PAUL KUPPERBERG: My 13 Favorite PAUL LEVITZ Bronze Age Stories
A BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE: The celebrated Mr. K salutes his childhood pal, who turns 66… By PAUL KUPPERBERG Disclaimer: Paul Levitz (October 21, 1956) is my oldest friend. We met in 9th grade in Brooklyn’s Meyer Levin Junior High School in 1969, two comic book-reading ships that collided in the lunchroom and soon after began publishing crude Xeroxed fanzines like Postscripts out of Paul’s East 58th Street home. During our fannish years (’69 –’73), I practically lived at Paul’s house after school and on weekends and was always made to feel welcome by his parents, Alfred, and Hannah, and, of course, Chi-Chi the wonder dog, the family’s miniature Schnauzer. When Alfred got tired of us both responding every time he said “Paul,” he dubbed me PK, a nickname that persists to this day, especially among those who have known me since the ‘70s. When I started on staff at DC in 1991, Paul started referring to me by my proper name, I guess because he thought it sounded more professional, but it’s never sounded right to me. Our crude Xeroxed fanzines eventually yielded to the crude photo offset news ‘zine, Etcetera, which would later pick up and continue the legacy and numbering of one of comic fandom’s first and most respected publications, The Comic Reader. I don’t remember exactly why, but I soon relinquished my share of the ‘zine to Paul, although I remained involved, writing for and helping to produce the monthly fanzine, as well as editing three issues of the article ‘zine Etcetera (Volume 2), and helping produce the 1973 and 1974 square-bound, 100-page program books for Phil Seuling’s legendary New York Comic Cons. Paul folded TCR Publications and handed it off to another publisher in 1973 when we started college, him at NYU, me at Brooklyn College, but those two and a half years of fan publishing would yield dividends to us both for the rest of our lives. A year earlier, DC editor Joe Orlando hired Paul to write his letter columns and text pages, that year, Joe brought Paul in as a summer replacement assistant editor while Michael Fleisher was on vacation. Long story short, Michael never came back, and Paul never left. My break came two years later when I sold my first scripts to Charlton Comics and, six months later, to DC. In...
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