TRUE STORY: It was wonderful to see long-time DC Comics publisher and writer Paul Levitz at NYCC 2024.
Although this was our first picture together, I realized that I’d first met Paul nearly 50 years ago — at PittCon in the mid ’70s.
In a bizarre fanboy turn of events, Scott Rockwell, Doug Asianman Rockwell, new friend David Lawrence, and I all attended an auction held by the Con. A “real” auctioneer confused fans, so Len Wein and Marv Wolfman took over. At some point one auctioned off an hour of his time, which the other bought. Somehow it got to the point where Jim Shooter’s time got bought. Paul Levitz was in the mix.
Then, before we knew it, the four of us scraped together our (meager) dollars and quarters and nickels — and we won the auction.
It resulted in an amazing situation: Jim Shooter, Paul Levitz, Roger Slifer, Len Wein, and Marv Wolfman crowded into a hotel room with us talking all about creating comics and breaking in and mistakes amateurs make submitting their work, and so on. I even recorded it all on a big, clumsy tape recorder, which I recall transcribing years later and The Buyer’s Guide for Comics Fandom publishing.
Paul invited us to New York to submit work to him at DC, which I took him up on the following year. I wasn’t ready, but Paul advised me what to do better so I someday would be ready.
In 1982 I broke in as a writer at Pacific Comics, and by ’84 I was selling Superman stuff to DC’s Julius Schwartz for Action Comics.
The decades that followed, I wrote many thousands of pages of comics, most recently this year’s graphic novels WARRIOR ONE with Quantum Leap co-creator Deborah Pratt and MOON BASE ALPHA for Simon & Schuster. I became an editor, a publisher, a book packager, an agent, an animation studio head…and a dozen or so years ago I even (literally!) wrote the book on creating comics, STAN LEE’S HOW TO DRAW COMICS.
And, of course, I’ve taught many a Creating Comics Seminar all around the world and written hundreds of essays/blog posts about breaking into comics and the many mistakes artists make when submitting — so that today’s artists won’t repeat those same mistakes.
That’s all my way of paying it forward, thanks to the kindnesses shown to us that day, back in the ’70s.
Thank you, Paul.
