TwoMorrows Publishing - Alter Ego #7 - Julius Schwartz Interview

(Left) Photo of Julius Schwartz which he says was "taken August 10, 1945... how I looked in my All-Star days!" And yes, he hyphenated "All-Star"! (Right) Julie's recent memoir, Man of Two Worlds: My Life in Science Fiction and Comics, written with Brian M. Thomsen, is a 200-page treasure trove for fans of the Golden and Silver Ages, available at better comics shops, via online booksellers, and through Bud Plant, among others. [©2000 Julius Schwartz]

[INTRODUCTION: Julie Schwartz needs no introduction to anyone who knows anything at all about the Silver Age of Comics, since as the original editor of The Flash, Green Lantern, Justice League of America, Hawkman, The Atom, The Spectre, et al., from 1956 through the 1970s, he practically invented the damn thing. Earlier, he was a science-fiction fan, then agent, in the 1930s and early '40s; and from 1944 he was an editor at All-American Comics and later for DC Comics proper. (All-American, a company which included all comics featuring Wonder Woman, Flash, and/or Green Lantern, among others, lasted from 1939 to 1945, when it was wholly absorbed by National/DC; however, DC's symbol had graced all AA covers during those years except for a brief time in 1945.)

[Julie, who is one of the people most responsible for (or guilty of, take your pick) helping Ye Writer/Editor break into the comic book field in 1965, graciously agreed to be interviewed this past August in conjunction with The All-Star Companion, and for this issue of Alter Ego. The limited _purpose of the interview-his first since publication of his memoirs-was to be the JSA in the 1940s, and to some extent the influential JLA-JSA team-ups he initiated with writer Gardner F. Fox in 1963.

[My intention in what follows was simply to ask Julie all the questions I could think of about All-Star and the Golden Age JSA, which he edited from 1944-50. Julie has been swearing for decades that he remembers few details about individual stories or even the original series; but I felt I had nothing to lose by asking. Until I did, none of us could ever be certain he might not, under gentle prodding, recall some detail that had just never occurred to him before. And, indeed, while Julie is understandably uncertain about many events now more than half a century in the past, the reader is still likely to find a few surprises in what follows. I know I did.... -Roy.]

ROY THOMAS: Basically, Julie, what I'd like us to talk about is the Justice Society, which means mostly All-Star Comics in the 1940s, but to some extent the JLA-JSA team-ups, as well. We'll send you a free copy of The All-Star Companion.

JULIUS SCHWARTZ: [laughs] I'd expect that "irregardless"! All right, go ahead.

RT: You've often told the story of how you bought three comics on the way to be interviewed at All-American in 1944, and how that's the only thirty cents you ever spent on comics in your life. Do you know what kind of comics those three were?

SCHWARTZ: I guess I'd have to answer positively, because when Shelly Mayer interviewed me, my answers must've been good enough for him to hire me on the spot! [laughs]

RT: So he did the actual hiring? You didn't meet with [publisher] M.C. Gaines?

SCHWARTZ: No, no, no. Just Shelly. In fact, he offered me $60 a week. I never thought of mentioning that before. $60 a week was pretty good back in those days.

RT: 'Twasn't bad. I started out at DC in '65 for only $100 a week-$110 at Marvel-and that was twenty years of inflation later!

SCHWARTZ: I must have been doing well enough, because once he'd offered me $60 a week-it was during the War years-he could not raise me in salary [due to a Wartime wage freeze], so what he did was give me a $100 a month bonus after a couple of months.

RT: Did the fact that you were a science-fiction fan and reader and agent probably help you get the job?

SCHWARTZ: It wasn't the fact that I was a fan; it was that I was a literary agent. Writers would submit scripts to me, and if I liked one well enough to submit to magazine editors, I had the know-how whether the story was good or bad. Shelly knew I was well-versed in pulp magazines, with their strong plots, and that's the type of stories All-American was doing.

RT: Did you know Dorothy Roubicek, whom you replaced as script editor under Shelly Mayer in 1944?

SCHWARTZ: Very well. She had replaced Ted Udall a couple of years earlier. You know who Ted Udall is? His real name? If you check the early All-American Comics, there were several text stories written by "Ted Yigdal." I believe that's how you spell his real name. He was an editor for Shelly prior to World War II, and he wrote stories.
Before Ted Udall came along [in 1940-RT], I believe Shelly Mayer may have gotten some editorial help from-what was the name of that artist who did "Hop Harrigan"?

SCHWARTZ: Well, I think he may have helped Shelly with the editing for a while, too, earlier. Now, when Ted Udall got drafted [in 1942-RT], that presumably is when Shelly hired Dorothy Roubicek. What Dorothy had done before, I have no idea.
The reason Dorothy was leaving in '44 is, she was getting married to a comic book artist named Walter Galli, and she gave notice; she was just going to stay another week. As a matter of fact, I think it was a short week. [laughs] I was hired February 21, 1944, and began working on February 23. February 22 was Washington's Birthday, which in those days was a legal holiday. It wasn't until years later that we instituted Presidents' Day.
For three days, as I roughly remember, Dorothy briefed me. She advised me that my main job would be plotting stories and editing them. I would not have to bother with the artwork, which was a relief. I knew nothing about art.
She left behind a series of index cards containing plot ideas. Hey! Now that I think of it, I haven't thought about this in years. You're pretty good, Roy!

SCHWARTZ: She left a series of index cards. If she had to plot an "Atom" story, she'd go to that index card and come up with a plot she'd already prepared. I don't think I ever mentioned that to anybody before.

RT: You mean she just thought of ideas for "The Atom," for this character or that character, in spare moments, and wrote them on index cards?

SCHWARTZ: Right! Let me tell you something about Dorothy. She married Walter Galli and later divorced him, her second husband, to marry Bill Woolfolk [prominent comic book writer and later a bestselling novelist]. Let me tell you an anecdote I probably should've put in my book....

SCHWARTZ: This is roughly in the early '90s. After the San Diego conventions, I used to go up to Los Angeles and spend three or four days with Harlan Ellison, Gil Kane, and Forrest Ackerman. I'd go to the Golden Apple comic book shop, and just hang out. I'd stay at the Holiday Inn in Westwood.
One day, exiting the Holiday Inn, to my stunned amazement, I see Dorothy! I say, "Dorothy?" She says, "Julie?" And we hug each other. Listen, is Dorothy still alive?

RT: Yes. Bill and her son Don both wrote me recently that she is. [NOTE: Sadly, Dorothy Roubicek Woolfolk passed away in Dec. 2000.]

SCHWARTZ: I hadn't seen her in twenty years! When she was back at DC briefly during the 1970s, editing the romance books, I used to go into her office and talk with her.

RT: You went to work for AA in '44. Later that year, things began to fall apart between the All-American group and DC. For seven or eight months, there was an AA symbol instead of a DC one on the books like All-Star, All-American, Flash, Sensation, Wonder Woman, All-Flash, Green Lantern, and Comic Cavalcade-plus a few humor and Bible titles-which finally made AA look like what it was-a totally separate company from DC.
And then, late in '45, suddenly everything folded into DC. It's always seemed to me like two different periods. Were you aware of what was going on at the time? And what was going on, precisely?

SCHWARTZ: I was aware of it, but I had no knowledge of what was going on. All I can recall is, presumably at the end of 1944, Shelly Mayer told me we were moving uptown to 480 Lex [= Lexington], because we were now part of DC Comics. We moved uptown, and when you got out of the elevators, as I recall, the first office was Whit Ellsworth's; next to him were the offices of Mort Weisinger, Jack Schiff, Murray Boltinoff, and Bernie Breslauer. Did you know Bernie Breslauer?

RT: Only by name. He used to edit Leading Comics, among other things, for Ellsworth.

SCHWARTZ: And further down the hall I had my office with Robert Kanigher. Do you know how Jack Schiff got into DC Comics?

SCHWARTZ: Well, lucky you! I'm going to tell you! Because you just asked me, didn't you?

SCHWARTZ: I'm glad you asked me that question. Mort Weisinger always wanted to be a writer and an editor. So in the early '40s there was a group of magazines called Standard Magazines; they put out Thrilling Mystery, and other "Thrilling" magazines. Mort submitted a short story to Thrilling.
Leo Margulies was the editor-in-chief. The way he worked was: When a script came in, it was read by a series of assistant editors. If three of them okayed the story, Leo bought it. So Jack Schiff read this story by Mort Weisinger, whom he didn't know, and he asked him to come visit him at Standard. And that's how Mort became an editor there; Schiff was the editor, really, of Mort.
Later, Mort switched over to editing comics for DC. When he was drafted, he persuaded Jack Schiff to take his place at DC until he got out of the service. Mort would get his job back, which was the law at that time. But after the War, DC had increased its output so much that they needed not only Mort; they needed to keep Jack Schiff, too. Somewhere along the line he brought in Bernie Breslauer, who was also an editor at the "Thrilling" group.

RT: It must've been good for you as a science-fiction agent to have your old friend Mort working for Standard.

RT: When he went to work for Standard, he gave up being an agent with you, right?

SCHWARTZ: Mort liked Henry Kuttner, whom he'd met while we were in California, and I persuaded Kuttner, who'd only been writing stories for Weird Tales, to write science-fiction. So his first science-_fiction story was sold to Mort.
Henry Kuttner had a thousand pen names. My favorite one-when he lived in Hastings-on-the-Hudson, a town on the Hudson River-was Hudson Hastings. [laughs]

RT: That's all right. The thing I was thinking before was-well, the given story about M.C. Gaines is that at some stage he was fighting so much with Harry Donenfeld and especially Jack Liebowitz that he insisted on them buying him out-but it seems to have been done in two stages, or else why is there more than half a year's worth of a totally separate All-American line?

SCHWARTZ: I know absolutely nothing about it. All I know is that we moved uptown, about the end of '44.

RT: Are you sure? The reason I'm wondering is that, during most of 1945, books were coming out with just an AA symbol...

SCHWARTZ: Wait a second, let me think. Somewhere in the office, I had a photograph of a big Christmas party in 1945. There's a shot of everyone who ever worked there... there's a shot of Harry Donenfeld, there was a shot of a guy who tells me he was Joe Kubert-he was so young at the time! [laughs] There's a shot of Ted Udall sitting at a table with the girl I later married.

SCHWARTZ: Missing. I was not in the picture, because I went to the men's room at the time. [laughs] There's a shot of a guy named David Vern, who wrote a lot of short stuff, and Judge Goldstein, who helped out in the lawsuit against Fawcett. The original photograph was held by Milt Snappin. He was originally a letterer, but later he was in charge of the foreign sales department. He gave me a copy of that photo, and I gave it to Paul Levitz [now DC's publisher]. So, let's get back to All-Star.

RT: Actually, we never did quite get to it yet! This is all preliminary, but that's okay-this will be a "Julie Schwartz Golden Age Interview." After DC took over AA, did you ever get the feeling that the AA people, like you and Mayer and Kanigher and so forth, were second-class citizens there?

SCHWARTZ: Well, I wouldn't say second-class. Just say-how can I put it? Maybe we were the junior members. In other words, Mort and company being there ahead of us were the senior members, and we were the junior members. But we had no editorial contact with each other, really, not even after Gaines sold out. We didn't interfere with their magazines, and they didn't interfere with ours. Mayer was our boss, and Ellsworth was their boss.

RT: Besides All-Star, the other All-American super-hero books were any comics that featured Flash, Green Lantern, and/or Wonder Woman. Did you work editorially on all those for a number of years?

RT: I guess Kanigher eventually took over the Wonder Woman stuff, especially after [co-creator William Moulton] Marston died in '47.

SCHWARTZ: Kanigher got the job, or he took it upon himself. I don't remember. The way I recall it, on the books I worked on, I did all the plotting and editing on stories, on the script. Shelly did not interfere with my plotting or editing.

RT: Shelly Mayer said that, right up to when he left in '48, he was still co-plotting with the writers, but I'm wondering if he hadn't cut down on that some years earlier, and given more of it over to editors like you and Kanigher.

SCHWARTZ: During my tenure, I don't recall Shelly plotting any stories with Gardner or Kanigher. After I plotted the story and edited the script, I would turn it over to Shelly, and Shelly would give it to the artist. When the artist had done the work, Shelly looked at it, but eventually I'd proofread it.

RT: So, in some cases, the first he would see of a story was when there was a completed script?

RT: Did Shelly earlier know what the general plot was? After all, when you're talking about All-Star in particular, you're talking about practically the whole book being one story.

SCHWARTZ: My recollection is that he did not. He didn't know what was going on until I handed him the edited script.

RT: So Shelly's memory of co-plotting probably reflects those earlier years, when he used to plot All-Star with Gardner in the early '40s?

SCHWARTZ: When I plotted with Gardner, there was no co-plotting [by Shelly], as I recall. You're talking about 55 years ago, and everything just blurs, and we have to speculate.
I'd like to briefly say, I think my job was to plot the story, edit it, give it to Shelly, and when the artwork came in, Shelly would look at it and give it to me and I would proofread it.

RT: That means you were most likely the co-plotter on many of the AA comics I liked most, including on what I consider the high point of All-Star, in 1947-48. In late '46, after #34, Gardner Fox quit writing All-Star. Was he edged off the book?

RT: He mentioned the change as being fairly amicable, but he never gave any more details.

SCHWARTZ: Let me put it this way: When I first met Gardner, when I started to work in comics in '44, I persuaded him to write science-fiction, and I sold maybe half a dozen or more scripts of his to Planet Stories.

SCHWARTZ: Let me tell you something: I persuaded Ted Udall to write, too. He wrote a number of stories for Weird Tales, published under the name "Charles King." That would be between '45 and '47.

RT: By the end of '46 Gardner seems to have gone over at least partly to westerns and humor. One feature he says he worked on was "The Dodo and the Frog," in Funny Stuff. Did you have editorial duties on the humor books, too?

RT: I didn't think so, but I was curious. You probably worked with Gardner on some of the westerns he wrote-in All-American Western, or Western Comics, or later All-Star Western.

SCHWARTZ: When you say "worked with," don't forget Kanigher. By this time Udall had left, and Kanigher had taken his place. As far as I can recollect, I was editing the western books, but Kanigher did a lot of writing, and he may have plotted some of the stories in the westerns. I know he plotted with Robert Haney a lot. I was in charge of the final layout, you might say-what stories would appear, and where. I also kept the books. Kanigher never kept any of the books.

SCHWARTZ: Records, yeah. The reason we don't have any records is, in those days we had what were called-what the hell was that called? There was a book, maybe half the size of a comic book, in which, if I bought a story, I would write, "Pay to Gardner Fox for script," I'd give the title, the payment, and so on, right? I'd tear out the front page, and that would go to the accounting department, and I would keep the carbon. When the book was finished, we'd throw it away. So the only record of what was bought was in Accounting!
DC must now have no records of the '40s, because when they print those Millennium issues, they say, "Author Unknown" or "Artist Unknown."

RT: #35 and the last nineteen issues of All-Star were written by John Broome, but there were at least two issues that were scripted by Kanigher. Would you and Kanigher have co-plotted the issues he wrote?

SCHWARTZ: Sure. I didn't have to put in as much detail as I did with Gardner or John Broome, because Kanigher was such a good plotter. I knew what he was doing and I would look it over and edit it, but there's hardly any editing on Kanigher.

RT: Years ago John Broome told Jerry Bails that he did the issue [#35] right after Gardner's 32-issue run ended. But then Kanigher evidently came in for at least two issues, maybe three. Then Broome's records showed that he did all the rest, from #39 on. Do you know why All-Star would have bounced from Broome to Kanigher to Broome?

RT: There was a period of nine issues [#33-41] which were very good-Gardner Fox's last two stories, then Broome's and Kanigher's. At the same time, the art was getting better. Was there a conscious effort to try to upgrade the book starting in late '46 and in '47? Over a fairly short period, suddenly Irwin Hasen and Alex Toth and Lee Elias and Carmine Infantino all came in, and some of the _earlier guys were eased out-while Joe Kubert just kept getting better. All those people were in place when Shelly left.

RT: One guy who also came in around this time, but became more prominent after Shelly left, was Arthur Peddy, who was mostly teamed with Bernie Sachs as inker.

SCHWARTZ: Yeah, I can't remember when they came in. Did they work on All-Star?

RT: Oh, yeah! Not only did they do many of the covers; they even penciled and inked entire issues. Peddy and Sachs did more work in the last two years of All-Star than any other artist or team.

RT: Most of them. Well, according to Craig Delich, Bob Oksner confirmed that he inked one of Peddy's covers, but mostly Bernard Sachs inked them.

SCHWARTZ: Oksner did an All-Star cover? Really? I don't remember that. You've surprised me.

RT: Another guy who did some work on All-Star in the last year was Frank Giacoia. He's noted mostly as an inker, but he seems to have done some nice penciling in All-Star and on "Atom" stories in Flash, and later he did the early "Strong Bow" in All-Star Western.

SCHWARTZ: I think a lot of the stuff he did was ghosted by Mike Sekowsky. I'm just guessing.

RT: It might have been, though I'm more aware that Mike ghosted Frank's penciling later, like on the Sherlock Holmes newspaper strip.

RT: Yeah. I worked with Frank at Marvel, and he was very insecure in his penciling, like on one Avengers we did together, because everything had to be swipes. He was a great inker, so maybe he'd get an assignment as penciler and then get somebody else to do it for him. But whether or not he did that as early as on All-Star #54-57...

SCHWARTZ: All I can tell you is an anecdote about Frank Giacoia. Ready? I should've put it in the book, but I never thought of it. Frank Giacoia was late, late, late, late. On one occasion he was getting married to a girl named Celeste, and I went to the wedding. And after the ceremony was over, I told Frank, "You cannot go on your honeymoon. I've reserved a room at a hotel. You're staying there until you finish the goddamn story." [laughs] Every time I saw Celeste years later, she'd say, "I'll never forgive you for not letting me go on my honeymoon!"

RT: I don't blame her! About All-Star: I noticed that some of those primo 1947-48 issues I love had a looser format than the earlier ones. Do you recall any conscious plan to make the book a bit looser, a bit less formulaic?

RT: Now, I have a bunch of specific questions about particular issues of All-Star-you probably won't remember them, but I'll ask anyway, just in case they stir something. In the first story Broome wrote [#35], there was a time villain, Per Degaton, a really good character who looked like a short Napoleon type in a stormtrooper outfit....

RT: No, he was a lab assistant who stole a time machine. What's interesting to me is, he changed the outcome of a particular battle between Alexander the Great and the Persians. I'm curious: Who was the history buff who came up with that, do you think? Would that have been you, or Broome?

RT: Did John read much history? Important as it was, the Battle of Arbela isn't one of the most famous battles, nowadays.

SCHWARTZ: That's way beyond me. John was extremely well-read, he was well-versed in everything. He went into all forms of literature and art. He was a-how can I say it? He was always kind of afraid of himself. For a while, I didn't know that he was an artist! An amateur artist, but-of course, you know about his traveling. Eventually he left DC and went to Israel, Taiwan, Japan, Paris. He went all over; he sure loved to travel!

RT: All-Star #36 is the one about whose writer we're not certain. This was the one where suddenly Superman and Batman guest-star. Do you have any idea as to why they might have been shoehorned into the JSA, especially just for one issue?

RT: Issue #37 has an idea you'd have thought would have happened a long time before, an Injustice Society. Of course, you used that idea later in Justice League. Do you know how that happened? That was a Kanigher story.

RT: It must've worked, because there was another one only four issues later. Then there was the issue [#38] where almost all the JSAers died, or seemed to. It's never been reprinted....

SCHWARTZ: Let me tell you something about the JSA stories that were never reprinted. There's a possibility-When I was hired by Shelly, he said, "You really have no deadline worries, because we're three issues ahead on everything." So eventually, when All-Star was cancelled, there were three issues still hanging around!

SCHWARTZ: What I can't remember at all is whether any of the material that was hanging around was done even before I was hired. Some of the stories you mentioned, I have no recollection of. Some of those stories may have been bought by Shelly as inventory.

RT: They still had to be done no earlier than 1945 or '46, though, because the unpublished issue of All-Star that partly exists has Flash and Green Lantern in it.

SCHWARTZ: I have no knowledge of it.
[EDITOR'S NOTE: For more on the "lost issues" of All-Star, especially the dozen-plus extant pages of the unpublished 1945 JSA tale "The Will of William Wilson," see The All-Star Companion, published December 2000 by TwoMorrows. End of shameless plug!]

RT: "The Will of William Wilson" isn't the greatest story in the world-but throwing away two, three, four stories means a lot of money being wasted, when you take a whole issue that's basically written and drawn, and you don't publish it.

SCHWARTZ: Presumably you could write it off. Financially, if you buy something and don't use it, you could take it off your taxes.

RT: And they did. The date "September 30, 1949" is stamped on a lot of the pages that were "written off."
Broome also wrote an All-Star [#40] about juvenile delinquency. Some of us are tempted to see Kanigher's hand in that one, because Black Canary is so prominent in it, and he's the one who created her. But #40 was evidently scripted by Broome. It's an unusual story, with no super-villains, just hoodlums and kid gangs, with the Justice Society trying to help the kids go straight.

SCHWARTZ: How it came about, I don't know-whether anyone suggested it, or it just came to us out of the blue.
Let me ask you a question out of the blue: Fifteen, twenty years from now, when you are interviewed about your editorship at Marvel, are you going to remember everything?

RT: I don't remember everything now. Some things I remember crystal clear, and others-well, they may as well have happened on the dark side of the moon.

SCHWARTZ: You'll say, "Julie was right!" When you get to be-and I hope you do-in your eighties. I don't remember what I did fifty years ago.

RT: I think people remember what's important to them. Some things you just do for a living, and you don't think about them that much. If the actual comics didn't still exist, there'd be no memory of any of this at all.
In one issue [#41], there was this whole thing about stealing the Freedom Train, which was another John Broome story.

RT: For some reason, the name was changed to the "Liberty Train." In this same story-and this is even weirder!-the name of the Liberty Bell is changed to the "Freedom Bell"! Why in the world would you change the name of the Liberty Bell?

RT: Well, I figure that all the broad strokes have already been written about All-Star, over the years. What I wanted to do in The All-Star Companion was a book that really examines the comic under a _microscope. Only with affection. Isn't that what you expect from a "companion"-affection?

SCHWARTZ: You ought to call your book A Thousand and One Things You Never knew about All-Star Comics!

RT: Oh, there are more things in it than that, Julie! [laughs] Moving on: With issue #42, and for the last 16 issues through #57, Shelly Mayer was gone and Whit Ellsworth officially became editor. At this time, there's very much a change in the feel of All-Star. I was wondering if he had any active part in it, or did he just leave it up to you?

SCHWARTZ: Let me tell you something: Whit Ellsworth never saw my covers before they appeared. I never had an okay from him. We just did covers and they went out that way.

RT: I get the idea he was a little more hands-on, maybe, with some of the DC stuff than he was with what he had inherited from AA.

SCHWARTZ: He gave us complete liberty. I'm not even sure he read the comics before they came out.

RT: When Shelly left, Ellsworth had almost twice as many books to oversee, but DC didn't put you guys' names in the indicia. They just had you and Kanigher keep doing the work, while Ellsworth was the official editor.

SCHWARTZ: I don't think Whit Ellsworth even interfered with Mort and Jack Schiff. The only thing Whit Ellsworth did, for me-
Mort and Schiff had a book called Big Town. For some reason Ellsworth didn't like the way it was going, so he turned it over to me. When I say "me," I mean Kanigher and me, but I did it. The same thing with the western comics. If Whit didn't like the way the western comics were going, he turned them over to the Schwartz and Kanigher team. Whenever I did a cover, I never had a prior okay from Whit.

RT: There were some good ones! One of the things that happened at this time is that, starting with #42, the stories tended to become-and I enjoyed some of them tremendously-a bit more formula-ized again, with the JSA together at the beginning and end, and splitting up into teams in the middle of the book.
Also, there's a lot of science-fiction in that last couple of years. Is that because of your and Broome's own inclinations, or was it the feeling that science-fiction was the wave of the future?

SCHWARTZ: No, we never thought it was the wave. We just liked doing science-fiction! Don't forget, I used to be John Broome's agent before he went into comics.

RT: There was also one issue in which the villain was supposed to be a surviving Billy the Kid. Was this because westerns were big at the time?

RT: [laughs] You realize I'm asking you a lot of these things just as a technicality. I don't expect you to remember everything-there's no reason why you should-but I don't want to take the chance that you do remember something I'd like to know, and I simply neglect to ask the question that brings it out!
For the first few years you were editing All-Star, the Justice Society worked out of Gotham City, same as Batman. Then, in #44, they went out west for "Evil Star over Hollywood"-you revived Evil Star years later-and when they came back, they came back to a new place for the last couple of years, called Civic City! Do you remember why?

SCHWARTZ: I have no recollection. What you ought to do, Roy, is to keep records of everything you do, because fifty years later, somebody's going to ask you about it, and you won't have the answer. _Seriously!

RT: I'm always glad when people do keep records. I wish I had a chance to go over all Gardner Fox's pay records. He donated them to the University of Oregon in Eugene. I've received copies of some of them from Michael T. Gilbert and others.

RT: It was an idea of Gardner's agent, August Lenniger, probably for a tax break. For example, I saw on them that sometime in the early 1940s, Gardner got a $600 bonus for All-Star, which would have been a huge sum then. I guess the book was selling really well! Those records also show that Gardner did a lot more writing for DC strips like "Green Arrow" and others than we thought.

SCHWARTZ: I would like you to solve the following problem, Roy. I'm giving you an assignment, okay? Here it is:
Gardner Fox and [original DC editor] Vin Sullivan were schoolmates together, and when Vin Sullivan persuaded Gardner to start writing for comics, he wrote several stories for Sullivan, right? Even some "Batman"?

RT: I've often wondered the same thing, because he did start with DC, and later the majority of his writing was for the AA group. I don't know the answer.

SCHWARTZ: I have a similar question: How come Bill Finger, who wrote so many stories for Vin Sullivan, and was always late-how come he would end up at All-American Comics doing "Green Lantern" and "Wildcat"?

RT: [laughs] Maybe he had to jump from one company to another where someone didn't know he was always late!

SCHWARTZ: When Bill Finger was writing "Wildcat" and "Green Lantern," I don't think he was doing anything for Vin Sullivan or DC Comics.

RT: Well, of course, Sullivan by then was long gone, first to Columbia, and then by the late '40s he started his own company, Magazine Enterprises.

SCHWARTZ: But it is an interesting problem-how two of the main writers that started at DC wound up exclusively at All-American. I think once Gardner started with Shelly, he didn't write anything for DC.

RT: I don't know how exclusive it was, but they certainly did the majority of their work there.

SCHWARTZ: It's possible that Bill Finger went back and forth, but since he was always so late on Batman, how come he was allowed to spend all that time at AA? Also, how many Golden Age "Green Lantern" stories did Bill Finger write?

RT: It's hard to say, isn't it? A lot of the early ones, of course, but after a while there were no credits anymore.

SCHWARTZ: When Bill Finger wasn't writing the early "Green Lantern" stories, who was writing them? When Alfred Bester took over as writer, was Finger writing them up to that point?

RT: You're asking me? You were the editor! Craig Delich has written an article, which will be in the same issue of Alter Ego as this interview, about all the different versions of Green Lantern's oath back in the middle '40s.

SCHWARTZ: I guarantee, Bester did write "In brightest day, in blackest night..."

RT: I'm talking about the ones in between. There were several other variations for a brief time there.

SCHWARTZ: Did I explain in my book that Bill Finger taught Alfred Bester how to write comics? When Al Bester was persuaded to write DC Comics by Mort Weisinger, he put him in touch with Bill Finger, and Bill Finger taught Bester how to write for comics.

RT: Yeah, I think you've got that in there. So everybody should buy your book and read the full story. I know you want me to say that, Julie, but I will anyway-because they should!
Anyway, about all those science-fiction issues of All-Star: I noticed that one of them, "Invasion of the Fire People," owes a lot to Orson Welles' War of the Worlds radio broadcast. Did you hear that back in 1938?

RT: Of course, All-Star #49 came ten years later, but a lot of things in it came straight out of that broadcast. About this time, too, you started printing "JSA Laboratory" pages, where some member of the Justice Society would tell how to do some simple science experiment. Do you know how these came about?

RT: One story, "The Gun That Dropped through Time" [#53], in 1950-that was Broome, too, of course, and it had this wonderful _theory of "time ledges"-that time was like a mountain, and if something fell through time, it would stop for a little while on each of several ledges, each a different era. I've been trying for years to learn if that theory came from any particular science-fiction story.

RT: Just three issues before the end [#55], in "The Man Who Conquered the Solar System," you had a Professor Napier-I guess that name came from Edgar Rice Burroughs' Carson Napier [Carson of Venus]. There were elements in that issue, too, from H.P. Lovecraft's story "Whisperer in Darkness." Did you read Lovecraft, besides acting as his literary agent back in the '30s?

SCHWARTZ: Oh, sure! I never could read his long stories. I would only read the short stories.

RT: But hey, it was his longest story that you sold, Julie-his short novel At the Mountains of Madness! And the other HPL story you sold, "The Shadow Out of Time," was one of his longer short stories, too!

SCHWARTZ: Prior to that, he'd been writing since 1923, so-all I can say is, I liked things like "The Rats in the Walls" and "Pickman's Model." I was not a devout Lovecraft fan. I couldn't read them fast enough. I was a fast reader, and you couldn't read Lovecraft fast!

RT: The last issue of All-Star [#57] was called "The Mystery of the Vanishing Detectives." People have wondered for years, did any of you know this was going to be the last issue and thus give it that title?

RT: At this point you and the writers and artists made up various features for All-Star Western, like "The Trigger Twins" and "Strong Bow" and "Don Caballero"....

SCHWARTZ: Yeah. Kanigher wrote "The Trigger Twins," I'm pretty sure of that. But otherwise I can't remember who wrote what. When did All-Star Western begin?

SCHWARTZ: I may have records of those. My recollection is that I started keeping records roughly about that time.

RT: Gil Kane drew "Don Caballero," and Frank Giacoia-whether by himself or not-did "Strong Bow" for a few issues.
The last few questions I wanted to ask you are about the revival of the JSA in the early '60s. Why do you think the Justice Society was basically revived, renamed the Justice League, after only two old DC heroes-Flash and Green Lantern-had been brought back in new form? Was this something that came up in an editorial meeting? Do you recall how it happened that this was the time DC decided to come out with a group again?

SCHWARTZ: After The Flash proved successful, they said, "What do you want to do next?"
I said, "I want to do 'Green Lantern' because that was really a favorite of mine."
When "Green Lantern" proved successful, they said, "What do you want to do next?"
I said, "I'd like to do 'The Justice Society of America,' but I don't like the word 'Society,' because it's like a social group, and I want to use the word 'League,' because it's a more familiar word to young readers, like the National League, American League."
And that's how that happened.

RT: I guess by then, with Flash and Green Lantern and the handful of pre-existing DC characters, you felt you had enough heroes to make up a whole League, huh?

RT: You had seven, but of course you didn't show much of Superman and Batman.

RT: Okay, everybody-buy the book! Of course, before long, you brought in Green Arrow, too, and later the new Atom and Hawkman.
Even after Justice League started, Jerry Bails and I, and I'm sure other people, suggested bringing back the JSA itself. And yet, when you actually did it, you did it in a unique way, with this parallel world business. Do you remember how it came about-why that particular way of bringing the JSA back? Did it grow out of that issue of Flash Comics we'd seen Barry Allen reading back in Showcase #4?

SCHWARTZ: Well, as you remember, when Barry Allen realized he had super-powers, and was thinking what he wanted to do with them, he remembered the old Flash, and at that point, I said, "There's a second Earth." And when I used the term "second Earth" to think about what I would call this Earth, I said, "Earth-Two," because it was the second Earth. It should have been the other way around, of course.

RT: Yeah, but that's okay. Nobody cared. The main thing is, it was a great idea.

SCHWARTZ: Well, I care! Of course, I had to go to Earth-Three, and eventually to Earth-Prime. But Earth-Two should've been Earth-One, let's get that straight!

RT: Here's something I've been wondering for years: Except for a few very early stories by Kanigher, including the origin, John Broome had written all the Flash stories. Yet, suddenly, when you _decided to revive the original Flash-which both Broome and Kanigher had also written at times in the '40s-do you know why Gardner Fox wound up writing "Flash of Two Worlds" instead of Broome? #123 was the first new Flash story that Gardner wrote!

SCHWARTZ: Let me ask you: Was John Broome on a limited schedule then? Was he still around?

RT: Yes, because he came back and wrote most of the Flash issues for some time after that single story. He was just off the book for an issue now and then.

RT: Originally, did you have any thought that the Earth-Two stories might become a regular thing, as they did especially in Justice League after the initial "Crisis" story?

SCHWARTZ: Correct me if I'm wrong-when I did the "Crisis on Earth-One"/"Crisis on Earth-Two" story, which is a two-parter, I believe that was the first time a Justice League story hadn't been completed in one issue.

SCHWARTZ: When the second "Crisis" issue appeared, I took up the whole front [splash] page with a summary of what happened before.

RT: It was like a scorecard. With that many characters, you needed a scorecard!

SCHWARTZ: When I see a Batman or some other comic nowadays, and it says, "Part 4 of a 6-part Story," you've got to brief the reader. You've got to put somewhere at the beginning about what went on before, and who the characters are.
In the old days the pulp magazines like Argosy would run two or three serials in the same issue, and they'd always lead off with a page or more of what happened before! I was brought up on pulp magazines, and that's where I got it from.

RT: It was a good idea, because it allowed people to get into the story. Two-parters were pretty rare in those days. Was there any resistance from the higher-ups to the idea of a two-issue story?

SCHWARTZ: No! No one raised any objection. I was allowed to do what I wanted to do.

RT: And what you wanted to do made for some very good comics. Thank you very much, Julie.

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All-Schwartz Comics

A Conversation with Editorial Legend Julius Schwartz

Interview Conducted and Edited by Roy Thomas
Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson

All-Schwartz Comics

A Conversation with Editorial Legend Julius Schwartz

Interview Conducted and Edited by Roy Thomas Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson

Interview Conducted and Edited by Roy Thomas
Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson