The celebrated Mr. K tips his pen to the late Superman editor, who was born 108 years ago… — UPDATED 4/25/26: The late Mort Weisinger was born 111 years ago. Perfect time to reprint this piece from his birthday in 2023. Dig it! — Dan — By PAUL KUPPERBERG For me, the process of going from being a casual reader to an involved fan was like piecing together a then 30-years-in-the-making jigsaw puzzle. Remember, this was back in a time when there was virtually no readily available reference or database for comics or their creators. Even writer and artist credits, much less for colorists or letterers, were a rarity, and, until Stan Lee splashed his name across every Marvel, well, splash page, even the concept of “editor” was foreign, much less putting names to those who did the job for individual titles. After learning to identify by sight artists with uniquely individualistic styles like Carmine Infantino, Mike Sekowsky and Gil Kane, it took learning to read the fine print — i.e., comic book indicia — for the pieces of the jigsaw to finally fall into place. Reading in the mid-1960s, really getting deeply into comic books as the Batman TV show hit the airwaves in 1966, I saw that the comics I liked best from DC were the ones written and drawn by a select group of creators and most of those creators appeared to work almost exclusively for someone named “Julius Schwartz.” But my favorite character, regardless of the quality of the stories, was Superman, and the adventures of Superman and all his best guy and gal pals, were edited by someone named Mort Weisinger (April 25, 1915-May 7, 1978). Again, I wasn’t sure what an editor did, but judging from the differences in the looks and tones of titles produced by the different offices (Schwartz and Weisinger, as well as Murray Boltinoff, George Kashdan, Jack Schiff and Robert Kanigher), I figured the editor was the boss. It was their choice of artists (almost exclusively from their individual stables) and the types of stories those artists created that branded a book as theirs. There was no mistaking a Weisinger book for one done by Boltinoff, or crediting Kashdan with editing one of Julie’s titles. My indicia reading habit translated to inspecting movie and television credits as well. And...