First Encounter

Irecall the exact moment I became aware of the comic book art of Steve Ditko. I was astride my bicycle, delivering newspapers very early in the morning, in late November of 1958. I dropped a folded copy of the Wilmington (Delaware) Morning News on the side porch doorstep of a house on Shipley Road. Lying next to the step, scattered on the cement, was a small stack of comic books. On top was a copy of Tales of Suspense #2, dated March 1959. (Comic book publishers used to pre-date their comics to ensure longer newsstand life.) I had never seen a copy of Tales of Suspense before. I had only just begun to collect comic books, having “discovered” them at camp, a few months earlier. The ones that had my attention at the time were all published by DC Comics. The comic books I knew all had the corner “Superman DC National Comics” emblem and usually featured Superman and/ or Batman.

But this Tales of Suspense comic book was different; man, was it different! There was no identifying emblem on the corner. The cover scene was a futuristic city, obviously (to me at least) on a different planet, as a moon loomed in the sky much larger than I had ever seen it on Earth. The pale blue heavens above the city were filled with giant, twinkling stars. Hovering in the air in the middle ground was the most fantastic, ultramodern floating car, the likes of which I had never seen. On the side of this orange and red transport were the letters “POLICE.” Inside this amazing vehicle were two green-uniformed policemen, one piloting and the other pointing to the foreground.

And, oh, what a foreground! Through a huge window was a room filled with exotic green furniture and electronics. A curved green sofa sat behind a polished table on which sat a wine goblet and a handled pitcher. Next to the table was a small sculpture of a

One fateful day, one of my comic fan college classmates came to class with a newspaper clipping about Michael Uslan, a college student just like ourselves, who had managed to create and teach his own college course on comic books at Indiana University. We were inspired! That very day, we skipped a class, sat around in the cafeteria, and outlined our own “History of American Comic Books” course for the Philadelphia College of Art.

In a remarkably short time, we presented our outline to the liberal arts department, and, the very next semester, we were teaching the first student-taught course in the college’s history. We taught it for two semesters. During that time, we had a few guest speakers come down from New York City. Writers Denny O’Neil and Len Wein spoke to our class, as did artist Dick Giordano. We had met these gentlemen at various New York comic book conventions and they were very generous with their time, and quite willing to share their knowledge and insights.

During this period, I had the opportunity to write an article about our course and comics books themselves for a teachers’ magazine. Upon graduation, armed with my diploma, experience and contacts, I approached DC Comics regarding employment. To my delight, my timing was perfect, and DC was indeed looking for assistant editors. In November 1974, two months after my college graduation, I became an assistant editor at DC Comics, as one of the legendary “Woodchucks” that included Carl Gafford, Allan Asherman, Steve Mitchell, Guy H. Lillian III, E. Nelson Bridwell, Bob Rozakis, Paul Levitz, and Mike Uslan. (Yes, the same Michael Uslan who had inspired our comic book course in the first place, and who would go on to become an executive producer of all the Batman movies!) I was assigned as the assistant editor to Murray Boltinoff, one of DC’s best-selling editors at the time.

The experiences and friendships developed during my first year at DC could fill a whole other book. Suffice to say, in a year I was a DC editor in my own right, with my own office on the sixth floor of the Warner Communications building. My window looked directly down on the entrance to the famous 21 Club on 52nd Street. Early books I edited included Blackhawk, Secret Society of Super-Villains, Green Lantern, World’s Finest Comics, Warlord,