Alter Ego 7 - Julius Schwartz Interview

All-Schwartz Comics

A Conversation with Editorial Legend Julius Schwartz

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

[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: What titles and issues? Only my memory bank knows. I don't.

RT: Well... did they help? With the interview, I mean.

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: That was really good!

SCHWARTZ: Yeah, that was much more than I was making as a literary agent.

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"?

RT: Jon Blummer. He both wrote and drew it, I think.

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!

RT: [laughs] It's a gift, Julie.

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....

RT: Well, you can put it in the second edition.

The JSA's first meeting in 12 years, as served up by Schwartz, Fox, Sekowsky, and Sachs; repro'd from a photocopy of the original art, courtesy of Jerry Bails. [JLA & JSA ©2001 DC Comics.]

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?

RT: Not really.

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

RT: Yeah, sure. [laughs]

SCHWARTZ: Ask me!

RT: How did Jack Schiff get into DC Comics?

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.

SCHWARTZ: Sure!

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: Of course, he and his wife C.L. Moore together were Lewis Padgett.

SCHWARTZ: We're going far afield from All-Star...

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.

RT: Really? Where is that picture?

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?

SCHWARTZ: On all but Wonder Woman.

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?

SCHWARTZ: That's the way it was.

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?

SCHWARTZ: I've been thinking about that, and I really don't recall.

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.

RT: He even got his name on the cover once or twice.

SCHWARTZ: This also reminds me-see how you're making me think?

RT: That's my talent, Julie.

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?

SCHWARTZ: Absolutely not.

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.

RT: You mean records and things?

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?

SCHWARTZ: I don't remember. No recollection.

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.

SCHWARTZ: Absolutely.

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.

SCHWARTZ: Really? I don't remember that. They did the covers?

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.

SCHWARTZ: On much of Frank's syndicate stuff, he had a lot of help.

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?

SCHWARTZ: No.

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....

SCHWARTZ: Was he out of another time?

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?

SCHWARTZ: Oh, no! Not me!

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

A "family portrait" of the full roster of the Justice Society, by Murphy Anderson. [JSA drawing ©2001 DC Comics.]

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!

Thus ends the excerpt of this interview. For the complete interview, buy a copy of Alter Ego 7!