Posted By Dan Greenfield on Nov 27, 2025 | 3 comments

A THANKSGIVING SPECIAL: Not every story I wrote was… well… good…

By PAUL KUPPERBERG

It’s turkey season!

And by George, I’ve certainly written my share of them!

And by “turkey” I mean a dud of a story that failed or disappointed for any number of reasons, from flawed concept to faulty execution to a payoff that just laid an egg. A big, fat turkey egg.

Every writer has written at least a few of them, at least that’s what I tell myself. And while no one ever sets out to write a turkey, a few gobblers are almost guaranteed to slip through and make it to the printed page, especially early on in one’s career, especially in the fast turnover world of comic books. And, in fact, when I broke into comics in 1975, I had ample opportunity to write bad stories because as a newbie, I worked mostly on five-, six-, or eight-pagers for DC’s numerous anthology titles, cranking out several shorts a month because at the then-page rate of $15 per, making a living required volume production.

It’s funny: I always know when the script I’m working on is going to turn out to be a good one, but the turkeys almost always catch me by surprise, the realization of the fowl result not becoming clear to me until it’s too late to do anything about it. But the scheduling (and economics) of comics demand we let the bad ones go and try to make the next ones better.

To be clear: I take full and complete responsibility for the badness that follows. In the beginning is the word, i.e., the script, and that’s on me. The artists can only draw what’s there in the script (with one exception: see Captain America #240, below) and the subject of this column is my failures, thank you very much!

Also to be perfectly clear: Your mileage may vary! I can’t tell you how many times a creator on panels I’ve been on at conventions gets asked what’s the worst story they’ve ever done, and their answer turns out to be a favorite story of someone else in the audience. Every story is somebody’s favorite, yes, but it’s also someone else’s least favorite. De gustibus non est disputandum, dude!

Here then, MY 13 TURKEYS THAT GOT PUBLISHED ANYWAY: 

—

Creepy Things #5 (April 1976). “Hanging Offense,” with art by the Récréo Studio, was among my first half-dozen professional sales, made to Charlton Comics, and it suffers from (a) youthful inexperience, and (b) being riddled with clichés, including the tired old trope of the protagonist being hoisted upon his own petard, i.e., getting his comeuppance at the hands of ironic fate.

—

DC Super-Stars #14 (June 1977). I never felt that “Let There Be Dr. Light,” the villain’s “secret origin,” ever quite got off the ground, no Hawkman-related pun intended. Art by Dick Ayers and Jack Abel.

—

Young Love #126 (July 1977). I did it! I confess! I killed off the romance-comics genre at DC with this godawful story that appeared in the final issue of Young Love. Like NASCAR, “Love in Peril” just went in circles, going nowhere. Art by Jim Pinkoski and Tony Pano.

—

DC Special Series #1 (September 1977). I’d like to take this opportunity to apologize to history and the memory of American electrical engineer Elisha Gray, as well as to Alexander Graham Bell. “The Telephone Tangle” was the result of my coming across an interesting historic factoid around the time I got the assignment to write an Atom story, a character I knew could time travel (Professor Hyatt’s Time Pool, bitches!) and for which I had no better idea. Art by Steve Stiles and Bob McLeod.

—

Weird War Tales #75 (May 1979). On the one hand, the script for “Fire of the Gods” did get me yelled at by penciller Don Heck. On the other, it’s another one of those self-hoisting petard stories.

—

Adventure Comics #463 (June 1979). It was aftermath of the “Death of a Prince” storyline where we killed off Aquababy, and Aquaman was the first ongoing superhero feature I’d been assigned. I clearly had no idea what to do with the character, but that didn’t stop me from writing the storyline that climaxed with this story imaginatively titled “Climax.” Art by Heck and Joe Giella.

—

House of Mystery #273 (October 1979). On the cover — by Michael Kaluta no less — the story was billed as “Rites of Inheritance,” which is a much better title than “The Right of Inheritance,” the one used on the story. And it’s another case of petard-hoisting.

—

Captain America #240 (December 1979). Remember where above I wrote, “The artists can only draw what’s there in the script”? Let me amend that to add, “unless you’re working Marvel style, plot-first, and the artist assigned to the issue was your older brother who changed the story to make it one big fight scene?” For those of you who ever wondered why I never wrote for Marvel Comics (other than on Crazy Magazine, which had little to do with the goings on in the Marvel Universe), the turkey that became “Gang Wars” should explain a lot. I was embarrassed enough by the results to stop trying there, which I’m sure was to Marvel’s relief.

—

Justice League of America #182 (September 1980). To which I contributed this Elongated Man backup story… a turkey on its own to be sure, but also the winner of the “Most Unfortunate Story Title of 1980”: “The Sun Queen Snatch!” Art by Rodin Rodriquez and Vince Colletta.

—

Action Comics #561 (December 1984). Stuff happens, OK? You go in to plot out a story with your editor, maybe you’re a little short on ideas, so things get crazy, he throws out the suggestion of a Toyman story, and you say, “Sure,” and the next thing you know, you’re writing “The Great Toyman Trivia Contest.” Art by Kurt Schaffenberger and Dennis Jensen.

—

The Fury of Firestorm #54 (December 1986). Fill-ins can be problematic. Because fill-in issues were usually stories that had been created some time earlier and put in a drawer until such time as they were needed, the job was to tell a story that wouldn’t interfere or refer to the storyline in progress, nor do anything with the characters that had any effect on their lives or stories whatsoever. “Rock n’ Roll Fantasy” managed to pass through the run of Firestorm without any notice or impact whatsoever. Art by Michael Bair and Bob Smith.

—

DC Challenge #7 (May 1986). The title is a takeoff on the title of Firesign Theater’s album, Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers, the art by Joe Staton and Steve Mitchell is really nice, and I got to mess around with a batch of really fun characters. But coming smack-dab in the middle of this 12-issue round robin series whose rules — which I wasn’t sure of to start with — had been mostly ignored by the writers who came before me, a couple of whom were writing their issues simultaneously with mine in order to catch up with deadlines and keep the whole project from being scrapped, so I just went ahead and did… stuff… with whoever… and had fun with the nonsensical “Don’t Bogart That Grape… Hand Me the Gas Pump!”

NOTE FROM DAN: Thanks, Paul! A) This is where I learned what the term “Bogart” meant! B) It’s the only story title I remember from that series!

—

The Adventures of Goggleman (1999). This was a commercial job that came to me through some advertising agency representing the Power Tool Institute, a group of power tool manufacturers, as I recall, that advocated for workshop and tool safety. I wish I could claim credit for the creation of Goggleman, but he was the brainchild of artist Steve Green, and I was just the script monkey.

The thing about commercial jobs for advocacy groups where there’s a high risk of injury is that they have to legally cover their asses, so while the writer knows we only have to say, “before using any power tool, make sure you read and understand all operating instructions and to wear safety goggles and follow all safety instructions” once, the lawyers at the Power Tool Institute want that phrase to be included each and every time a power tool is mentioned. They want everything spelled out in overwritten detail, and that’s why you get pages like this, where the characters have to shoulder their way through overstuffed word balloons.

Here’s hoping your holiday turkeys are tastier than these.

Happy Thanksgiving!

—

MORE

— JIM BEARD: 13 Things About Comics Books I’m Thankful For. Click here.

— Have a Very Happy MARVEL and DC THANKSGIVING! Click here.

—

PAUL KUPPERBERG was a Silver Age fan who grew up to become a Bronze Age comic book creator, writer of Superman, the Doom Patrol, and Green Lantern, creator of Arion Lord of Atlantis, Checkmate, and Takion, and slayer of Aquababy, Archie, and Vigilante. He is the Harvey and Eisner Award nominated writer of Archie Comics’ Life with Archie, and his YA novel Kevin was nominated for a GLAAD media award and won a Scribe Award from the IAMTW. Check out his new memoir, Panel by Panel: My Comic Book Life. 

Website: https://www.paulkupperberg.net/

Shop: https://www.paulkupperberg.net/shop-1