[dramatic music] ♪ ♪ - Hello, and welcome to "Comic Culture."

I'm Terence Dollard, a professor in the Department of Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.

My guest today is writer Elliot S. Maggin.

Elliot, welcome to "Comic Culture."

- Thank you.

How're you doing?

- I'm doing well.

Thank you so much for joining me today.

You are known for working at DC Comics, and on my favorite character of all time, Superman, so I was wondering, and I realized as I got dressed this morning, I'm wearing the cover of one of the books that you worked on.

So can you talk a little bit about what it was like transitioning from fan to professional in those heady days of the 1970s?

[Elliot chuckles] - There wasn't much of an organized fan base at the time I started.

I think I went to my first comic convention when I was already writing full time with Julie Schwartz.

Phil Seuling used to organize these conventions in New York a couple of times a year, and Julie gave me a card and a note on the back that said, "Let Elliot in, he's a new wa, wa, wa, wa," and I gave it to Phil, and he said, "I'm not much for honesty, just go on in."

Didn't read it.

[both laugh] That was my introduction to organized comic book fandom.

- And you mentioned Julie Schwartz, obviously, the longtime editor of "Superman," and, I guess, responsible for heralding in the silver age of comics.

So how do you impress an editor who's been at the company for, you know, at that point probably close to a decade, if not more, that you, you know, a 20-something punk, is going to be able to write the most famous comic character of all time?

- It was kind of an accident, I guess.

I wrote a term paper that involved a comic book story, a term paper for a history course, I was at Brandeis, and part of the paper was a 20-page Green Arrow story just to illustrate something, and I got a B+ on it, and I thought it deserved an A. Wikipedia says I got a B-, because that's apparently funnier, but it was a B+.

But I went to him, and I said, "Listen, you write a comic book script as part of a term paper, an academic paper, and you either get an A or an F, there's no B+."

And he said, "Yeah, I thought you were gonna, I thought you were gonna draw it, too," and I said, "I can't draw."

[both laugh] So he didn't change the grade.

And I was still pissed, so I sent it to Carmine Infantino, who was the president of the company at the time, and he didn't read it, and he gave it to Julie, thought he should read it, and Julie didn't read it, and gave it to Neal Adams, and Neal took it home and said, "Yeah, maybe I'll read it."

And next morning he came in and he put the script back on Julie's desk, and he said, "If you buy it, I'll draw it," which he did.

I shortened it to 13 pages, and that was my first comic book story, "What Can One Man Do?"

At some point, about a month later, Julie leaned over his desk and said, "Do you think you're ready to write a Superman story?"

I said, "I suppose, yeah, that'd be great."

He said, "You know, Superman's the hardest character to write," and I said, "Okay," and I believed him for about two or three years [laughs], until I realized he wasn't so hard, you just had to start with the right premise, and nobody, apparently, had been doing that at the time.

Mort Weisinger, who'd preceded Julie as the "Superman" editor, and he had edited the character for 30 years, his idea that he was doing was that he was doing fairy tales for kids, so every story started the same: "One day in the offices of the Daily Planet, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah," and the story took off from there.

Julie's attitude was to be more innovative.

My attitude was you had to understand the character before you did anything else, so I thought about Superman a bit, and it occurred to me that if you're the most powerful person in the world, and in the universe, and the cosmos, your stories can't really be about power.

What the stories are really about is answering the question, what do you do in any given situation if you've got all the power in the world?

So these stories become about ethical norms, moral choices, and that's the premise I started pretty much every Superman story that worked.

I keep telling this to people who are writing the stories since, and some of them listen, some of them don't, but that's what I always did, yeah.

So that was good for 15 years on the character.

- Superman is one of those characters that people just don't seem to get, and they always either fall into the camp of he's boring, or he should be angry and mean, and the idea that there's someone out there who is a nice guy, who can do everything, but just wants to help you, you know, get that cat out of the tree or stop Lex Luthor from, you know, enslaving a population.

It ruffles my feathers, as a Superman fan, when I see the angry Superman, for no other point than it looks cool to have his eyes glowing or something like that.

So as somebody with a little bit of distance from the character, when you look at contemporary comics, if you do, do you recognize the same character, or is it sort of maybe based on which creator's taking the helm at the time?

- Usually, you recognize the character, sometimes you don't, sometimes it's just a comic book story, and frankly, I don't think Superman is essentially a comic book character.

He's a pop cultural figure, he's a... And by pop culture, I mean pop culture for thousands of years, whatever the culture is.

He's an iconic figure, the most powerful creature in the current imagination, and he has to reflect the culture you live in.

I guess I was writing Superman stories from about '71 until '86, and I thought that was a pretty good culture.

I'm not sure I think so anymore [laughs].

I think, I think...

I'm not sure whether iconic archetypal is reflect the culture or define it, but I like to think to a great extent they define it.

The Superman I was writing at the time, that's the character I think defined that period of time.

Are we angrier a lot now?

I think we're angrier than we were then.

I hope that's not my fault, but [laughs] we'll see.

- It's interesting, because when we take a look at those Superman stories from that era, it seems that Julie is kind of thinking of "Superman" as that book for the younger reader, so he has some issues that are going to be more, you know, it's a wacky alien who's going to do something, and now the school kid has to get involved and help Superman, or there might be the story where, and I'm thinking perhaps this is the influence of writers like you and Cary Bates, who are thinking more in terms of let's do Superman in a more Marvel-style battle with, you know, Terror Man, or the Parasite.

Is that sort of that kind of dynamic?

- I don't know if it was Marvel-style.

I think Marvel might have [chuckles] copied it a bit Hmm.

I think, I think the ultimate answer to that is you talk to the character, you get to know who he is, and you, and you see how he'd react in any given situation.

I think it was, I think it was more a reflection of, having grown up as a comic book fan, now that I'm a grownup, how am I now?

And, you know, I think Superman was the only character I wrote who I never really identified with personally, I identified with him as a character with whom I had a relationship, but I was Green Arrow.

I was even Batman once in a while [chuckles] if I wanted to be really cool one day, but I was never Superman, I was Clark.

You have to get to know them as people, you have to hear their voices in your head.

I'm writing a story now for an anthology.

I don't know how much I should tell you.

Okay.

[Terence laughs] It's a story about a kid who wrote comic books in the '70s and his relationship with the character, and effectively, this is a real person, this character who's adventuress he's writing.

Nobody sees him but this kid, this kid, a guy in his 20s, I remember, I was a kid then, but that's what I'm writing.

The guy who's editing the book said, "What are you thinking?"

and I said that, I said, "It's a story about where I was in the 70s in New York, and my relationship with the character," and he said, "So."

So that's what I'm doing.

You have a relationship with your character the way you've got a relationship with your dad, [both laugh] and that's what I'm doing, that's what I'm doing now.

Does that make any sense?

- It makes a lot of sense, and, you know, it's interesting, because we tend to think of, you know, a nine to five job, when you are no longer doing the job, you don't necessarily think about it, but as a writer, your ideas are always there So, you know, - Yeah.

- even if you aren't working on something for an anthology, I'm assuming that you have things that you're writing down, whether the plan is in the future to publish it or in the future to, you know, collaborate with somebody on a possible comic project, so are you still in that mindset where you are thinking of these ideas, or they're just coming to you, and you feel compelled to just sit down and write?

- Yeah, I write compulsively, I write all the time, and sometimes I publish what I write, and sometimes I don't, and lately, I've been publishing less than I used to, but I really, I've gotten to the point where I don't care whether anybody buys it, I just care whether people read it [chuckles].

So, you know, I just finished a book, trying to sell it to a publisher, and I've been...

I started a memoir, because my granddaughter, my daughter wants my granddaughter to have a record of my life.

Like, "I'm not done," you know, I keep telling her, but geez.

[Terence laughs] So that's the book I'm writing now, and besides this story, yeah, I keep writing.

I worked for a hospital chain for 15 years, and I wrote constantly through that.

It really doesn't interfere with your real life, which is sitting in front of a screen and making stuff up.

That's real life, I guess.

[both laugh] - Well, you were talking about writing, and I'm thinking of two novels that you wrote in the 70s at the height of Superman mania, I suppose, right after the film with Christopher Reeve came out.

You wrote a series of novels for DC, I guess, under the Warner Brothers imprint, and I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the second book you wrote, "Miracle Monday," and if you are on the internet at all around, I guess, the third Monday in May, you start to see a lot of posts, including, you know, trending hashtags for Miracle Monday, so as someone who wrote the book, are you- - I get more Happy Miracle Monday notices on Facebook than Happy Birthdays, so people here, people know about it, people are still reading it.

I republished it a few years ago.

People are still buying it, not as quickly as they did when it was a bestseller, but geez, [chuckles] you know.

The first one, "Last Son of Krypton," I wrote, actually, a couple of years before the movie came out.

It was my treatment for a film, originally, and Maria Puzo showed up at the office one day, and I just flipped out, and I sat with him for two days, talking about who Superman was, because he'd just gotten the assignment to write the screenplay.

"Oh, my screenplay?"

I said.

He said, "Uh, yeah, okay."

[laughs] So the idea was... Well, I rewrote my treatment as a novel.

and I took it upstairs to the book publisher, and they said, "Yeah, we're gonna put it out between the first two movies, because we wanna keep excitement up."

The Salkinds had a fight with Mario, had an argument with Mario, I shouldn't say fight, over how this screenplay was gonna end up.

He had the right to do a novelization of the screenplay, that was what was gonna happen, both of them, and when they were rewritten not to his liking, he decided just not to exercise that right, but he kept it, so they brought "Last Son of Krypton" out as a tie-in with the first movie, it was a completely different story, and I got a phone call from Sol Harrison, who was president of the company at that time, and he said, "Alexander Salkind wants to sue you," and I said, "Why?"

He said, "Yeah, [chuckles] he said, "they looked at the book, and they decided that there were too many things in the book that were similar to things in the movie, and they were supposed to be two different projects.

I said, "Well, I handed in the book two years before Mario finished the screenplay, and here's where to look for the proof."

And Sol called me back a day later and says, "Salkind says, "Just kidding."

So I never got sued.

I called up my agent at the time, and I asked her, "Should I sue the Salkinds?"

and she said, "Not if you ever wanna write a Superman script."

I said, "Okay, I won't," so I didn't.

I don't know if that was the best idea in the world.

Mario had told me, the only way you get paid in Hollywood is by suing for your paycheck.

The second book, they just asked me to write a companion to the first one, similarly to the first novel, just not related at all to the screenplay.

I read the screenplay, and I said, 'Yeah, I could do that."

And for the third movie, Paul Levitz asked me to do a novelization of that screenplay, so I read the screenplay, and I said, "No, I don't think so, [Terence laughs] didn't like it," which was not the best career move I've ever made, but not the worst.

So somebody else wrote the screenplay of that, as well as the fourth movie, and people are still reading the books, my books, which is cool.

- If it were simply an adaptation of the first film or the second film, people wouldn't still be talking about it 40-some-odd years later, they would probably just be thinking, "Oh, yeah, this came out," but you have two novels that are unique in that they are, you know, obviously, they've got, you know, the image on the cover from the film, so there's that tie-in, and it does seem like you are living in that film style, that film universe, but they stand on their own, and I think that's what makes them have the longevity.

- I went about writing books that I thought people would wanna read whether they saw the films or not, and I don't think anybody who read either book didn't see either film, but that was what I had in mind at the time.

Yeah.

There was a whole spate of licensing changes at that time, I mean changes in the licensing world.

Every big adventure movie had a novel adaptation after that.

I remember "The Man Who Would Be King," by Kipling, was a short story by Kipling, and Sean Connery and... Who played Alfred?

- Michael Caine.

- Michael Caine, the two of them, I think it was Michael Caine and Sean Connery, - Yes.

- It was a good movie, real good movie, and it was pretty close to Kipling's story, and they did the prose based on the movie.

I thought that was just wacky, but [chuckles] I like to think the reason they do stuff like that is because my books work.

We'll see.

- It is funny when you hear, it's sort of like reinventing the wheel with a triangle somewhere in there, because you're, it's almost the telephone game, but it's interesting, and I'm imagining, you know, working on the Superman comics at that time, there's gotta be some sort of bump, whether it is, you know, parents buying the comics for their kids, or maybe somebody who used to read "Superman" trying to, you know, see if the magic was still there on the page, so when those films come out and you're working on the books, are you encouraged to sort of lean into the cinematic interpretation, or is it just, you know what, we're gonna keep the house style?

- I wrote the books independent of the movies.

The screenplays hadn't been written in either case by the time I wrote those books, so, no, it was all what I was doing anyway.

I was just making him fatter, you know, giving him more girth.

I like to think the character evolved because of the books, to some extent, like to think, who knows?

- Well, you know, as somebody who, whenever I go to a convention, if I have the time between running around and trying to interview folks, I like to go in and do a longbox dive, and my sweet spot is that late '70s through about 1986 Superman in action comics, anything that Curt Swan has done artwork on, I will, you know, spend a couple of bucks on, and invariably, your name comes up on the the credit role, as well, so, you know, as you are working and we start to see this Superman mania, and the comics might sell better, they might sell worse, I'm not sure exactly if there was a fatigue or something like that, you know, as you are working with that team, are you, again, are you thinking about what the movies are, and maybe there's a pressure to put in a character like Otis, who might suddenly be a henchman that we've never seen before but now is just part of this, and, you know, maybe there's gonna be an adventure in Otisburg?

- There was no Otis in my stories.

[both laugh] You know, my idea with "Miracle Monday" was that I wanted it to be a movie.

I think it was, I think I had in mind the notion that it was adaptable cinematically.

I liked the idea of Luthor having a girlfriend.

I liked the idea of Luthor.

Luthor's a great character.

If I were gonna identify with anybody in the Superman universe, it'd be Luthor, only because I can be real smart like, three or four hours a day [chuckles].

[Terence laughs] I would like to have explored the relationship between Superman and Luthor a lot more if I had continued with the character.

- I'm thinking that, you know, when we are looking at someone like Lex Luthor, I think he takes on a new life with Gene Hackman's interpretation, and I do notice that, you know, there's a bit more play into this sense of humor that he seems to have, whether it's, you know, the way he's speaking to his underlings, or the way that he is, you know, speaking to himself when he realizes that something's working or not working.

And again, you're talking about learning who these characters are, you've got a big supporting cast that you're working with, an iconic supporting cast, Lois Lane, obviously, appearing in Action Comics #1, so when you're dealing with that supporting cast, how much leeway do you have to sort of make those changes?

I know, later on, you know, Superman, pardon me, Superman breaks up with Lois, and Clark starts dating Lana, and all of these other sort of things are happening as we're getting closer to the reboot in '86, when you're looking at these supporting characters, how do you kinda use those to drive a story the way Superman can't?

- Well, there are things that those characters can do that Superman can't.

There are things that Clark can do that Superman can't.

Clark calls people's names.

At some point in the book, he tells Steve Lombard that he's a self-centered egomaniac.

Superman can't do that.

The human characters make Superman more human, including his alter ego.

There's a lot of noise going around as to who Superman really is, is he Superman or is he Clark, and I always came down hard on the side that he's Superman, that Clark was a construct, a work of art, a brilliant work of art, a real person, but somebody created by Superman every day.

I subscribe to the Kill Bill notion of Clark, if you saw that "Kill Bill 2", Carradine explains that Superman is Superman when he wakes up in the morning, and that Clark is the guy, he's a construct, he creates him.

I guess the Kents created Clark, but what they found in the spaceship was this kid with superpowers.

- I see we have about three minutes in our conversation.

I did wanna touch on this.

You know, we see a lot of modern interpretations bringing in religious imagery with the character, and I'm wondering, is this something that you think is appropriate, or is this something that you think might not be, or might be, the perfect device in a story?

- Well, religious notions are a human construct.

I always give my characters religions.

All the characters I write have a religion as backstory.

Batman is Episcopalian, obviously, [Terence laughs] Jimmy is Lutheran, Perry is Catholic, Lois is Catholic, no, Perry is Baptist, Lois is Catholic, Clark is Methodist, Superman's not.

[Elliot chuckles] You know, a lot of what we use as backstory is stuff that we might even refer to only tangentially, but that's valuable, you know?

It defines the character better in the writer's mind, and I think it makes it more vivid as it comes on the page.

You think?

I don't know.

- Well, I mean, obviously, having a rich character, somebody who has experiences that can motivate, I suppose, that is what makes the character work well, rather than somebody who is just that blank slate that nothing makes sense, but you can do anything with, I guess, if that makes any sense.

- Blank slates are fun, [both laugh] especially if they let you run with them.

It took me a long time to feel like Julie was letting me screw around with a character, but I felt like that for most of the time I was writing it.

He trusted me after a while.

[Terence laughs] It was less hard to get him to trust me five or six years in than it was to get him to trust me the first time I tried it.

And there were a lot of people who wrote a Superman story in the interim, besides Cary, besides Marty.

Some of them worked, some of them didn't.

Cary, I thought of Cary as Clark to my Superman, actually.

[Terence laughs] Marty had a really good feel for the character, but there was stuff he wanted to do that just wasn't gonna work, and I, nah, Julie can tell him [laughs].

- Well, Elliot, they are waving their hands at me and saying that we've run out of time.

I wanna thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule to talk with me today.

- Oh, you're welcome, good to meet you.

- I'd like to thank everyone at home for watching "Comic Culture."

We will see you again soon.

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