Secret Origin: The Story of DC Comics (2010)

1. Comic books are the dreams and aspirations of human beings.

2. There is no better medium than comic books. It's the medium.

3. You may not like comic books. You may not respect comic books.

4. But they are something that people buy for themselves that they want to read.

5. There's a reason for that, and it's because they love them.

6. I remember being given a box of comics

7. when I was about seven.

8. And I loved it.

9. Still to this day I have no idea where it came from.

10. My father, just before he died,

11. I mentioned it to him, he said, "Oh, yes, I remember that box of comics.

12. I'll have to tell you sometime where it came from."

13. And I thought, "Great." And then he died.

14. I think a lot of these characters,

15. they were special and different and unique.

16. And I definitely remember connecting to a lot of the superheroes in that sense.

17. This is a comic book from 1975. I used masking tape...

18. to actually hold it together.

19. I would read it so much that it would literally fall apart.

20. Frankly, I think you could have put

21. any DC comic in my hands

22. and I still would have fallen in love.

23. My mom, when I was eight,

24. made me sell all mine for two cents apiece to Mr. West,

25. the junkman in the back of the Tupelo hotel.

26. Once, there was a world without comic books.

27. Like jazz and like baseball, like so much that is distinctly American,

28. the comic book was born in the country's margins,

29. cheap, slight, juvenile.

30. An orphan child that would transform over time

31. into something vital and strong.

32. But not by magic word...

33. or accident of science...

34. or ancient incantation,

35. but by the efforts of writers and artists and entrepreneurs

36. whose ambition was simply to entertain,

37. to challenge, to captivate,

38. to enlighten.

39. These men and women of DC Comics let their own lives

40. and the world around them inspire their creations.

41. This is the story of the birth of the comic book.

42. This is the origin story of DC Comics.

43. I know I sound crazy to say it, but guess what?

44. If you put the best artist in the world and the best writer in the world,

45. they will make the greatest piece of art in the world

46. and you know what you'll call it? You'll call it a comic book.

47. New York is fundamentally an immigrant and entrepreneurial city.

48. There's an enormous pressure...

49. that boils from the bottom of the hungry people who come here.

50. They're looking for a thing they can do.

51. And that inevitably goes to either things that are new

52. or the things that the elite aren't interested in doing.

53. It's the early 1930s.

54. Two immigrant entrepreneurs, Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz,

55. run a small but profitable publishing concern.

56. Harry was...

57. the backslapper, the glad-hander, the salesman, the conman.

58. Making people happy, telling dirty jokes, drinking,

59. going out to girly shows, you know, that was Harry.

60. He had mob connections, or so went the rumors at the time.

61. It didn't help that he bragged about knowing

62. Lucky Luciano and Frank Costello.

63. What he didn't have was someone who really knew how to balance books

64. and run a company, and so that's where Jack Liebowitz entered.

65. Harry and Jack make their fortune

66. putting out pulp magazines.

67. Not just the pulps, but what we call

68. the spicy pulps, in other words...

69. the lascivious pictures of half-naked women on the cover,

70. and these sort of racy stories inside, or at least racy for 1935.

71. About as naked as the law would allow

72. and sometimes sort of pushing over that line.

73. Some people did jail time for these magazines in the '30s,

74. so they were pornography by the standards of the '30s.

75. Harry Donenfeld almost went to jail.

76. He had to talk one of his employees into taking the rap for him

77. in exchange for a job for life.

78. The handwriting came on the wall about '37, '38. He thought...

79. You know what, maybe spicy pulps is not where I want to be

80. if the law's gonna be breathing down my neck.

81. For a country in the midst of the Great Depression,

82. newspaper comic strips are a popular and cheap amusement.

83. Collections of these, the very first comic books,

84. begin to appear on newsstands.

85. And Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson,

86. a prolific pulp fiction writer and former cavalry officer

87. is inspired to put out his own.

88. January 11th, 1935.

89. You go to the newsstands in New York,

90. and you find on them Fun Comics #1.

91. The very first DC comic.

92. Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson had a sense,

93. not just that this is filler, but that new material

94. might find its own audience.

95. The Major needs business partners.

96. And Harry and Jack need less racy material to publish.

97. And in 1937, their very first collaboration, Detective Comics,

98. the comic that would give DC its name,

99. hits the stands.

100. Why Detective Comics? Because it's an outgrowth of

101. this whole urban culture that is fairly new to us as Americans.

102. And the idea of urban crime was something that

103. 50 years ago didn't even exist.

104. And suddenly, you know, we have to worry about

105. muggers and pickpockets and street crime.

106. Detective Comics was clearly a response to that.

107. After buying out Wheeler-Nicholson,

108. Harry and Jack set out to grow their new venture.

109. And with comic-book pioneer Max Gaines,

110. they launched National Allied and All-American,

111. the companies that will eventually become DC Comics.

112. At the same time in Cleveland,

113. two teenagers, sons of Jewish immigrants,

114. are escaping the pain and struggle of their everyday lives

115. into a fantasy world of their own making.

116. Together, they would create something revolutionary.

117. Jerry was the nerdy science-fiction fan.

118. Jerry was the one who read any kind of crappy pulp

119. fantastic story out there and was constantly making up his own stories.

120. And Joe was the artist.

121. Joe was very poor,

122. it was very hard for him to get paper, hard for him to get art lessons.

123. But he found things to draw on. He was just always scribbling.

124. And they were both rejects. They were both outcasts.

125. The kids who are coming of age in the 1930s,

126. that first generation of creative talent for comics,

127. have lived through an astounding moment of transition in society.

128. The world is changing very, very rapidly.

129. Amazing things are happening.

130. It's a marvelous world in a very literal sense.

131. And the comics seize on a very visual dimension of it.

132. Which is, if you can take a human being to the next level,

133. what will that next level be?

134. Jerry and Joe imagine a man with powers

135. and abilities far beyond those of mortal men.

136. Superman,

137. I believe, was the most personal of Jerry and Joe's creations.

138. In large part because Jerry had lost his father

139. when he was 17 years old in a robbery.

140. It clearly left a mark on Siegel.

141. You can see how that would make you long for a father figure who was bulletproof.

142. Shuster gave the vision of the character.

143. Shuster's the one who designed the costumes,

144. Shuster's the one who gave it the visuals,

145. but Siegel was completely the heart of that character.

146. The passion of it really came from Siegel.

147. Jerry and Joe submit their creation

148. to editors across the country.

149. And in turn, every one of them promptly rejects it,

150. some more than once.

151. Nobody liked it.

152. This was an anomaly. This was...

153. I mean, nobody else was doing it. Everybody was doing

154. cowboys, detective, science fiction-type things.

155. These two 17-year-old Jewish kids in Cleveland, Ohio,

156. created a genre.

157. It's not until four years later

158. the DC finally brings

159. Superman to Earth's newsstands.

160. That spring, Action Comics #1 is born.

161. And there he is, Superman,

162. in his red cape and blue tights,

163. signature "S" emblazed on his chest,

164. a modern-day Hercules sending hoodlums on the run.

165. A refugee from a distant planet.

166. A newly-minted American who becomes an unapologetic social crusader.

167. Leaping through the night sky,

168. a murderess under his arms in a desperate race to the governor's house

169. to save an innocent woman from death row.

170. Superman, even as he was drawn originally,

171. in his raw form, was one that I felt was alive...

172. Understanding or feeling at that time, that this was possible.

173. That really had a tremendous effect on me.

174. He's throwing guys right and left.

175. He bursts in through the walls

176. and smashes the doors

177. and that's how you meet Superman.

178. He is two-fisted, he's knocking stuff around.

179. He takes no prisoners.

180. He's a giant ball of energy and force.

181. He's just bulldozing his way through the story.

182. And Clark is there, Clark is instantly recognizable

183. as the meek, mild, bespectacled alter ego.

184. "If you just saw inside me, you'd see that there is something big

185. and exciting and dynamic in here, if you just looked behind the glasses."

186. I was quite meek and I was quite mild...

187. and I thought, "Gee, wouldn't it be great if I was a mighty person

188. and these girls didn't know that this clod here is really somebody special?"

189. I was very small...

190. and I was always pushed around by bullies and so forth.

191. So that was one of my dreams.

192. I took courses in bodybuilding and weightlifting.

193. I don't know if it helped, but I made an effort.

194. Action Comics introduces another iconic character, Lois Lane.

195. She was smart, she was capable, she was a bulldog.

196. She was passionate. When she saw a story, she went for it.

197. She didn't think, "Oh, my gosh! It's gonna get me killed."

198. She would just do it.

199. I loved that.

200. I loved

201. her tenacity and her intelligence.

202. And in Superman, Lois met her match.

203. In that very first issue, he takes on government corruption,

204. domestic violence

205. and urban crime.

206. Really, Superman was the first crusader

207. for social justice in comics.

208. He was sprung from two Jewish kids from Cleveland who were picked on,

209. and this was their idea of empowerment.

210. There's an assumption that there is an absolute standard

211. of justice in the world.

212. It's also very true to the immigrant experience

213. at that point in their hope for justice.

214. "We have come here. We've come to this land.

215. It will be okay here. It will be just here."

216. These are families that have come over from Europe

217. and they are watching whoever they left behind disappear

218. in a very scary fashion.

219. So the characters live for them.

220. And Nazism was rising up, and a lot of innocent people were being killed...

221. countries were being invaded, a lot of innocents slaughtered.

222. And I felt that the world desperately needed a crusader,

223. if only a fictional one.

224. Superman was about the immigrant experience...

225. in a very, very powerful way.

226. It's the kid from the old country

227. who brings the best values from the old country...

228. In this case, the old planet... To America,

229. adds it to the pot, and accepts the best part of America.

230. It's a really powerful set of ideas that was really important to people

231. in the '30s and '40s.

232. The newsstand dealers couldn't get enough.

233. Within three issues, they were up to a million copies.

234. It was a phenomena.

235. There was never anything like it.

236. There was that Supermania that hit in 1939 and 1940.

237. We have not seen anything like it in American pop culture since.

238. Beatlemania was not that big.

239. Over 100,000 boys and girls in the United States and Canada

240. are members of the Supermen of America.

241. One mother says...

242. I should like to thank the publishers

243. of Action Comics magazine for including a health page in every issue.

244. Billy has been eating his cereal and drinking his milk regularly

245. since Superman told him to do so.

246. Say, he can do about anything, can't he?

247. Everywhere you go, Superman.

248. He's in your newspaper strip, he's on your radio,

249. there is short cartoons in your theater, he's on clothing.

250. He's in the Macy's Day Parade as a balloon.

251. He's at the World's Fair in costume.

252. It's Superman Day at the World's Fair. It's a big deal.

253. Everybody would've known Superman, from your grandmother

254. right down to the immigrant who just got off of Ellis Island.

255. Everybody would've known him.

256. After Superman's unprecedented success,

257. editors at DC sent out a call.

258. "Bring me another Superman."

259. And for an 18-year-old kid from the Bronx,

260. that call does not go unheeded.

261. And at DC Comics at that time,

262. the editor came over to me and he said,

263. "Would you like to create another superhero

264. in the genre of Superman?"

265. Let's see, I was making about $25 a week

266. and I said, "How much does Siegel and Shuster,

267. who created Superman, make?"

268. "They make $800 a week apiece."

269. I said, "For that kind of money, you'll have a superhero on Monday."

270. Kane enlists his friend, a shoe salesman

271. who wants to be a writer,

272. Bill Finger.

273. Bob Kane sat down with him over the weekend and said,

274. "I've got this idea.

275. It's a character named Batman and he's basically Superman

276. but without powers."

277. And the two of them sit down

278. and they start knocking the idea back and forth.

279. And with Finger's help,

280. Kane spends the weekend refining the character

281. into something remarkable.

282. By Monday morning, Kane comes back to his editor, Vin Sullivan, and says,

283. "Here's what I got." And Vin Sullivan knew something good when he saw it.

284. And he said, "See, I love it. What do you call it?"

285. and I said, "That's a good question, Vince.

286. May we call it the Bat-hyphenated-Man?"

287. Less than a year after Superman's debut,

288. Detective Comics introduces the Batman.

289. Hyphen optional.

290. Here comes this mysterious, bat-shrouded character

291. carrying a gangster under one arm and swingin' in.

292. The first cover was unlike anything

293. we'd seen in comic books before at that point.

294. This... This was new.

295. A superhero detective in the urban crime tradition.

296. He takes on "The Case of the Chemical Syndicate"

297. and solves it with his brain and his fists...

298. Dispensing vigilante justice.

299. And it's not until the final panel that the Batman's alter ego is revealed...

300. Young playboy millionaire Bruce Wayne.

301. I wanted to be Bruce Wayne in my reverie.

302. Instead of a poor kid, I imagined I'd like to be a rich playboy

303. and fight crime at night.

304. He made himself up in the same way that Bruce Wayne makes up this Batman.

305. He was born Bob Kahn, went for the Bob Kane name very early.

306. Everyone who knew him in the old days

307. said he got a nose job as soon as he had the money.

308. He was very dapper, very concerned with his appearance.

309. He really wanted to be, I think, a movie star.

310. And he also wanted to be a successful, nonethnic New York socialite.

311. I can probably count on the fingers of one hand

312. the comic book characters that have ever been created by

313. affluent, successful people.

314. The characters of longevity always come from a place of oppression,

315. always come from a place of wanting to break out

316. of the world that you're in.

317. We all were kids from the Bronx.

318. We were all bunch of schmucks talking Jewish.

319. Schmucks.

320. We were innocent, talented guys

321. who were schmucks.

322. We never drew ourselves. Why?

323. Why should we draw poor little guys?

324. What would inspire us to draw poor little guys?

325. Comic books is an industry made up

326. of people who aren't accepted,

327. who desperately want to be accepted.

328. So they desperately want to be like mainstream America.

329. It's why Batman's a millionaire

330. and Superman is a farmer. Real mainstream.

331. Real "real" America.

332. So, they imprint themselves on heroic images

333. that embody all the stuff they wish they were.

334. Rich, and handsome, and muscular, and able to handle any situation,

335. and not tongue-tied.

336. The public loved Batman. The public embraced Batman very quickly.

337. Especially when you get into the fourth or fifth Batman adventure

338. and you start to outline his origins.

339. The classic scene of young Bruce Wayne with his parents, out behind a theater,

340. and his parents are gunned down before his young eyes,

341. and that's the moment that made him want to turn into Batman.

342. That's why Batman works so well.

343. Whatever he does, you understand why he does it.

344. He's lost his parents at a random crime in the city,

345. and he wants to make sure that no one else

346. suffers the same horror that he had to go through.

347. Batman's popularity soon rivals Superman's.

348. And now with two signature characters, business is booming.

349. But with success comes scrutiny.

350. Wouldn't you know it, before long, the comics have their first critics.

351. Comic books were still targeted very much toward adolescent boys

352. with the things that made adolescent boys excited.

353. You know, violence, and no time for girls.

354. Girls are for sissies.

355. A pop psychologist and minor celebrity,

356. Dr. William Moulton Marston,

357. pens an article criticizing the comics for not reaching their full potential.

358. DC's response?

359. "Hire him."

360. They hired Marston to be an editorial advisor.

361. He was very much one of the world's first feminists.

362. He also helped create the lie detector.

363. Marston would reportedly give lie detector tests

364. to anybody who visited his home just to break the ice.

365. Dr. William Marston tests his latest invention,

366. the love meter.

367. He is going to find out whether blondes or brunettes react more to love.

368. Dr. Marston declares, "Gentlemen may prefer blondes

369. but brunettes prefer love scenes."

370. He had a very interesting home life.

371. He had a wife

372. and he had a graduate student who lived with him and his wife.

373. Sort of became her co-wife.

374. It sounds like a very amicable arrangement that he had.

375. And somehow he talked his wife into working to support the family.

376. The family being him and his mistress and the kids by each.

377. So, he may have believed in female domination

378. but he had some manipulative brilliance.

379. Marston writes that the comics' worst offence

380. is their bloodcurdling masculinity.

381. He insists something important is missing.

382. That something? Wonder Woman.

383. Wonder Woman makes her first appearance buried in the back

384. of an issue of All-Star Comics,

385. a child of the gods called by the rumblings of war

386. to bring peace to man's world.

387. She was a vehicle with which you could introduce pacifism,

388. give these comics a mother figure where they didn't have one before.

389. They were just full of father figures

390. or angry uncles.

391. Princess Diana is a native of Paradise Island, untouched by men,

392. until Captain Steve Trevor crash-lands into her world.

393. Against her mother's wishes,

394. Diana competes for the right to take him back.

395. Driven by love, she bests her sisters at every challenge.

396. And with her mother's blessing, Wonder Woman is born,

397. a statuesque Amazon wrapped in the American flag.

398. She is not an unreasonable icon to have been created.

399. During World War II, women took over a lot of male roles.

400. She's a Rosie the Riveter, only a goddess.

401. Defending her adopted nation with a lasso of truth,

402. an invisible plane

403. and bulletproof bracelets,

404. thugs cower before her.

405. And Wonder Woman soon pushes her way out of the back pages.

406. Marston wanted to portray Wonder Woman

407. as a character of strength.

408. But his definition of strength was very interesting.

409. It was all about the willingness of women to submit themselves.

410. That was a symbol of power

411. and a symbol of defiance.

412. But what that translates to on the comic book page,

413. more often than not, is Wonder Woman tied up.

414. There is a lot of bondage in those comics.

415. It's hard to convey how often...

416. I mean, I say that and people think,

417. "Well, maybe like once an issue," somebody said.

418. It's like every page, Marston found a way

419. to have his artists draw somebody tied up, manacled to walls,

420. spread-eagled.

421. You could see where he was going.

422. Wonder Woman was one of the comics that was most troubling

423. to DC's editorial advisors

424. because, on the surface, it seemed to be saying all the right things.

425. But then there were all these scantily-clad women

426. either getting tied up or tying men up.

427. The question then becomes,

428. is that one of the reasons Wonder Woman was popular?

429. I'm not entirely sure. I wouldn't rule it out.

430. Wonder Woman is instantly embraced,

431. mostly by little boys

432. and servicemen.

433. And America has its first superheroine.

434. And she takes her place in the pantheon alongside Superman and Batman.

435. And now with three iconic characters,

436. the Golden Age of DC Comics is underway.

437. Justice-seeking superheroes hit a nerve in an America on the verge of war.

438. By 1945, comics triple their circulation,

439. selling millions each month.

440. And so they would jam...

441. these creative young guys, in these little rooms just drawing,

442. side by side, hour after hour.

443. Gil Kane, one of the artists of that time,

444. walked into one of these... It looked like an internment camp.

445. Sweaty. Foul-smelling.

446. Maybe one reason there were not very many women in the business

447. was it probably looked rather unappealing.

448. It was a scene of desks, that's all.

449. And a secretary's... One.

450. That was the way it was.

451. It could've been a hell of a lot worse.

452. It was an escape.

453. We wanted to be with each other. The brotherhood.

454. Publishers all over New York were inspired by DC's success

455. to home-grow their own superheroes.

456. And before you know it, the newsstand was just flooded.

457. There wasn't enough of it to sate the public.

458. There was the appetite for more.

459. By the time you get to 1940, 1941,

460. literally hundreds of comics

461. and dozen and dozens of costumed characters,

462. not just from DC, but from all over.

463. Here comes the Flash, the fastest man alive.

464. the Spectre,

465. Sandman,

466. Hawkman,

467. Green Arrow,

468. the Spirit,

469. Star-Spangled Kid,

470. Aquaman,

471. Mister Terrific,

472. Phantom Lady,

473. Plastic Man,

474. and Green Lantern.

475. He had a mask, blond hair,

476. an emblem on his chest

477. and a ring on his finger. I never remember which finger.

478. Sheldon Mayer used to go, "Hasen, ring is on the left hand."

479. I was never a finger man.

480. As hero after hero arrives on the newsstands,

481. one grabs young fans more than the others.

482. Fawcett Publication's Captain Marvel.

483. There was this sense of whimsy.

484. The genius stroke of Captain Marvel is that he's a child,

485. and then he says his magic word...

486. and becomes this big, all-powerful adult.

487. Well, hello. I mean, that's what every kid wanted.

488. In his heyday, the big red cheese

489. outsells even Superman.

490. And with new superheroes comes supervillains.

491. Batman takes on the Joker,

492. Penguin and Catwoman.

493. Wonder Woman battles the Cheetah.

494. And for Superman, Luthor,

495. a criminal mastermind with a full head of red hair...

496. Briefly.

497. And to help fight these supervillains, sidekicks.

498. Robin, the Boy Wonder, is first.

499. Costumed sidekicks just didn't exist.

500. Robin is this young, youthful acrobat.

501. He's cracking jokes and he's making puns

502. and it radically changes the tone of the book.

503. Robin gives young readers

504. a chance to see themselves in the comics.

505. He strikes a chord.

506. And kid sidekicks become almost obligatory for new superheroes.

507. And superheroes are everywhere.

508. Up in the sky. Look, it's a bird.

509. It's a plane.

510. It's Superman.

511. The Adventures of Superman radio show

512. is broadcast into living rooms across America.

513. Every week promises a new thrilling adventure.

514. But Superman also finds time to fight against religious intolerance,

515. juvenile delinquency

516. and even the KKK.

517. Superman was the first figure

518. outside of my family

519. that influenced me toward, uh...

520. a non-bigoted view of the world.

521. Certain that Jimmy Olsen and editor Perry White

522. were in the hands of a group of hate-mongers and terrorists

523. known as the Clan of the Fiery Cross.

524. Clark Kent tracked down a boy he believed

525. knew the identity of the robed and hooded bigots.

526. The Anti-Defamation League

527. had an operative in the KKK,

528. and every day he would call us...

529. and give us the code word for the KKK

530. and we would reveal it on Superman,

531. and we drove the KKK crazy.

532. In all, more than 2,000 episodes air.

533. Up in the sky. Look.

534. - It's a bird. - It's a plane.

535. It's Superman.

536. Soon after his radio premiere,

537. DC gives audiences their first glimpse

538. of Superman in action.

539. Max Fleischer Studios, famous for their Betty Boop and Popeye cartoons,

540. adapts the hero's adventures.

541. The Fleischers didn't wanna do it.

542. They made up this insane figure for Paramount

543. so they would just have an excuse to not do it.

544. And Paramount said, "Okay."

545. But you see every penny.

546. The infant of Krypton is now the Man of Steel.

547. Superman.

548. They were ambitious beyond belief,

549. but they got what they paid for, because it looked phenomenal.

550. The Superman of that era, he doesn't say much.

551. He just sort of rolls up his sleeve when there's a problem and says...

552. This looks like a job for Superman.

553. And then goes out there and kicks ass.

554. I think the Fleischer Superman cartoons

555. are like a pinnacle of cinematic achievement in the 20th century.

556. I mean, I'm sure people would laugh at me for saying that.

557. But they're like beautiful little poems

558. that I never get tired of hearing.

559. December 7th, 1941.

560. A date which will live

561. in infamy.

562. When America enters World War II,

563. DC writers, artists and editors,

564. immigrants and sons of immigrants, answer the call.

565. The comics brim with their patriotism.

566. Suddenly, they were in there helping us fight the war.

567. And, really, characters like... Well, especially Wonder Woman

568. with her star-spangled bloomers,

569. were perfect for that kind of context.

570. The Justice Society of America...

571. the first superhero team and the club every kid wants to join,

572. dives into World War II headlong.

573. Batman and Robin deliver guns to soldiers on the front line.

574. Wonder Woman uses the heads of Hitler, Hirohito and Mussolini as bowling pins.

575. We were in a war. The Army and the Navy were involved.

576. Boys and sons and daughters and fathers were all involved in this.

577. And so, putting the superhero into these stories

578. meant that we would be saving not the world, but saving our own.

579. Superman supports the war effort back home,

580. rousing Americans to grow Victory Gardens,

581. buy war bonds and recycle scrap, including comics.

582. The moment you put him in Nazi Germany, you know, war is over.

583. In fact, Look magazine did a piece with Siegel and Shuster early on.

584. The question was, how would Superman end the war?

585. And the answer was,

586. he flies over, he grabs Hitler by the scruff of the neck,

587. he flies to Russia, grabs Stalin, takes them before the World Court...

588. and that's two pages, by the way.

589. So, Superman could've ended the war in apparently 14 panels of comics.

590. But you can't have Superman stop the war.

591. Because there is no Superman to stop the war in reality.

592. And Superman's creators don't wish to disrespect

593. the struggles of real-life fighting men and women.

594. Many of the brightest talents in comics joined their superheroes in the fight.

595. Like the Spirit creator, Will Eisner,

596. publishers like Irwin Donenfeld,

597. artists like Sheldon Moldoff and Irwin Hasen,

598. and writers like Jerry Seigel.

599. Many enlist, not all of them come back.

600. Bert Christman was a young illustrator

601. who, with Gardner Fox, created Sandman.

602. But his real love was flying.

603. His real love was adventure.

604. So, he joined the Flying Tigers in World War II

605. and tragically was shot down over Burma in the line of service.

606. Comic books are wildly popular

607. among fighting men and women.

608. Millions are shipped overseas to boost morale.

609. Over 30% of all printed material

610. shipped to military bases are comic books.

611. I'm sure it took them places that they just needed to go.

612. After they came back from the war, they associated comics

613. with the war experience.

614. And the sales in comics dropped.

615. The war's over and suddenly, with the Nazi scourge out of our hair,

616. there's this giant void.

617. You can't just go back to fighting bank robbers at that point.

618. The DC characters had all this might and all this energy

619. and they didn't quite know where to put it.

620. In the early '50s, the only characters to survive

621. were Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman.

622. And a couple of other third-string characters survived

623. by being in the backs of these books.

624. That's it. That's your whole list of ongoing characters that survived

625. from the Golden Age into the 1950s.

626. Women were forced out of careers

627. that they had had back into the home.

628. Because the soldiers were coming back and they wanted their jobs back.

629. Again, a whole societal shift.

630. And at that point,

631. Wonder Woman's role shifted as well.

632. She went from being the fighter

633. to worrying more about her boyfriend.

634. Wonder Woman's progress, in a way,

635. reflects the place that society wants women to be at that point.

636. In the late 1940s,

637. superheroes all but disappear from the comic pages.

638. Westerns, romance, crime fiction

639. and child-friendly titles emerged in their place.

640. The only new superhero comic of the era, Superboy,

641. reflects the demographic shift.

642. With comic book superheroes on the decline,

643. DC follows their audience to a new medium, television.

644. Ladies and gentlemen, as you know,

645. I have made Metropolis my headquarters.

646. And I have done my best to give you a clean, healthy city.

647. Back then, there wasn't anything like it.

648. And it's just fascinating because...

649. this great heroic character

650. also pretends to be an ordinary person among us.

651. Oh, my God, that's wish fulfillment.

652. It's pure wish fulfillment. If you could take off your glasses,

653. you can become Superman.

654. If you wear that cape, you can become Superman.

655. But Superman, as played by George Reeves,

656. is more than just wish fulfillment.

657. He offers TV audiences a model of themselves,

658. as useful contributors to a polite and peaceful society.

659. It's men like you that make it difficult for people to understand one another.

660. You were warned nothing would come of this but trouble.

661. But not everybody shares that interest in the status quo.

662. Our young people are getting out of hand everywhere.

663. Well, I know, Mrs. Robinson. Every report I get from the field

664. tells me how enormous the problem is.

665. And while DC's comics are becoming safer,

666. other publishers are emerging at the edges.

667. With titles like Dark Mysteries,

668. Out of the Shadows, Crime, Horror and Terror.

669. Just dripping with horror and irony,

670. and they did not go over well with America's parents.

671. The public becomes galvanized

672. around the publication of Seduction of the Innocent,

673. by psychiatrist Fredric Wertham,

674. where Wertham asserts

675. that children who read comics grow up to be juvenile delinquents.

676. And DC is not exempt from his brush.

677. To Wertham, Superman is a fascist un-American.

678. And Wonder Woman is a poor role model for girls

679. because she emphasizes power and independence over nurturance.

680. And, of course, most damning,

681. he's decided that because Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson

682. are two men, unchaperoned, who share a house together,

683. that they must be homosexuals.

684. Because it's right there on paper.

685. This, of course, is absurd.

686. But all across the nation, parents are up in arms.

687. They're having bonfires, burning comics publicly.

688. They're telling children to give them away.

689. Parents, when I grew up, said to their kids...

690. "Don't read comic books, don't you bring a comic book into this house."

691. The same houses that kids brought comic books into all the time.

692. It was a cultural revolution.

693. A very bad cultural revolution, but it was nonetheless a cultural revolution.

694. So, they actually had hearings on comic books.

695. Comic books are an important contributing factor

696. in many cases of juvenile delinquency.

697. My name is William Gaines.

698. I was the first publisher in these United States

699. to publish horror comics.

700. I am responsible, I started them.

701. Bill Gaines, son of DC Comics pioneer Max Gaines,

702. is the only person who testifies on behalf of the comic book industry.

703. A horror book publisher at EC Comics,

704. Gaines would go on to publish the widely-imitated MAD,

705. which later went on to become

706. DC and the nation's most popular humor title.

707. It became successful with Issue 4,

708. when we lampooned Superman.

709. We ran a feature called "Superduperman."

710. That's hilarious.

711. Uh... It was then.

712. You had to be there.

713. He was a very courageous man.

714. Unfortunately, his courage sort of exceeded his...

715. You know, his eloquence.

716. Not intending to, but he came off as glib and sort of weaselly,

717. and nervous, which was not fair.

718. But he came off like Nixon during the debates.

719. The attorney presents him with a cover showing a severed head held in a hand.

720. Do you think that's in good taste?

721. Yes, sir, I do, for the cover of a horror comic.

722. Almost singlehandedly sank the whole ship, God bless him.

723. The hearings are a major blow

724. for the comic book industry,

725. and many smaller companies, including Bill Gaines', fold.

726. This is the way the public wants it.

727. This is the way it'll have to be, as far as I'm concerned.

728. In an effort to survive,

729. DC comes together with the remaining publishers

730. to form a self-censoring body...

731. The Comics Code Authority.

732. At that time, the comic books were

733. so attacked for the material that they were doing

734. where, if that Comics Code emblem was not on the book,

735. the book did not get distributed.

736. These guys were decent family men.

737. And suddenly somebody had told them, "You're pernicious. You're evil."

738. And then they had to stunt whatever artistic growth might have happened.

739. The worst kind of censorship is self-censorship.

740. They erred on the side of caution.

741. They had comic books like My Greatest Adventure.

742. My favorite, Pat Boone comics.

743. It's about Pat Boone and his family. Well, isn't that nice.

744. Oh, I was just, uh, reading through this comic book.

745. Were you reading a good story?

746. No.

747. The characters that began as rebellious,

748. agents against the status quo,

749. now, in the 1950s, fall into that envelope of conservative America

750. as policemen for the status quo.

751. Batman would walk down

752. Gotham's equivalent of Fifth Avenue

753. and there would be contests that he would judge, or it was one,

754. "Spend a day in the Batcave, with the Batman."

755. As Batman transforms from vigilante

756. to Gotham City's leading citizen,

757. Superman gets his own makeover...

758. from a rough-and-tumble social crusader to an establishment figure.

759. And things aren't much better for Lois Lane

760. This tenacious reporter gets to the '50s

761. and suddenly, she's not the tenacious reporter anymore.

762. Her real focus is, "Is Clark Kent really Superman?

763. Whom I love dearly."

764. Even as a child, I was annoyed

765. by how Lois was portrayed. I was annoyed by what she was doing.

766. It aggravated me,

767. but then I wasn't so happy with Superman at that point either.

768. It's very much a suburban psychedelia that suddenly emerges at that time.

769. You know, in the '50s, Superman could represent

770. the men who were home from the war.

771. And who suddenly had to make suburban lives for themselves

772. in quite strange circumstances.

773. And if you look at the Superman comics of those times,

774. he's no longer a reformer, he's no longer a patriot.

775. What he is, is a dad with women troubles

776. and relatives from the 31st century,

777. and old friends who come back to pester him.

778. With comic books floundering creatively,

779. the whole industry finds itself on the verge of collapse.

780. An editor said to me, "Kid, I saw your samples."

781. Said, "They're really good.

782. I'm going to do you the biggest favor in the world.

783. I'm going to turn you down.

784. Kid, there are probably not going to be comic books in the next year or two."

785. Just one year after the Code's implementation,

786. sales plunge by 75%.

787. DC needs a new strategy for the new times.

788. It looks to reinvent itself in the Silver Age.

789. Superheroes have been in an eclipse for almost a decade.

790. We had to come up with new ideas.

791. Someone at the editorial meeting suggested,

792. "Say, why don't we put out the Flash again?"

793. They said, "Okay."

794. "That's a good idea, who's going to edit The Flash?"

795. Everyone looked at me.

796. Julius Schwartz has been with DC since 1944.

797. I firmly believe...

798. there would not be a comic-book business today

799. if it weren't for Julie Schwartz.

800. He and his childhood best friend, Mort Weisinger,

801. who, for many years, was the editor of Superman,

802. were also early science fiction fans.

803. They were among the people who founded science fiction fandom.

804. They produced the first fanzine for science fiction

805. called the Time Traveler.

806. Julie was a curmudgeon, I started writing for him by accident.

807. Julie came storming into the office

808. and looked at me, "You, what the hell are you doing here?"

809. I said, "I'm waiting to sell Mr. Bridwell a Lois Lane story."

810. And he literally grabbed me by the scruff of my collar,

811. dragged me out of Nelson's guest chair, slammed me and put me down in his own,

812. and said, "No, you're not. You're writing The Flash."

813. He said, "You couldn't possibly do a worse job

814. than the son of a bitch I just fired."

815. Julie is just one of those people

816. without whom an industry would not have existed.

817. I could have continued Flash as it had appeared in the '40s

818. or I could've done a variation, something different.

819. I had to put out a magazine with a costumed character who was speedy.

820. And that's all I kept, everything else I changed.

821. Well, the original Flash was stupid.

822. The old Flash was a guy in a doughboy's helmet with two little wings on it.

823. And I think he had wings on his boots, too. Very strange.

824. No offence to whoever designed it.

825. It looks silly.

826. Observers without goggles must face away from the blast.

827. We are in the Atomic Age now.

828. You can't get away with saying guys got their powers through magic.

829. The original Golden Age Flash got his powers by

830. inhaling the fumes of hard water.

831. Hard water is ice. Not...

832. You know, kids were hipper than that in the 1950s.

833. We're in an era where science is gonna solve all our problems.

834. So, this new Flash

835. was Barry Allen, a police scientist, a forensic specialist,

836. who is working late in his lab one night

837. in front of a big bank of chemicals. And suddenly, "Bam!"

838. A bolt of lightning comes in and strikes the chemicals and splashes him

839. with these electrified substances.

840. And poor Barry gets up, and he's dazed, and he doesn't know what to do.

841. And he realizes he's late for a dinner date.

842. So, he starts running down the street after a cab.

843. And before he knows it, he overtakes the cab.

844. This is very strange. He goes to a diner.

845. And he orders some food and the waitress accidentally spills some stuff,

846. and he sees it falling in slow motion,

847. to the point where he can grab the plates out of the air, and the food,

848. and put everything back where it's meant to be.

849. So, inspired by the comic book adventures of the Golden Age Flash,

850. he's inspired to don, really, a superhero suit unlike

851. anything that we'd seen in comics before.

852. It's sleek, it's one piece, red and yellow with a lightning motif.

853. The response to Flash was gangbusters.

854. They did one issue and it sold out.

855. The Flash is successful. We revived one of our Golden Age characters.

856. "Hey, Julie. What else you got?"

857. And the Silver Age of comics was on.

858. I liked Green Lantern. But once again,

859. I said, "I'm making a complete change."

860. And to show how things are going to be different,

861. while the Golden Age Green Lantern

862. wore his power ring on the left hand, I'm going to put it on the right hand.

863. Green Lantern is reborn as Hal Jordan,

864. ace test pilot,

865. a comic book Chuck Yeager rocketing into the jet age.

866. With a ring of power conferred to him by a dying alien,

867. he becomes a model space patrolman.

868. The only thing I kept was the oath. "In brightest day, in blackest night,

869. no evil shall escape my sight.

870. Let those who worship evil's might, beware my power, Green Lantern's light."

871. I remember that so well. I still love to say it.

872. Under Julie Schwartz,

873. dozens of characters are reborn and given science fiction origins.

874. And even more new heroes are created. Here comes Metal Men.

875. Adam Strange, Metamorpho, Teen Titans,

876. and the Challengers of the Unknown.

877. Once again, the heroes band together to fight.

878. But not as the Justice Society.

879. I hate the word "society." It sounds like a social club.

880. I want to use a better word, "League."

881. There's baseball leagues, football leagues.

882. Youngsters identify with leagues.

883. Societies, they know from nothing.

884. And when that came out, boom, boom, boom.

885. Rocketed into space.

886. Julie revived the characters, created the Silver Age of comics.

887. His revival of the Justice League

888. very directly led to the formation of Marvel Comics.

889. Marvel Comics publisher Martin Goodman

890. and DC's Jack Liebowitz play golf together.

891. So, Jack Liebowitz kept boasting to Martin Goodman,

892. "Hey, we have a big hit on our hands."

893. Martin came back from the golf game, talked to Stan Lee,

894. who was his editor, and said,

895. "DC's got this really good-selling book called, uh, Justice something.

896. You gotta do something like that."

897. And Stan Lee, the nerve of that guy,

898. puts out a magazine

899. called the Fantastic Four.

900. It proved to be a big hit.

901. So, in a sense, I not only saved DC Comics,

902. I saved Marvel Comics, too.

903. While Julie set about reinventing

904. forgotten superheroes,

905. his childhood friend takes editorial control of Superman.

906. Mort Weisinger has the reputation of being

907. perhaps the grumpiest editor in comic books.

908. One day I said, "Look, you're really mean to people."

909. And he said, "Imagine you're me.

910. You get up in the morning and you look at this face.

911. How would you feel?"

912. Mort was kind of a toad.

913. And I say this in the friendliest possible way.

914. But he just wasn't attractive.

915. On the other hand, he was smart.

916. When he really took command of Superman in the late '50s,

917. he created this strange world of cats and dogs

918. and horses that were actually humans that had been transformed.

919. He made it kind of like a big playground.

920. Weisinger also oversees the expansion

921. of the Superman family,

922. and the introduction of Supergirl.

923. I actually had a copy of the first Supergirl.

924. And I remember thinking, "Well, there's gotta be some trick

925. in the story where it's not going to... Or really be..."

926. Supergirl would be like an alien or... And then I read the comic,

927. "Oh, my goodness, it's really Supergirl. It's really, like, his cousin."

928. DC wants to bring the Superman magic to Batman.

929. These real crazy flights of fancy created all these amazing villains.

930. Which are now super-creepy because they're so weird.

931. Bat-Hounds and Batwoman and Batgirl.

932. And all these spin-off things that had worked well in the Superman universe.

933. But in the Batman universe, very quickly drove them down

934. to the point where the books were

935. about to be cancelled in the 1960s.

936. At that point, sales were so anemic...

937. that they were just gonna stop it.

938. Luckily, a TV producer was looking for something

939. big and splashy to put on TV screens.

940. And Batman fit the bill.

941. The camp and self-aware take on the Caped Crusader

942. makes stars out of Adam West and Burt Ward.

943. I took it seriously as a kid.

944. I didn't know that that stuff was supposed to be satirical.

945. I mean, it seemed riveting and dramatic to me.

946. It was an overnight sensation.

947. Batmania swept the nation. It was enormous.

948. Batman was everywhere.

949. They started making all this stuff.

950. The licensing for the Batman TV show was unprecedented.

951. As the '60s draws to a close,

952. both the quaintness of DC's heroes and the high camp of Batman

953. begin to feel out of touch

954. in the midst of race riots and draft card burnings.

955. DC comics were still sort of stuck in the '50s.

956. Nobody really had personalities or opinions, or, you know,

957. everybody kind of liked each other.

958. They were all hail-fellows, well met.

959. Justice League was kind of the Kiwanis Club

960. and Wonder Woman was their secretary.

961. Teenagers had pretty much abandoned comics

962. after the censorship battles of the mid-'50s.

963. But Marvel is bringing 'em back with these much more sort of

964. relevant, restive, challenging superheroes.

965. One company was doing things

966. that the readers actually did want to see.

967. And the other company was floundering.

968. It falls to a new generation to make DC Comics,

969. in the slang of the time, "hip, " in the Bronze Age.

970. The first generation of editors

971. are largely fading out of the business.

972. The companies aren't quite sure what to do next.

973. There's no Donenfeld on the floor anymore.

974. That creates a moment of opportunity.

975. In the late '60s, DC and Warner Bros.

976. become a part of the same corporation.

977. Ironically, that newly-corporate DC

978. brings in a whole new wave of anti-establishment writers and artists

979. like Neal Adams and Denny O'Neil.

980. Denny started as a reporter and I was an asshole.

981. We both grew up at the time that we grew up,

982. and we were very angry at society.

983. But not angry in a way, like, we're picking irrational things

984. to be angry at. There's a lot of bad stuff going on.

985. This was a shirt-and-tie business back then.

986. My hair was all over the place and I wasn't wearing

987. a suit or tie anymore, Lord knows.

988. I was not an authority-lovin' kind of guy.

989. You know, if the ruination of the business was my generation who...

990. We were happy if we were wearing socks that particular day.

991. Hippies, guys whose hair was longer than their careers.

992. Sometimes we'd work on a Friday night at the office

993. till 1:00 in the morning, until one Friday

994. where we decided to play hide and seek.

995. Tackle hide and seek, of course, 'cause you know, we were idiots.

996. And at one point, Neal saw me and tackled me

997. and went right through one of the cubicles.

998. Put a me-and-Neal-shaped hole in the wall.

999. - Now, you see, we have radar. - Yeah.

1000. So what would happen if the rockets start appearing...

1001. The real clash of countercultures

1002. started not in the books, but in the offices.

1003. I don't know what these weird hippies were doing in the hallways

1004. but they must be doing something right, these long-haired freaks.

1005. We're also the first generation that got into comics

1006. who wanted to be in comic books.

1007. We're the first generation who grew up with the comics.

1008. Who said, "This is what we want to do."

1009. There was an artist named Neal Adams,

1010. and then you had the writer Denny O'Neil.

1011. And what they started to do were stories that were much more naturalistic.

1012. And not "funny."

1013. Denny and Neal seek out a platform

1014. where they can express themselves.

1015. Not only artistically, but politically.

1016. Throughout the Silver Age, Green Lantern had been off

1017. fighting crime in outer space.

1018. I thought of him as a cop, but the best cop who ever lived,

1019. a really competent, decent man.

1020. But one who thought his job was to carry out orders.

1021. And in one issue, Denny and Neal

1022. bring him crashing down to Earth.

1023. And we needed somebody to articulate

1024. the non-establishment viewpoint.

1025. And we had this rebel, Green Arrow.

1026. This arrow-slinging guy who didn't trust anybody over 30.

1027. In fact, didn't probably trust anybody wearing a necktie.

1028. Not all these characters were invented, obviously,

1029. when there was a lot of thought going into who they really are

1030. behind the mask and behind the powers.

1031. And Green Arrow was one of those characters.

1032. And as soon as they took him and pushed him

1033. in this different direction, not only did it make sense,

1034. it was very unique. It was something that was, I think,

1035. desperately needed in the DC Universe

1036. and in comics in general.

1037. The first six pages of that story

1038. are significantly important in comic books in that

1039. they broke so many rules.

1040. It got into black versus white, it got into integration.

1041. It got into rich versus poor.

1042. This man was emptying tenements of people who couldn't pay their rent.

1043. And a young man was attacking him on the street.

1044. Not really doing much to him, just shoving him. Why?

1045. Didn't matter why to Green Lantern.

1046. Green Lantern beat him up and sent him off to jail.

1047. And then, Green Arrow watched the neighborhood throw

1048. garbage on Green Lantern

1049. and then explained to him why.

1050. "See that old lady over there?

1051. That young man that you just put in jail is her only source of income.

1052. And when that fat pig downstairs throws everybody out of this building,

1053. they're not gonna have any place to live. And he's gonna level it.

1054. Turn it into a supermarket.

1055. And that's what you did today."

1056. Page 6, an old black man turns to Green Lantern.

1057. He says, "I have seen that you've done lots of things for people

1058. on another planet out there with purple skins.

1059. Have you ever done anything for people with black skin?"

1060. You're doin' all that stuff for the extraterrestrials,

1061. you're not dealing with problems right under your feet.

1062. Not only Green Lantern,

1063. but every American that you could scratch

1064. had not done anything for their brothers.

1065. That was a time of change, remember the '60s.

1066. Big changes in America.

1067. And that was right there in that comic book.

1068. Bam! Right in your face.

1069. Green Lantern and Green Arrow embark on a quest across America

1070. confronting real-world problems.

1071. They discover racism,

1072. government corruption, labor strife, overpopulation and poverty.

1073. It forced Green Lantern and through him, the readers,

1074. to look at America as it really was at that time.

1075. Denny and Neal grow the Green Lantern family

1076. to include John Stewart,

1077. DC's first African-American superhero

1078. without the word "black" in his name.

1079. We practically destroyed the Comics Code.

1080. We attacked Nixon and Agnew in our comic book pages.

1081. The governor of Florida wrote a letter to DC Comics

1082. and said they weren't gonna distribute DC comics in Florida

1083. if we do one more thing like that.

1084. Under the Comics Code Authority,

1085. one of the biggest taboos is the depiction of drug use.

1086. I drew a cover. Speedy, Green Arrow's ward,

1087. was in the foreground, bags under his eyes,

1088. and the fixings for a heroin injection.

1089. In the background is Green Arrow,

1090. looking on in shock

1091. and Green Lantern turning to him and saying,

1092. "So, you're such a big deal, how come your ward is a drug addict?"

1093. Cover.

1094. Took it into DC Comics and gave it to Julie Schwartz

1095. and I said, "This should be our next issue."

1096. And Julie said...

1097. We undid 15, 20 years of lousy Comics Code.

1098. DC became the company that brought new artists in.

1099. So, you got a tremendous amount of experimenting.

1100. You got a new generation of comic book artists.

1101. These are all guys who saw that

1102. comics didn't have to be made by stodgy old white guys.

1103. They should be a reflection of the times.

1104. I read everything, but had this special place in my heart...

1105. for the DC horror comic line.

1106. The first time I remember falling in love with a writer,

1107. it was Len Wein.

1108. I just thought Swamp Thing was beautifully written.

1109. It was special, and weird, and magical, and odd,

1110. and I was in love, and these were my comics.

1111. As DC's characters change, Wonder Woman, too, sits for a makeover.

1112. Denny O'Neil spearheads her reinvention.

1113. She loses her star-spangled costume and her powers

1114. and trains as a martial artist

1115. under the tutelage of her mentor, I-Ching.

1116. An ordinary woman, but possessed of extraordinary combative powers,

1117. and we put her in ordinary adventures and give her boyfriends.

1118. Boy, did I screw that up.

1119. My thinking, such as it was, was this.

1120. She is a super-being beholden to a male god.

1121. Let us make her somebody who achieves on her own.

1122. What I did, in effect, was take the feminist icon

1123. and depower her, dial her way down,

1124. and then, to compound the sin, give her a mentor who is a male.

1125. And then, to compound that sin,

1126. name the male after one of the classics of Chinese literature.

1127. Whoo!

1128. Leading feminist Gloria Steinem

1129. decries this new Wonder Woman as a mere mortal

1130. who walks around in boutique clothes

1131. and takes the advice of a male mastermind,

1132. James Bond made boring and without the sexual liberties.

1133. Thank you, Gloria Steinem,

1134. for not mentioning my name in that article.

1135. I really dropped that one. I thought I was on the side of feminism.

1136. Sorry.

1137. Steinem leads the campaign to bring back

1138. the strong female role model she grew up idolizing,

1139. and in 1972, puts a costumed Wonder Woman

1140. on the very first cover of Ms. magazine.

1141. Now a symbol of a burgeoning women's lib movement,

1142. Wonder Woman, the superhero, returns.

1143. Wonder Woman

1144. Wonder Woman

1145. All the world's waiting for you

1146. And the power you possess

1147. In your satin tights

1148. Fighting for your rights

1149. And the old red, white and blue

1150. And then Lynda Carter comes along. They found their perfect Wonder Woman.

1151. I mean, I don't know that I've ever seen

1152. a better translation from the comic-book page to real life

1153. as you've seen in Wonder Woman to Lynda Carter.

1154. It fit perfectly for the time period,

1155. and was a role model for teenage girls.

1156. Excuse me, but that's very rude.

1157. - Get out of here, broad. - It's also dangerous.

1158. A girl can be a powerful character

1159. that can throw guys around

1160. and they're not gonna stop her, and you can take charge of yourself.

1161. And Super Friends was the same thing for little kids.

1162. Gathered together from the cosmic reaches of the universe,

1163. here in this great Hall of Justice,

1164. are the most powerful forces of good ever assembled.

1165. Super Friends cartoons are notable

1166. because they made Aquaman a household name.

1167. Aquaman!

1168. That's the stuff I was growing up on,

1169. and I couldn't wait to get to my TV every Saturday morning.

1170. It wasn't quite the Justice League that I knew...

1171. Wonder Twin powers activate!

1172. Form of a seagull!

1173. Shape of an ice gondola.

1174. Come on, Gleek, let's go!

1175. But it was still cool to see them on my TV screen.

1176. It did last a long, long time,

1177. and I think because those guys,

1178. even though they're fictional characters,

1179. become your heroes.

1180. So, it hits everybody when they're a young age,

1181. and when you get older, you wanna understand

1182. why they do what they do,

1183. and you wanna know more about the depth of their mythology.

1184. While the television shows awoke the interest of a new generation,

1185. DC's defining adaptation of the '70s

1186. would appeal as much to adults as to their children.

1187. Nobody had thought of a superhero movie as a potential blockbuster.

1188. But producers Ilya and Alexander Salkind decided to take a chance.

1189. I believe that could be very good as a major film.

1190. If it will be done right.

1191. With Richard Donner directing...

1192. the only hole left is the Man of Steel himself.

1193. I thought it should be an unknown.

1194. At the beginning.

1195. Now, they all started working on me,

1196. and the commercial side said we need a star.

1197. There's a moment where you weaken,

1198. and I said, "You might be right." So, we started looking for stars.

1199. And thank God Redford turned it down.

1200. Dozens of hopefuls are screen-tested.

1201. Even Salkind's first wife's dentist.

1202. I won't have to fly anywhere,

1203. not after you tell me where the controls are.

1204. Wouldn't you know it. Story of my life.

1205. The single most important interview...

1206. But the role goes to a 25-year-old Juilliard graduate,

1207. Christopher Reeve.

1208. Good evening, Miss Lane.

1209. Careful, you'll...

1210. Okay. So, you won't.

1211. Thank you very much for finding the time for this interview.

1212. I realize there must be many questions about me

1213. the world would like to know the answers to.

1214. What sets Superman apart

1215. is that he has the wisdom to use his power for good.

1216. He's got the kind of maturity, or he's got the innocence, really,

1217. to look at the world very, very simply,

1218. and that's what makes him so different. When he says...

1219. I'm here to fight for truth, and justice, and the American way.

1220. Everybody goes... You know. But he's not kidding.

1221. It was just so perfectly cast.

1222. Christopher Reeve as Superman.

1223. Nobody else can touch the hem of that cape.

1224. January 26th, 1979, was the most important day in my life.

1225. I went to see Superman: The Movie, and I saw it twice in that one day,

1226. and I walked out,

1227. and I knew that no matter what the rest of my life was gonna be,

1228. it had to involve Superman.

1229. I remember literally running out in the parking lot afterwards

1230. with my hands in front of me, pretending I was flying.

1231. By far, my favorite scene in the Superman movie

1232. was the helicopter save.

1233. When you see Superman full-blown

1234. for the first time on your motion-picture screen...

1235. What the hell is that?

1236. Easy, miss. I've got you.

1237. - You've got me. Who's got you? - Hmm.

1238. He's just sort of like, "Oh, good one." And it's just so understated.

1239. You're so focused on her at the moment, you don't see that.

1240. And that, to me, is Superman. That's that sort of...

1241. He's just one of us.

1242. Everyone, stand back, please. Stand back.

1243. It's all right. Nothing to get worried about.

1244. Here is a character,

1245. in a world where I didn't feel like I was being paid attention to,

1246. in a world where I didn't feel like I mattered,

1247. here is somebody who cares about everybody.

1248. Whether you're rich or poor, or black or white,

1249. Superman cares about everybody.

1250. A new wave of Supermania hits in the wake of the film's success,

1251. a wave that rolls into three sequels.

1252. - Watch the trees. - Whoa!

1253. A challenge from Muhammad Ali

1254. and a merchandising bonanza.

1255. And it really cemented this idea

1256. that these characters are timeless,

1257. that this is not your father's Superman.

1258. This is a Superman for a modern era.

1259. Two years before the Superman film

1260. swept across America,

1261. behind the scenes, DC had hired its very own Wonder Woman.

1262. Jenette Kahn became the company's first female publisher.

1263. At 28 years old, the youngest one as well.

1264. Jenette wasn't plucked from the ranks of comic books.

1265. She was an erudite, experienced person in the world,

1266. and not a neighborhood guy.

1267. She wasn't married to any concepts that were in comics

1268. because she came from the outside.

1269. She was very much responsible for royalties,

1270. which changed all of our lives,

1271. and really came into the business intending to make changes.

1272. Jenette let DC be DC.

1273. In fact, one of the first things she did

1274. was change the name of the company from National Periodical Publications

1275. to DC Comics.

1276. I still remember one of the first times I met her...

1277. she was talking about the literary potential of comics...

1278. and how you could tell any kind of story in comics

1279. and she would love to be able to do that someday.

1280. There was this revolution really happening,

1281. and at DC, in particular,

1282. they wanted to foster that new thinking

1283. and that modern sensibility.

1284. DC seeks out new audiences

1285. and again rebuilds their iconic characters

1286. as reflections of the time in the Modern Age.

1287. I, Ronald Reagan, do solemnly swear

1288. that I will faithfully execute the office

1289. of President of the United States.

1290. In the '80s,

1291. there was a whole new conservative grip to the nation.

1292. Some of the younger comic book creators were not as keen on that,

1293. chief among them, Frank Miller.

1294. One of seven children from a blue-collar family,

1295. Miller moved to New York City's Hell's Kitchen as a teenager

1296. and established himself as a striking new voice in comics.

1297. He's not afraid.

1298. And you gotta kind of be punk.

1299. You just gotta be punk once in a while.

1300. Miller sets out to re-envision Batman

1301. in the age of new conservatism...

1302. in The Dark Knight Returns.

1303. There's something very antiquated about the whole notion.

1304. And the effort of Dark Knight was to revive it.

1305. It wasn't to bury the idea

1306. and it wasn't to kick it around the block a few times

1307. or do an autopsy,

1308. it was to make the idea work

1309. in a modern context.

1310. In The Dark Knight Returns, after Batman's retirement,

1311. the world crumbles into a police state.

1312. And now, as a man in his 50s,

1313. Bruce Wayne is moved to don the cape and cowl once again.

1314. He's rolling over Gotham like a tank. And if you're in his way, God help you.

1315. Most of the basic assumptions of comics up until the past few years,

1316. everything had to happen in a very benevolent world

1317. where you can always trust the cops,

1318. you can always trust your elected officials,

1319. you can always trust your parents.

1320. It's unfortunate that, for so many years,

1321. the basic idea of superheroes

1322. was made impossible

1323. by putting it in a world where it didn't need any.

1324. Superman is painted as Ronald Reagan's right-hand man,

1325. the force of law and order that must contain the vigilante Batman.

1326. Now, the whole climax of the book

1327. ends up being Superman and Batman literally trading blows

1328. as Batman rains upon him with Kryptonite gloves.

1329. And really, in that moment, you're seeing the fire of liberalism

1330. pound the crap out of the staid, conservative era of the 1980s.

1331. The first press run of The Dark Knight Returns

1332. sells out each and every copy.

1333. We haven't done a second printing of a comic book

1334. for possibly 50 years.

1335. The book ultimately went through four printings.

1336. It really was something everyone was looking at.

1337. Wow, wow, wow!

1338. And I remember getting to the end of the third installment,

1339. "Oh, my God. This is just brilliant."

1340. When it came out, it was a very startling new approach to Batman.

1341. It was suddenly getting written up in the music industry press,

1342. but it also found a whole new audience.

1343. So, I did a Plastic Man book years ago

1344. and it was for kids...

1345. and this was when I found out

1346. that the superhero audience is no longer kids.

1347. I want you to tell all your friends about me.

1348. What are you?

1349. I'm Batman.

1350. The success of The Dark Knight Returns

1351. gives rise three years later to Batman,

1352. directed by Tim Burton.

1353. Tim Burton's first Batman movie explodes the audience for comics.

1354. The size of the business about doubles in that one year.

1355. And to many, it's irrelevant what this movie is about.

1356. They will tell you this movie is a happening unto itself.

1357. The film spawns three sequels...

1358. Meow.

1359. and a Fleischer-inspired animated series.

1360. The industry was really starting to see

1361. the first sort of quake,

1362. you know, the first trembles of, "Hey, this can be something else."

1363. My name's Alan Moore.

1364. I write comics.

1365. Alan Moore grew up in poor, working-class Northampton.

1366. An underground comic book artist, Moore was also a vegetarian,

1367. practicing magician and self-proclaimed anarchist.

1368. The most important thing

1369. that you have to understand about Alan Moore

1370. is that he's a genius.

1371. I do like to try and put me finger upon the exact nerve, if possible,

1372. of what really scares people. It's sadism and I'm getting paid for it.

1373. Wherever he had taken his talents

1374. in whatever medium,

1375. he would've changed the game.

1376. When I needed a new writer for Swamp Thing,

1377. I thought of Alan. I liked Alan's work.

1378. And I called him up."Alan, hi.

1379. This is Len Wein. I'd like to talk to you about working for me."

1380. "Come on. Who is this, really?"

1381. "No, it's Len Wein."

1382. "Oh, come on, mate, who is it?"

1383. "No, it's Len Wein."

1384. "Right. Goodbye." He hung up on me.

1385. I thought it was one of my friends playing a practical joke

1386. and putting on a funny American accent, you know?

1387. But, no, it was the real Len Wein

1388. and he said, "Would you like to write Swamp Thing?"

1389. And, you know, when I'd picked myself up off the floor, I said, "Yes."

1390. "I'd love to,

1391. but, you know, do I have to do exactly what you did?"

1392. I said, "I hope not."

1393. The Swamp Thing had always been a man

1394. transformed into a monster.

1395. Moore reverses it,

1396. creates, in his words, "a plant with delusions of grandeur.

1397. A monster who thinks it's a man."

1398. I'd given up on comics.

1399. And I picked up a Swamp Thing.

1400. I loved the intelligence. I loved the passion.

1401. And Alan had brought me back.

1402. The next big project of Alan's, of course,

1403. after that was Watchmen,

1404. and which was just this absolute and utter game-changer.

1405. Watchmen actually examined the implications of the superhero.

1406. If these absurd characters were real,

1407. just what they'd do to the world.

1408. If there had been a Superman ever,

1409. the world would be unrecognizable.

1410. I don't want everybody to agree with me. I just want people to think.

1411. It seems to me that anything these days

1412. which is slightly to the left of Genghis Khan

1413. is immediately labeled "subversive."

1414. If, in this current time,

1415. tolerance and sensitivity of any kind

1416. are labeled "loony left" or "subversive,"

1417. then I would be quite proud to be considered a subversive.

1418. The whole concept of Watchmen

1419. is very much a reaction to Thatcher's England,

1420. that very Orwellian sense of government power

1421. and sense of censorship

1422. and sense of personal freedoms being curtailed.

1423. What frightens people these days

1424. is not the idea of a werewolf jumping out at them.

1425. It's the idea of a nuclear war

1426. coursing through our society at the moment.

1427. And I think that to really frighten people,

1428. you have to somehow ground the horror in their own experience,

1429. things that they're frightened of.

1430. Watchmen just stretched the limits of what we thought a comic book was

1431. and found a way to use superheroes or genre conventions

1432. as a metaphor for talking about the Cold War.

1433. It was like, "Wow! These things can be about something."

1434. Superhero stories can actually be about something.

1435. I remember being a teenager reading those books at the time,

1436. and finally, there was something you could show your college professor...

1437. or you could show your doubting uncle,

1438. and they'd say, "Wow! This is... You know, this is a literary work."

1439. Watchmen was the culmination

1440. of something that had been happening for a few years

1441. which people were calling "the British Invasion."

1442. There was a bunch of English writers and artists

1443. suddenly being brought in, mainly by DC.

1444. Editor Karen Berger is tasked

1445. with finding more up-and-coming UK artists and writers.

1446. For me, being a woman coming from outside of comics,

1447. what they were doing was the stuff that really interested me,

1448. and what they wanted to do. They wanted to change things.

1449. They wanted to mature comics. They wanted to be provocative.

1450. We had a whole generation of people

1451. who'd grown up reading this stuff, who'd been obsessed by it...

1452. and always imagined doing it.

1453. And to finally get this chance was just unbelievable.

1454. 'Cause a lot of people actually lived up to

1455. the sense that we've got something to prove here.

1456. I'd really wanted to write comics.

1457. That was what I wanted to do.

1458. And it was an ambition that I gave up after an unsatisfactory...

1459. meeting with a careers counselor.

1460. I explained that I wanted to write American comics.

1461. And he sat there, and he stared at me and after a while, he said,

1462. "Have you ever thought about accountancy?"

1463. For years, I had to explain to people

1464. that comics was a medium and not a genre.

1465. It is an empty bottle and you could put anything you like in that bottle.

1466. In Neil Gaiman's reinvention of the Sandman,

1467. an amateur sorcerer seeking everlasting life sets out to trap Death

1468. and mistakenly snares her brother,

1469. Dream, the Sandman, instead.

1470. After seven decades of captivity, Dream is released

1471. and takes his revenge.

1472. No one cared about the concept of the Sandman

1473. until Neil Gaiman reinvented it.

1474. And Sandman really was a comic that I was writing to please myself.

1475. I think there are lots of other people

1476. who like the same kind of stuff that I like.

1477. The mythos Neil Gaiman creates in Sandman

1478. soon outstrips sales of DC's flagship character, Superman.

1479. And Sandman brings with it a whole new audience.

1480. Every 14-year-old Goth girl in the world

1481. is reading Sandman.

1482. And the giant influx of new readers we have

1483. is unbelievable.

1484. That comic became one of the most literate, most well-drawn,

1485. most well-written comics that we've ever done.

1486. You know, DC's realized it needs to create an imprint for that stuff

1487. because it has a unique and distinct voice of its own.

1488. There was that fire. There was that creative sensibility.

1489. We were doing this whole bunch of cool, edgy, irreverent,

1490. literate comics.

1491. It was V for Vendetta, it was Sandman,

1492. it was Animal Man, it was Hellblazer,

1493. it was Shade the Changing Man, it was Swamp Thing,

1494. Doom Patrol, Books of Magic.

1495. You know, they said, "Well, what would you like to do with it?

1496. You know, would you like an imprint,

1497. or you'd like to do something on your own,

1498. you know, separated from the rest of the superhero stuff?"

1499. I'm like, "Are you crazy? Of course I'd love that."

1500. That's pretty much how Vertigo started.

1501. Under editor Karen Berger,

1502. Vertigo becomes the imprint for mature audiences,

1503. grabbing the attention of the mainstream press,

1504. inventing and reinventing genres

1505. and consistently pushing the boundaries of what constitutes a comic.

1506. And if we're really talking about making comics relevant

1507. and really treating this as a real literary form,

1508. you gotta let people, you know,

1509. create their own work and have a stake in it.

1510. In 1993, minority creators come together to form Milestone

1511. with Dwayne McDuffie as editor-in-chief.

1512. Blacks in comics for many, many, many, many years...

1513. were drawn as subhuman.

1514. The Spirit, which is a relatively realistically drawn comic,

1515. Ebony White could have been a gremlin.

1516. I'm not sure a modern reader would understand that he was human.

1517. You just got into the habit

1518. of looking past that so you could have entertainment.

1519. The few black characters who had their own books

1520. were mostly the children of blaxploitation movie fad,

1521. as much like Shaft as they could get away with.

1522. I just never had met anyone

1523. who was anything like the black characters

1524. who existed in comics.

1525. DC was very experimental, very open to new voices and new ideas,

1526. which was really the biggest part of Milestone.

1527. Milestone initially launches four titles

1528. that far outsell the founders' expectations.

1529. And Static is adapted into a popular animated series.

1530. The industry has changed.

1531. You know, it used to be very dominated by white men

1532. and that has changed, and that's good.

1533. We're attracting a broader audience

1534. and, you know, frankly, I think the stories are more interesting.

1535. South Korean immigrant Jim Lee

1536. turned away from premed studies to pursue his love of comics.

1537. He became a massively popular artist,

1538. and in 1992, founds WildStorm.

1539. We really did it because we wanted to change things

1540. and control the stuff that we were doing.

1541. WildStorm goes on to merge with DC

1542. and the partnership continues to produce popular and enduring titles.

1543. While Vertigo, Milestone and WildStorm are all reaching new audiences,

1544. Superman has again fallen out of touch with his.

1545. A decade past the success of the films, sales are lagging.

1546. We started having what we called "Super Summits, "

1547. and everybody would get together in a room

1548. and we would literally plan out a year's worth of stories.

1549. We had plotted out a continuity that involved

1550. Superman getting married.

1551. Jenette Kahn managed to interest Hollywood

1552. in doing a Lois & Clark television show.

1553. And we said, "Ooh, gee, maybe we shouldn't get them married just yet.

1554. Maybe they'll get married on the show

1555. and we could do the comic at the same time."

1556. So we went to the room of writers and artists and told them

1557. we weren't gonna do the story they'd been planning on.

1558. A whole year's worth of continuity that we'd just plotted

1559. is, pssh, out the window.

1560. Jerry said, as he always did, "Let's just kill him."

1561. Now, up to this point, we'd say,

1562. "Ha-ha. Yeah, legit, Jerry, that's right."

1563. This time, we said, "You know..."

1564. We thought that the world wasn't really as appreciative of Superman

1565. as they ought to be.

1566. And we thought, "Well, let them see what a world without Superman

1567. might be like."

1568. A comic fan who works for the Miami Herald

1569. decides to write about it,

1570. and the whole world stops and says, "This is important."

1571. Of course he's coming back.

1572. I mean, does anyone really believe they're killing Superman?

1573. You know, and people did.

1574. Superman meets his match in Doomsday,

1575. an indestructible monster from the depths of the earth.

1576. With every issue, the art grows with Superman's peril.

1577. From four panels, to three,

1578. to two, until the death issue itself.

1579. All full-page panels of the slugfest that kills the Man of Steel.

1580. And then we get to do the world without Superman.

1581. How his death affects all of his friends,

1582. and the city, and the world.

1583. Superman's funeral cortège moves through Metropolis

1584. and affects people as it passes.

1585. People try to become...

1586. In a way, embody Superman as they see him.

1587. Every time I talk about it, I burst into tears.

1588. And then, his parents.

1589. I actually love the scene

1590. where his parents are burying his little kid stuff in their grave

1591. 'cause that's all they've got to bury.

1592. Superman belongs to the world

1593. and they only have these little things to bury.

1594. And they create a grave for him.

1595. They bury these little things kind of symbolically.

1596. I think that people need an ideal

1597. to look at and to try to become.

1598. And I think that, for me,

1599. maybe Superman is partly that kind of ideal.

1600. Across the country, fans stage memorials

1601. for the Man of Steel.

1602. And "The Death of Superman" issue

1603. becomes the best-selling comic in history.

1604. It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a '79 Ford.

1605. But it's carrying some pretty important cargo.

1606. Superman Issue 75,

1607. the issue in which the Man of Steel meets his maker.

1608. We packaged it with armbands

1609. and we ran out of silk to make the armbands.

1610. There were so many comics ordered

1611. that it was ridiculous.

1612. The Superman team enjoys their success

1613. and keeps Superman out of the books for months

1614. until his inevitable resurrection, another best-seller.

1615. But Superman is a heartfelt exception to the cynical comics of the time.

1616. There is always an unfortunate backwash

1617. from the big success.

1618. There was a tremendous amount of imitation.

1619. Almost every superhero seemed to have

1620. to have some of that gritty, psychological darkness

1621. of Watchmen and Dark Knight.

1622. They got darker, and darker, and darker, and they forgot the core

1623. of what most of these superhero comics are,

1624. which is about triumphing over adversity.

1625. The only way you could tell the villains from the heroes

1626. was by whose logo was on the cover.

1627. I mean, their behavior was evil.

1628. Not morally ambiguous, these guys were just flat-out,

1629. "Oh, I'm gonna kill this guy. He's a guard."

1630. Dismayed by what they saw as a lack of meaning

1631. in contemporary comic books,

1632. writer Mark Waid and artist Alex Ross

1633. come together to challenge the decade's murky tone

1634. in Kingdom Come.

1635. Alex and I both had this unbridled love

1636. for these characters.

1637. And we both were coming off

1638. of a reaction to comics of the late '80s and early '90s,

1639. which was a dark era.

1640. Are audiences looking at a world

1641. where white picket fences sometimes hide some really creepy secrets?

1642. That sort of wholesome America of the 1950s

1643. I associate with Superman.

1644. I wanted to see if we couldn't pull him into the America of the 21st century.

1645. It was a rebuke to '90s superheroes.

1646. All the old superheroes had gotten off the job

1647. and let these new, young guys, who didn't have any morals,

1648. take over, and everything went to hell.

1649. Superman has to come back and say,

1650. "Hey, whoa, wait, this isn't how we do things."

1651. Kingdom Come was very much a reaction

1652. to a world in which superheroes had just become things

1653. that fight against other things. They don't fight for anything.

1654. Kingdom Come is the first expression

1655. of a new dissatisfaction

1656. with meaningless, cynical storytelling,

1657. a call to action that grows more profound

1658. with the events of September 11th, 2001.

1659. You could not live or work in New York

1660. without being affected by the turn of events.

1661. Probably even more so than most places in the country.

1662. You saw people so much more guarded,

1663. so much more afraid than they ever were before.

1664. At that same moment, they were never more inspired

1665. by the people who went in and risked their lives.

1666. These were normal, average people,

1667. and there's story after story, tale after tale,

1668. people continued to persevere and do their job

1669. even though they knew death was upon them.

1670. It makes it very hard to tell fictional stories

1671. when you have real heroes out there doing that.

1672. New York and Gotham City are the same.

1673. I do subscribe to this notion that the heroes, they're cyphers for us

1674. and they're ways for us to be able to speak about the world.

1675. I think people do tend to see heroic projections of good

1676. as nostalgic or corny,

1677. and I think there are some people,

1678. maybe people who have children in their lives,

1679. who want to be able to provide stories...

1680. Or if you think of it in a deeper sense, like, ideas of good.

1681. Post-9/11, people wanted heroes to look up to

1682. instead of heroes that were...

1683. You know, that were not really heroes at all.

1684. For me, I think, that's probably why

1685. superheroes continue to climb up, because we do need heroes.

1686. We need aspirational, inspirational heroes.

1687. That's why we like comic books. That's why we love comic books.

1688. We love comic books because we think

1689. maybe if the conditions present themselves,

1690. we will be the hero of the moment.

1691. Could the men that started DC Comics

1692. have guessed what the company they began 75 years ago

1693. would one day become?

1694. My favorite character is Superman.

1695. He's someone that you aspire to be.

1696. Becoming better than what you are right now.

1697. Would it be unrecognizable to them?

1698. Or did they have a notion from the start that the voices and visions

1699. of each generation of new writers and artists

1700. might forever invent the company anew?

1701. You know, one of the wonderful things about working in comics is,

1702. you get to build on people and people build on you.

1703. You have all that under you and then you add to it

1704. and say, "I'm gonna make my mark over here."

1705. I'm going to tell the story that hasn't been told...

1706. about this character.

1707. Yeah, sometimes, they just need the right take

1708. or they need the love...

1709. Like, somebody who really understands it or sees something new in it.

1710. And it's not just entertaining people,

1711. it's giving them something to think about

1712. and some values, maybe something to live towards.

1713. I don't really even wanna think about a world without DC.

1714. I love superheroes because they're just, like,

1715. everything you wanna do in your life.

1716. Girl power.

1717. You like to help people, they help people.

1718. You get to live it through them.

1719. Being 75 years is a good thing. Shows you longevity and staying power.

1720. Seventy-five years, you don't wanna be your grandfather's superhero either.

1721. The spirit of innovation that was there at the company's creation

1722. is still its guiding force.

1723. Shows like Smallville,

1724. the longest-running live-action superhero series in TV history.

1725. With everything I've learned,

1726. apparently I'm just getting started.

1727. Games like Arkham Asylum and the DC Universe Online.

1728. Box-office smashes like Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins

1729. and The Dark Knight

1730. have given today's audiences

1731. distinctly modern interpretations of classic DC characters.

1732. A little fight in you.

1733. I like that.

1734. Then you're gonna love me.

1735. What began in two dimensions and pulp paper

1736. has now become the basis for storytelling

1737. across genres and media.

1738. Animated features and series,

1739. live-action television and film.

1740. - You're the hero. - I really don't like talking about it.

1741. Are you ready to cooperate?

1742. No.

1743. Comics are a storytelling format you can tell any kind of story on.

1744. You know, we provided this great space for creative talent

1745. to really have a place to tell their stories.

1746. It doesn't take a genius to see the world has problems.

1747. We can save this world.

1748. You have a lot of people that are...

1749. very respected in the world of film

1750. coming and writing comics and vice versa.

1751. They've made a more sophisticated form of telling stories...

1752. and they've made it a more respected form of telling stories.

1753. Look, in the sky.

1754. - It's a bird. - It's a plane.

1755. No, look, it's...

1756. You wanted to see me?

1757. You gotta make these characters into real people that you care about.

1758. And if you can do that,

1759. then, if somebody's dangling off the side of a building,

1760. it really does upset you.

1761. I really feel like I kind of grew up

1762. with these people around me,

1763. so I talk about them.

1764. I actually, like, I say, "I really like Clark,"

1765. or "I really like when Bruce said this or when Tim did this." Yeah.

1766. The average person just eavesdropping

1767. could think I'm actually talking about, like, friends or family.

1768. The characters are so flexible. You can't break them.

1769. They've worked in every era

1770. because creators have always found a way to talk about

1771. what's interesting to them now, what's happening in the culture now.

1772. Superheroes are these archetypes that live within us,

1773. and then somebody figures out a way to present them to us

1774. in a way that is compatible with the realities that we live in.

1775. They're still around after all these decades

1776. because they have been allowed to evolve.

1777. Superman has become a household name.

1778. Batman is recognized in every country around the world.

1779. In the '30s and '40s, you know, the newsstands were choked with

1780. comic book publishers and comic book characters

1781. that are forgotten today.

1782. DC managed to guide those characters into the future.

1783. What's exciting to me is that

1784. five, ten years ago,

1785. there were kids out there who were reading comics that I wrote,

1786. that are about to break into the business tomorrow.

1787. And I can't wait to see what they want to bring to the table.

1788. That is something that I could never envision.

1789. That's what I want to see and that's the future of DC Comics.

1790. The size and scope of DC today

1791. might well be far beyond

1792. the wildest dreams of the ambitious men who began it.

1793. But the characters continue to be built as they always have,

1794. by drawing on history, and culture, and personal experience

1795. to convey the deepest hopes of the new generation,

1796. in whatever form the comics may take.

1797. I have no idea how much longer books have for this world.

1798. But I do know people like Siegel and Shuster,

1799. people like Bob Kane and Bill Finger,

1800. Julie Schwartz, bless his soul,

1801. then Alan Moore,

1802. these people came up with characters

1803. and stories that are gonna be around forever.

1804. Whether you're reading it on a small thing

1805. that looks like a diamond that you tap with your finger,

1806. and it beams the entire content straight into your retina,

1807. or whether you're reading it on something that you can fold up

1808. and put in your pocket afterwards,

1809. and you want to pile up out in your tree house, I don't know.

1810. But I can tell you that 100 years from now,

1811. there will be kids who want to find out what's happening with Superman.