The Wall Street Journal has a Q&A up with DC President and Publisher (and Blog@ contributor) Paul Levitz:
Q: What was your first publishing experience?
A: I started publishing my own fanzine from 1971 to 1973 called the Comic Reader. It was really the first TV Guide for the business and it became the bible for the field. I won awards for it when I was 15 and 16. I eventually sold off the magazine.
Q: Did the zine open doors for you?
A: Definitely. I got to know everybody through the zine since the industry was very New York-centric then. I was up in the offices of DC collecting news when Joe Orlando, one of its legendary editors, called me into his office. One of his writers had quit his assignment doing text pages and he asked me, ‘You wanna do them?’ I (told him I wasn’t) a writer and he said, ‘I read your fanzine and you can write well enough for this.’ Then I filled in for Joe’s assistant that summer as an assistant editor. The guy I filled in for never came back, and I never left.
They also included a sidebar with advice from Levitz on how to break into comics.
August 6th, 2008 at 10:32 am
WHY WSJ and not some non-extremist website? *Sigh*
August 6th, 2008 at 10:50 am
Superhero slump in the 90s? I must have missed that, since it seems like DC was doing better then than now.
August 6th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
He’s talking about when the whole industry tanked in the late 90′s… I got out right before then, and I guess a lot of other readers did too. But yeah, I came back to comics after seeing Batman Begins, really enjoyed reading comics again for awhile, and now I’ve found myself dropping nearly every DC title I was reading. Green Lantern and Detective are the ones I regularly buy now. I actually buy more Marvel titles than DC, and I never thought that would happen.
My reasons for souring on DC are many, but far too many to mention here. For me, at least, let’s say that the multiverse, Bat-Mite, and Jason Todd could all completely disappear and I’d be a lot happier. It would be a start, at least. Oh, and a satisfying conclusion to the Chris Kent story, explaining the contradiction between the ending of “Last Son” and the fact that Chris was still appearing in “Superman” would also be welcomed. That was pretty much my last straw with DC.
August 6th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
And you’re right, Zonked… Why WSJ? Ick. I’m already furious enough about the editorial they recently ran about The Dark Knight, written by someone who clearly didn’t get what Nolan was doing with the movie (and even alluded to interviews):
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB121694247343482821-lMyQjAxMDI4MTI2NTkyNDUyWj.html
August 6th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Yeah! How dare Levitz give an interview to one of the most respected business news organizations in the world? The nerve…
Anyway, it was a decent interview but nothing I hadn’t read before. Still I’m loving DC right now!