[majestic music] ♪ [majestic music continues] ♪ [majestic music continues] ♪ [majestic music continues] ♪ [majestic music continues] ♪ - 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 Paul Kupperberg.

Paul, welcome back to "Comic Culture".

- Hi, Terence, thanks, nice to be here.

- Paul, the last time we were here, we were talking about one of the books that you've written recently.

It was about writing comics and I believe we talked about how it was actually a good primer for anyone who's looking to write a story in general, because it covers everything from how to set up a story and how to have a successful resolution.

We also talked a little bit about your series of essays, "I Never Write For the Money, But I Always Cash the Check".

But today I wanted to talk a little bit about this, what I call an intrusion onto my territory.

You're having conversations with creators that you've met through your career in comics.

So what inspired you to do this series of interviews and put it into book form?

- I had done a book of interviews that I had done around 1990 for DC Comics in-house publications.

And I had, I found all these raw transcripts of these interviews, about two dozen of them that somehow survived on a three and a half inch floppy.

I thought that they were too valuable to just let lay, so I pulled them together, I edited them.

I heavily annotated everything because I was dealing with 30-year-old interviews that dealt with events sometimes that took place 30 or 40 years before that.

And, you know, that got such a good response that I wanted to do more but I was unfortunately out of pre-packaged materials.

So I just decided to, you know, use my almost 50 years of connections in the comic book business to call on some old friends and colleagues in direct conversations, specifically, about the events of the mid 1970s when we all broke into the comic book business.

- You know, back then comics were really New York or Tri-State area centric.

It was very rare that you had a comic creator who was on the West Coast because FedEx simply didn't exist in the early seventies.

So, you know, as that cohort is kind of coming up together and getting to meet each other, whether it's at the Marvel or DC offices where you were, you know, how do you sort of make that connection so that you are not overly competitive with each other, but, you know, can somehow find a collaborative way to work together or support each other or occasionally, you know, push somebody outta the way so you can take their job.

- Gosh, that never happened.

It's interesting, you know, we all came out of a fan background.

You know, 95% of us were, were fans and involved in some sort of organized or disorganized fandom, more likely.

But, you know, I, where I came up in Brooklyn in the sixties and early seventies as a fan, and I met this other kid at my junior high school named Paul Levitz, and we got into the whole, you know, fan scene together and started publishing a fan magazine called "Et Cetera", and then later became "The Comic Reader".

You know, this was when we were in high school, and by the time we were ready to graduate, we were selling 3,500 copies a month.

And that led, you know, that was our entree into the business.

We were able to, you know, use the contacts and to, you know, help us break in.

But so there was this kind of, you know, feeling of comradery, you know.

I know there were this whole group of artists, you know, Howard Chaykin and Walter Simonson and Michael Kaluta and Al Milgrom, and, you know, a few others, my brother Alan Kupperberg, they were all kind of this little group that kind of moved around together, you know, like they all lived in the same apartment building in Brooklyn, and then they all lived in the same apartment building in Queens and, you know, so, you know, it was a very close group.

You know, everybody, I don't really remember resenting people for, you know, getting good gigs that I might've wanted.

I mean, I would've wanted them, but it's like, you know, well, okay, this guy's good.

I can't deny that, you know, that he deserves it.

Yeah, it really wasn't, I mean, it was competitive, but never, you know, never cutthroat or seldom cutthroat.

I'm sure there was throat cutting going on but.

- You pretty much worked exclusively at DC.

You were a writer and an editor, and I'm imagining that that put you in sort of a unique position because you were able to maybe learn from an experienced editor like Julie Schwartz on how to speak to an artist to make sure that, you know, they get that deadline and make sure the cover has the right gorilla on it or something like that.

- The right color gorilla, it has to be purple.

- So, you know, when you're coming up and you are sort of learning the ropes, is it something where the older generation of writers that are coming by the offices, are they sort of resentful or are they offering that hand up?

Is it the editor who's really doing more of the shaping?

- I think it was the editor doing more of the shaping.

I, there were instances of, you know, mentorship.

It seemed more common among artists than writers.

But I'm sure it happened.

But I think we mostly baffled the older guys.

They didn't understand our fervor.

You know, we came in, it's like, we're gonna change things.

We love this stuff.

And they were going, we were doing this because we couldn't get real jobs, you know, because they couldn't, you know, write their novels or their movies or their TV shows or whatever, you know.

I think, or syndicated newspaper strips, which actually used to be a thing that one aspired to.

But I don't think they got us at all.

You know?

I know I talked to writers like Bob Haney, who, you know, I asked him once, you know, "What was the secret?"

You know, and he kinda laughed at me.

He goes, "There ain't no secret.

"You just write this junk panel, you know, page by page, "panel by panel."

And, you know, that's I think the way they thought.

Robert Kanigher, who is a much underappreciated, brilliant, but you know, not the most stable personality, but he never talked about his comic book stuff.

You know, if you talk to him, he would, you know, be talking about everything else that he did that wasn't comic books.

You know, he was an abstract painter.

He went skiing here, he did this, he did that.

I don't think most of it was true, but it was certainly entertaining.

- You mentioned the comic reader, and I'm thinking that the, your cohort is that generation of serious fan that gives rise to the comic conventions.

And now we take a look at conventions as being this almost nonstop circus where creators of all ilk, either they're trying to get their foot in the door or they're trying to hang on, or this is their way of, you know, paying the bills, doing commissions at cons, you know.

So when you take a look at that early, almost innocent era of fandom, when you're selling 3,500 copies of a magazine every month to, you know, when you go to San Diego Comic Con, and they're drawing close to a million people, you know, how do you sort of view that evolution of fan fervor and devotion and the way the industry plays into it?

- I think if you stripped the media events away from San Diego Comic Convention, you know, if you took away all the TV and movie celebrities and the voiceover artists and the, you know, all that stuff, if you pulled all of that out of these major conventions, you would have a much smaller deal.

You would not be drawing 150,000 people a day to the Javits Center in New York to New York Comic Con just to see comic book creators.

So, you know, it's kind of apples and oranges at this point.

My first convention was 1971, a Phil Seuling New York Comic Con over the 4th of July weekend.

And those are the classic, you know, those are kind of the set the standard for conventions for years to come.

And it was at this ratty hotel across from Penn Station.

It's in fact the, the very hotel about which, you know, the song Pennsylvania six, 5,000, 4,000.

Oh, I forgot the 5,000, yeah.

You know, I think what there were two, 3000 people that first year, and I don't think anybody thought it could ever get any bigger or better.

And I don't think it has, frankly.

I think it's all been downhill since then, but, you know, but, you know, golden age, so.

- Well, it's funny because my first convention that I went to was ICON in Stony Brook, New York at Stony Brook University, and I remember just being amazed that, you know, Denny O'Neil was over there, and he spoke to me like a person, and it just shocked me that the way I viewed this writer an editor was, he was a celebrity, you know, and he was just a guy who was waiting to use the restroom and took a few minutes to talk to me about, you know, what I liked about Batman and his run on Daredevil.

And, you know, it's funny, now, we, on "Comic Culture", we have a space at Heroes Con the past three years, and we'll be there again this June.

And it's interesting to just see the change in fandom from when I was that teenager going to a convention in the eighties, to now when I see people in costumes and as characters, I have absolutely no idea who they are.

So I'm imagining, you know, as somebody with, as you said, nearly 50 years in the industry, you've seen a lot of this and at some point, do you just kind of tune it all out, or do you still try and keep up?

- I like what I like, you know, I don't force myself to keep up with, you know, with a lot of the stuff just because, you know, it just, there's too much.

And I'm at an age where I'd rather devote my time and energy to things that I really wanna, you know, read or write because, you know, this is getting, you know, so well, but, so I don't, but well, yes, it's just, it's a very big change.

A few, when my son was young, he must have been about 10 or so, we went to a convention at Baltimore, manga convention, an anime convention.

And, you know, it was just even then, and this was 20 years ago, or, you know, almost 20 years ago, no clue.

You know, I was just walking around, he was happy.

We got to meet Puffy AmiYumi so it was a, you know, it was a good trip, but I still don't know who they are, but you know, it's a generational thing.

You know, you reach a point, it's like, well, yes, I'm sure this stuff is great and all well and good, but it's not my stuff.

You know, I don't complain a lot about current comics and movies and stuff, because I'm not the intended audience.

I shouldn't be expecting it to be aimed at me.

You know, I'm not the 18 to 35 year old that they're trying to attract.

I'm a 68-year-old guy.

They don't want me.

It's like, don't even look at our movie.

You know, you're skewing our demo.

- Well, speaking of skewed demo, I believe you may have seen the recent house ad that was posted, I believe by "Back Issue Magazine" on their Facebook page that you are a DC Comics most versatile writer.

And I'm thinking of that versatility, again, you were writing "Superman", you were writing "Clark Kent Stories".

You'd fill in for just about anybody who needed to fill in, and you were able to do that in a way that was entertaining and within the parameters of the character, you did sword and sorcery, and, of course, you reimagined Peacemaker.

So Peacemaker has become a very hot property.

John Cena played him both in the film "The Suicide Squad", and in the "Peacemaker" TV series.

So when you see someone interpreting your work on this big screen, or the small screen with a big A-list celebrity in it, you know, how do you sort of wrestle with what you contributed to what their interpretation of the character is?

- I don't have any trouble with the interpretation.

I understand the difference in media.

I understand the difference in interpretations.

I tell this story several years ago that John Byrne and I were talking and we were complaining about, you know, look what they've done to Superman.

You know, they've screwed up our Superman, what have they done?

And I, you know, we, when we did Superman, we were doing the real, you know, and at some point I realized that the only people who have ever done the real Superman were Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

Everybody else, no matter how well they've done it and how much you've liked what they've done with it, everybody else since then have done their interpretations of Jerry Siegel and Josh Shuster Superman.

And over the last 85 years, so much has been layered on top of it, on top of that original interpretation that whatever Superman is being done in the comic books today is, you know, 42 steps removed from what Siegel and Shuster did.

So everybody has their own slice, you know, their own level of that, of Superman.

For me, it falls, you know, between 1958 and, you know, 1972.

For other people it's, you know, 1943, whatever it is, you know, so it changes.

It just, you know, so I don't expect to be serviced by, you know, by the current incarnations of the characters.

- It is fascinating because I had a similar experience when they introduced the new '52 Superman.

And I thought to myself, gosh, this isn't the Super, and I was getting upset and I thought to myself, this is silly.

You know, at some point fandom is letting go of the current stories and just saying, there's a lot of back issues that I can read.

I haven't read every issue Kurt Swan did in 1978.

I'm sure there's a reason that I can go and find them and read them and enjoy them, you know, so I kind of get what you're saying there 'cause I think I've reached that point, and it always kind of baffles me when I see supposed fans of a genre or of a medium getting upset that, you know, they're letting other people into their playground when it's everyone's playground.

It's like saying there shouldn't be a sitcom other than "I Love Lucy" on television because she did it best.

- Oh, but no, that's not true.

You know, then you got the "Dick Van Dyke Show", and you've got "Taxi" and you've got "Barney Miller", you know, some of the, "WKRP in Cincinnati", some of the greatest sitcoms ever made, you know.

No, there's always room, of course there, it's, there's this, you know, there's this very small minded community out there who believes that something becomes their province because that's what they like and they have exclusive rights to it.

And that's, you know, ridiculous.

I don't, you know, I don't, those people shouldn't be given the time of day, let alone any attention.

- I believe Howard Chakin made a point that I'm probably going to get it slightly wrong, but he was saying that basically nostalgia doesn't mean that what you like is best.

Just because you enjoyed it at a certain time doesn't mean that it is the end all be all.

And there are a lot of great stories out there.

So as a writer who's choosing to read what you choose to read, are you still finding stuff that excites you, whether it's something new on the bookshelf, or whether it's, you know, a magazine article that just inspires you to maybe come up with a quick idea for a story?

- Oh, sure, all the time.

I, you know, it's always happening.

It's, you know, it's part of the curse of being a writer or an artist that everything you look at, you go, oh, I could do something with that.

You know, it's the curse of having too many, you know, too many ideas at once.

And you know, having 18 of them going at the same time and never finishing any of them because you get so enthusiastic.

It's, so, no, there's, that hasn't stopped, fortunately.

- And, you know, you talk about having a lot of ideas.

Occasionally on your Facebook page you'll say, "Oh, "I found this pitch that I made to DC for this story idea "or that story idea."

So when you come across an idea that you think is really good and you make that pitch to DC and they choose to move in another direction, how do you sort of recover?

I know you're a professional and you have the ability to weather those kind of storms because again, you know, you're pitching a lot of ideas, but when you have something you really believe in and it just doesn't go in the direction that you're hoping it would, do you think maybe this is something I could offer to another publisher?

Or do you just kind of say, "Nuts!"

- Sometimes you try to do something else with it, take it to another publisher.

Back then, you know, there weren't a lot of options, you know, back in the eighties and nineties when most of these are from, but I made a post a few months ago on Facebook, something along the lines of something they don't teach you in freelancer school is you've gotta learn to take disappointment and move on.

You know, being a freelancer is 90% of the time throwing stuff at the wall that doesn't stick.

And, you know, you've gotta be able to go, "Oh, well, "darn it," or other language, and then move on to the next one or the, you know, send it off somewhere else, send it to the next, you know, get onto the next project.

Disappointment is part of the job.

You gotta learn to roll with it.

- And, you know, again, I'm just gonna go back to DC's most versatile writer because it is true.

'cause it made me think about the books that you've written, whether it was Superman or whether it was those backup stories where it's, you know, Clark Kent or Lana Lang talking about, you know, some adventure that they are on, or if it was Checkmate, or if it was Peacemaker, or if it was the Doom Patrol, or if it was your sci-fi series that I always get the name wrong, it's Arion?

- Arion.

- Arion.

- Arion, Lord of Atlantis.

It was sword and sorcery, yes.

- And, you know, so as you are kind of going between here, there, and wherever, I guess there's commonalities in every story that the character is paramount.

So how do you sort of work within those universes every month, let's say, when you've got a sword and sorcery book, and a Superman book, and maybe you're working on this kind of spy thriller book to make sure that you're able to get in the right mindset so that you are, you know, true to the characters, true to the time period, and true to that particular storyline.

- It's part of the job.

You know, I couldn't tell you how I do it, it's just what, you know, it's time to, you know, to do, you know, ancient Atlantis sword and sorcery.

Okay, that's, you know, click.

Going to do a Superman story next, click, ya know.

I think I did a team up of Arion and Superman in "DC Comics Presents", you know, so everything clicks.

It just, it's really, yeah, it's just the job, you know, and versatility is, you know, it is important not just, you know, different genres within comics, which I think most of us, you know, most people do.

And I was the one who I posted that Arion, Lord of Atlantis number one ad that had the DC's most versatile writer, one of DC's most versatile writers, Paul Kupperberg and I posted with it, you know, if I couldn't be good, at least I was versatile.

But it's important, you know, in addition to writing comic books, I've written everything from nonfiction and fiction for young adults and children.

I've written coloring books, I've written, you know, I can't even think of it.

I've written just like, whatever, somebody comes to you and goes, "Do you wanna write a Mad Lib?"

It's like, sure, let's write Mad Libs.

I've written Mad Libs, you know, I did over a dozen nonfiction books for the Scholastic market in the 2000s, you know, on subjects from astronaut biographies to rodeo clowning and you know, careers in robotics.

I mean, you know, a gig's a gig.

Does the check clear?

I'm interested, you know, it's, but yeah, you have to have that otherwise, you know, if one thing dies, you're outta luck.

- Well, you know, I did wanna talk about one thing dying, and that was, you were working on the "Superman" books in the early eighties, right before the "Crisis on Infinite Earths" did the reboot of the entire DC line.

So when you're working on a book that has a, I mean, I think they were still selling over 100,000 copies a month, and then you're kind of told, "Okay, we're gonna move on.

"You're gonna move to another book "because we're taking this in another direction."

You know, it's gotta be, I guess, frustrating, but also, you know, when you're looking at the work that's there, I noticed a lot of times, and maybe you could speak to this, it seemed one month might be really hardcore super heroics and you might see it, a Marvel book, and then the next month might be something for the younger reader, because maybe Julie Schwartz is aware that this is still that gateway book for a younger reader to get into Superman.

So was that the case, or am I just putting too much into it?

- No, no, there was definitely that.

There were, Julie definitely treated it like it was, we were still aiming at that, you know, 10 to 13, 14-year-old reader.

He let people get away with things that, you know, didn't, you know, that fell outside of that parameter that were, you know, more mature.

You know, Marv Wolfman did a series of really great stories in the late seventies, early eighties with Joe Staton and Gil Kane, you know, there were a lot of really good, you know, Elliot Maggin did some great stories, Cary Bates, but generally, yeah, it was silly stuff.

It was, you know, one of the stories I did for Julie was a Toyman story called, I forget the name, title of it, but, oh, "The Great Toyman Trivia Contest".

And it was Toyman pulling this, you know, this scam contest to find the kid who, the bully, who stole the first toy he ever made when he was a kid.

You know, Superman story.

I don't know, you know.

But yeah, that was the type of thing Julie was having me do.

You know, I would pitch him other things and once he got to trust me, you know, I was able to get away with and do stories that were, you know, less silly.

But yeah, that was still the feeling behind the titles and pre, you know, pre-crisis, I was writing stories regularly for Superman, for Action, for "DC Comics Presents".

I was writing "Supergirl" and "Superboy" monthly, and I was also writing the syndicated Superman newspaper strip.

So crisis kind of, you know, was a blow.

- Well, you know, I see we have about three minutes left in our conversation.

I did wanna talk about the "Superman" newspaper strip, because it's one of these things, again, thanks to the internet, there's a person out there who is reprinting the "Superman" newspaper strip every day in sequence.

And you had the ability to work with, with George Tuska, and you've got the ability, had the ability to work with Joe Delbo.

And, you know, is it a bigger feather in your cap to be working on a syndicated strip, or is it still better to be working on the flagship title "Superman".

- Unfortunately, I grew up, you know, at the very dying tail end of the great syndicated comic strips in the fifties and sixties.

And it used to be a thing, you know, that comic book people aspired to, but by the time I got to it, it was just kind of like, you know, "Well, it's in 17 papers "and you get paid page rate."

Oh, okay.

you know, but I still, I got to write a newspaper strip.

I also wrote the "Tom and Jerry" syndicated strip for several year, for almost a year.

So, you know, at least I got to touch the syndicated strips before they finally really died.

- Paul, they're telling me that we are just about out of time.

If the folks at home wanted to find out more about your latest work, your various books on comics and comic interviews, is there a website that they can go to?

- Yeah, they can go to paulkupperberg.net and you know it, it's all up there.

- Paul, thank you so much for taking time outta your schedule to talk with me today.

The half hour has flown by, and as always, you are a lot of fun to talk with.

- Thanks, it was a lot of fun, thanks.

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

We will see you again soon.

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