sent me down a Daredevil rabbit hole of his Daredevil stuff, yeah. Because I was like, Oh man, I gotta I gotta pick up that I gotta re reread that Daredevil stuff that he wrote. What's the new book now? The one you're working on now?

Paul Kupperberg 42:12
And I'm talking about storytelling process. How people approach coming up with ideas and telling their stories.

David 42:18
Fantastic. Do you have a timeline for that one?

Paul Kupperberg 42:20
Well I'm I'm just trying to get that uh one last interview done that people are

David 42:25
I'm sorry, I'll get it right to you, Paul. I I know that you I

Paul Kupperberg 42:29
don't want to kickstart it. If it goes much longer, you start getting into the holidays and I don't think I want to kick start during that.

David 42:35
Don't kickstart during the holidays. I tried it last year because I was like, oh counter programming, it'll work. And it didn't work.

Paul Kupperberg 42:40
No, I mean I've been pretty lucky with my Kickstarters. I've I've managed to get them funded in the first couple of days and then the rest is um I wouldn't say gravy, but you know. It's something. I've decided I I'm too old and too lazy to write novels anymore because that takes a lot of work. Uh I've been working on um you know, novellas, uh sort of. Um I've wrote this one Which is uh uh 1940s Pulp uh

John 43:06
Oh nice.

David 43:08
The Blank Tales of Mystery, Midnight Showdown in New York. That looks cool. It's uh The image on the cover is a is a man in a red mask with a red hat.

John 43:17
And a gun.

Paul Kupperberg 43:18
And a gun.

David 43:19
And a gun. And a trench coat. It's got some very uh pulpy vibes going on.

Paul Kupperberg 43:24
That's exactly what it is. Yeah. It's set in nineteen forty in New York City and it and there's also this one, which is uh Clockwork God. I'm involved in a group called Crazy Eight Press. It's a group of writers we all publish together under the same imprint. Everybody's independent, but you know, we're kinda like strengthened numbers. It's Bob Greenberger and Michael Jan Friedman. Peter David was one while he was still alive. Uh afterwards we decided he's out. Yeah, a bunch of people. There's nine of us involved. And we had published a an anthology series called uh Red Deus, a trilogy of anthologies, and the the concept was one day all the gods of all the pantheons returned to earth demanding to be worshipped. So he did this trilogy and my story, my character, his stories throughout the I looked at them again and it's like, Well, this is a story, you know, in itself. They stand on their own, so I put them together, uh, pulled them out and put them in into a book. All on your own called A Clockwork God. Currently I'm working on kind of a Superman pastiche, a novella, and another one called The Baden Voyage of the Yar, which is a uh a story set in ancient Atlantis. I've written a couple of stories that We're kind of like, well, you know, Arion Lord of Atlantis, but not. This is another one of those. It's it's kind of the the last Arion story. So

David 44:44
cool.

Paul Kupperberg 44:44
I'm working on those.

David 44:46
Man, keeping yourself busy. I like it.

Paul Kupperberg 44:48
It's either that I watch a lot of you know daytime TV.

David 44:51
Nothing good could possibly come of that. Paul, thank you so much for joining us. It's always a pleasure to have you Well you're one of our most recurring guests at this point. So thank you for that. Appreciate you taking the

Paul Kupperberg 45:01
first time on

David 45:01
chatting with us. I yeah, yeah First time in a long time. Everybody needs to go to Paul Cooperberg. net. That's P-A-U-L -K-U-P-P-E -R -B-E -R-G dot net. And it's just Paul's name altogether. No spaces, nothing. There's some great stuff on there. He's posting his uh work from the Daily Superman comic strips right now that are really cool. He's got great articles like the one we've been talking about today on Impact Comics. And also he's got all of his books available there. So I hope everybody goes and checks it out. Paul's quite the creative talent. And uh again, we're grateful for you uh taking some time to chat with us today, Paul.

Paul Kupperberg 45:35
Thank you. You're welcome.

John 45:36
Thanks again for joining us, and thanks everybody for joining us here on uh the corner box. We'll be back next week. See ya there. Bye.

David 45:43
Bye

Outro 45:44
This has been The Corner Box with David and John. Please take a moment and give us a five-star rating. It really helps. And join us again next week for another dive into the wonderful world of comics.