PAUL KUPPERBERG: My 13 Favorite EDMOND HAMILTON SUPERMAN Stories
A BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE to the late writer, who was born 120 years ago… By PAUL KUPPERBERG Growing up as a comic book reader and fan in the early and mid-1960s, I didn’t know the name of writer Edmond Hamilton (October 21, 1904 – February 1, 1977). Hamilton, a science fiction writer who began his career with a short story published in the August 1926 issue of the legendary pulp magazine, Weird Tales, went on to write dozens of novels and scores of short stories in that genre, including authoring most of the adventures of pulp science-fiction hero Captain Future, as well as Interstellar Patrol, The Star Kings, and others. I didn’t know his name, but I sure knew his stories because around all those hundreds of thousands of pulp fiction words, Edmond Hamilton managed to squeeze in a fair amount of comic book work, all for National Periodical Publications—the company we’ve long known as DC Comics. One of Hamilton’s pulp magazine editors had been Mort Weisinger, who earlier had worked as a literary agent for science fiction writers with fellow Bronx friend and fan Julius Schwartz, and who made the move to editor at National in 1941 to work on the Superman and Batman titles. Hamilton began with “Bandits in Toyland” in Batman #11 (June/July 1942). His first story starring the Man of Steel was “The Task That Stumped Superman” in Superman #50 (January/February 1948), and for nearly the next 20 years, he scripted hundreds of stories featuring Superman (and Superboy!), Batman and Robin, Tommy Tomorrow, and Chris KL-99 in Action Comics, Superman, Batman, Detective Comics, World’s Finest, Adventure Comics, Strange Adventures, and others. By the time I learned of Hamilton’s connection to my beloved Superman comics I had already begun reading his science fiction stories in anthologies and pulps and had several of his novels on my shelf. Still later, I would learn much more about the celebrated author, straight from the horse’s mouth, in this case the aforementioned Julie Schwartz, who had not only represented SF author Hamilton as his literary agent and been his editor at DC but had been a close friend as well. I had begun writing for Julie in 1981 and quickly learned that he was every bit the storyteller as his writers, except his stories were all true and usually involved the...
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