PAUL KUPPERBERG | 13th Dimension, Comics, Creators, Culture

Jul03

PAUL KUPPERBERG: My 13 Favorite Things About SHOWCASE #4

Posted by Dan Greenfield on Jul 3, 2026

PAUL KUPPERBERG: My 13 Favorite Things About SHOWCASE #4

The celebrated Mr. K pays tribute to the Flash’s anniversary — and the birth of the Silver Age… — UPDATED 7/3/26: THE FLASH debuted 70 years ago, in the pages of DC’s Showcase #4, on July 3, 1956 — kicking off the Silver Age! To celebrate both landmarks, we’ve got a FOUR-PART celebration for you! Once you speed through this piece — which first ran in 2021, celebrating the issue’s 65th anniversary — run to the links below for three new segments! — Dan — By PAUL KUPPERBERG I got into comic-book collecting when the collecting was good, when history was being made practically weekly on the newsstand and back issues were still available for reasonable prices, even taking inflation into account. It must have been around 1970 or 1971, when I was working diligently to complete my collection of Showcase, one of my all-time favorite — and probably the most important — comic book titles of the Silver Age. Running for 93 (often) glorious issues from March-April 1956 to September 1970, it was ground zero for the revitalization of the comic book superhero, beginning with Issue #4 — the revamping and re-introduction of the Flash. Taking only the Flash name from the original Scarlet Speedster, 1940s Jay Garrick, editor Julie Schwartz, writer Robert Kanigher, and artists Carmine Infantino and Joe Kubert built a whole new character who had solid roots in the original. Showcase #4 (pub date Sept./Oct. 1956) was, and remains, one of the key key issues of the era, and copies were not easily obtained, even then. But in a rare act of fraternal benevolence, my older brother Alan, who was then working in DC’s production department and was a frequent visitor at Neal Adams’ Continuity Associates, mentioned that artist Jack Abel had a copy of Showcase #4 laying around on his drawing board forever. Should he ask if Jack would sell it? Long story short, Alan asked, Jack would, and with $10 borrowed from my mother, I became the proud owner of a beautiful, near mint copy of the first appearance of the Silver Age Flash. (No, I don’t still have it. It fell victim to my starving artist years, circa 1980, when I sold it to comics dealer Larry Charet in Chicago for $900, at a time when my rent was $145 a month....

Jun21

The SUPERGIRL Adventure That Was Cancelled Because of CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS

Posted by Dan Greenfield on Jun 21, 2026

The SUPERGIRL Adventure That Was Cancelled Because of CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS

PAUL KUPPERBERG brings you a SUPERGIRL WEEK SPECIAL… — Supergirl, starring Milly Alcock, is out this week, so we’ve gathered up the 13th Dimension crew to bring you our first-ever SUPERGIRL WEEK! Click here for more high-flying features! — By PAUL KUPPERBERG I’ve seen the Supergirl movie trailers, and, while she’s not exactly “my” Supergirl (i.e. the Kara Zor-El I grew up with in the 1960s and the one I would later write), the new movie prompted me to post this on Facebook back in December: Maybe because I’ve worked across so many comic-book business disciplines—creative, public relations, editorial, licensing, licensed publishing—and was exposed to the many different uses of the characters, I’m not bothered that the canonical Batman in the comics differs from the ones that advertisers wanted to represent their products or services or the producers of other media needed for their animation or TV or movie projects. The “real thing”—whatever that particular version or era of a character that is to you—is still there for you to read whenever you want, regardless of changes made by licensors. Also, this ain’t my first time at the Supergirl cinematic rodeo; I was around for and writing the comic book during the fiasco that was the 1984 Supergirl movie starring Helen Slater and Faye Dunaway. And, after all, the new Supergirl is based on a comic book, and a particularly well-regarded one at that (2022’s Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow by Tom King and Bilquis Evely), starring a Supergirl that’s many steps removed from the character I wrote in the 1980s. Between my time on Supergirl (in Superman Family and in her own title) and the Kara Zor-El of Woman of Tomrrow there had been (1) an erasure from existence, (2) the Matrix Supergirl, (3) the Linda Danvers/Matrix-merged Supergirl, (4) Cir-El, the time-displaced Supergirl, (5) the reborn Kara Zor-El, (6) the “New 52” Supergirl, and (7) the “Rebirth” Supergirl. My “real thing” Supergirl was the original, the Kara Zor-El introduced in Action Comics #252 (May 1959). The Supergirl feature was the reason I collected Action Comics, and I followed Kara from there, through her sporadic career in Adventure Comics and her own short-lived series through the 1960s and into the 1970s, until she landed in Superman Family, which is where we finally became formally acquainted when I took over the writing duties from Marty Pasko in #217...

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