I should've mentioned that after my previous post about MAN OF TWO WORLDS, the book took a terrible turn for me. After the first third of the book--which is all about Schwartz's early life in science fiction--I was thinking this book would be one of my all time favourite reads. But as soon as he gets into his life in comics, the book just loses any kind of flow and natural organization. Plus he leaves out a lot.
He even leaves out his friend Mort Weisinger. Weisinger figured so prominently in Schwartz's life (in the first third of the book), but Schwartz omits just how Weisinger ended up at DC. A crucial part of the story since Weisinger got Alfred Bester into comics and Bester got Schwartz into comics. So how did Mort get into comics--I dunno.
Schwartz is full of little interesting anecdotes--some of which I've read before, others I never knew--but he goes back and forth through time so much that if I didn't have a thorough knowledge of comics history, I would not know when different events were happening. The book is incredibly disjointed, after the first third that holds together so nicely.
One thing we miss is much insight into Schwartz's personal life after he starts at DC. On top of that he never gives much insight into the editing craft either. We just have to trust that he's some kind of editing savant who seemingly never had a life outside the office and all these great comics just happened by magic.
And the book is riddled with glaring mistakes--suggesting that it was never given much of a good copy edit or proofread. And not much of a substantive edit, either. What this book about a great editor sorely needed was a great editor. Which is really sad for me, because I can see the diamond in the rough that this book could have been. If this book had been published by a minor house, the lack of editorial oversight would be understandable--but this was published by HarperCollins, a leader in the publishing field (or has Rupert Murdoch left HarperCollins a shadow of its former self).
One parenthetical passage in the book's epilogue by the co-author, Brian M. Thomson, really had me scratching my head. Listing some of those who have passed away since the writing of the book began, he adds
"(not to mention the credited creators of Batman himself, Bob Kane and Joe Orlando)."
I just can't figure that one out, because it can't be a typo. The only credited creator of Batman was Bob Kane. We know that Bill Finger co-created Batman (but was never credited for it), but we also know (as covered in a charming anecdote in the body of the book) that Bill Finger died many years before this, so Thomson couldn't have meant Finger. Orlando only had a fleeting involvement with Batman years and years after the character was created and he was never anywhere near the DC offices when Batman was created. So I'm at a loss to figure out what Thomson meant to say in that comment--and because it comes so close to the end of the book, its ghost haunts me still.
