Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the seven hundred and ninety-first installment where we examine three comic book legends and determine whether they are true or false.
As usual, there will be three posts, one for each of the three legends. Click here for the first legend from this installment. Click here for the second legend from this installment.
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COMIC LEGEND:
Julius Schwartz was recruited to sort of write a script for Batman: Black and White.
STATUS:
True
Reader Neil R. wrote in to ask the following:
I'm also a life-time fan of the works of DC editor Julius Schwartz. In his sixty or so years of working for the company, he has been credited as the writer of only three full comic book scripts; the Johnny Thunder story that appeared in the Big All-American One-Shot in the golden age (intentionally miscredited), an almost unpublished Alan Scott Green Lantern story that finally saw print an issue of The Amazing World of DC Comics, and a single as-yet-unidentified story from the series Foley of the Fighting Fifth, from the pages of the 1950's All-Star Western. Uncredited, he wrote hundreds of one-page fact-file style comic scripts, but only three actual adventure stories, although the amount of rewriting he did with the scripts of other writers often verged on changing them beyond recognition.
Shortly around the time he retired from DC, the title Batman: Gotham Knights began a back-up series of black & white stories created by a variety of talented writers and artists. Issue #20 featured a Batman story entitled "The Lesson" that is credited to Julius Schwartz with Dan Raspler. It's my understanding that Schwartz simply never had much interest in being a writer, preferring to fine tune the scripts of other writers. When I saw his name attached to this new script, I felt the need to call shenanigans. Did he really write that story himself? Did he co-plot or split scripting chores? Was it Raspler's story and Julie was asked to fiddle with it? I'm curious to know the Secret Origin of what I believe to the story #3.5 for Julius Schwartz. Can you solve this mystery?
Sure, glad to help, Neil!
(As an aside, Schwartz obviously re-wrote many scripts over the years, just not necessarily his own. He also supplied a lot of plots over the years, just not credited most of the time).
First off, as noted, here is the Johnny Thunder story from the Big All-American Comic Book #1 one-shot that Schwartz wrote under the name of John B. Wentworth, who was another writer from the era...
And here is the unpublished Green Lantern story that finally saw print in The Amazing World of DC Comics #3 (and all issue devoted to Julius Schwartz)...
And, since you note that we don't know WHICH Foley of the Fighting Fifth Schwartz wrote, here's one chosen pretty much at random...
And yes, finally, here is the story, "The Lesson," that Schwartz and Dan Raspler did with artist Christian Alamy for Batman: Gotham Knights #20 (the comic book had a great Brian Bolland Batman/Superman cover. That's what I used for the featured image, in case you were wondering why that image is for this article)...
As you can see, the story was edited by the great Mark Chiarello, so I asked him about it and he gave me the details...
One day, while sitting in Dan Raspler's office, I wondered out loud if Julie had ever written anything. He was obviously hailed as a great editor, but I thought it'd be cool to get the Legend to write a Batman B&W story for me. Raspler, who appreciated the concept of stunt casting and relished a challenge, said he'd get Julie to write it for me! Thinking Dan was nuts (which I often thought), I quickly forgot the offer.
A week later, Dan dropped an 8-page script on my desk and said "Here's Julie's Batman story!" With a smirk, he told me that he had taken Julie out for lunch and they sat for two hours and co-plotted the short story.
I was ecstatic that Dan had delivered the big fish. I guess I'll never know how much of the story Julie actually wrote, and I never will, but I don't know that that matters. What matters is I'm the genius that got Julie Schwartz to write a Batman story. Well, ok, it was ALL Raspler.
So there ya go, Neil!
Thanks for the question and thanks so much to Mark Chiarello for the great story! And thanks, I guess, to Dan Raspler, for creating a little bit of comic book history there.
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OK, that's it for this installment!
Thanks to the Grand Comics Database for this week's covers! And thanks to Brandon Hanvey for the Comic Book Legends Revealed logo, which I don't even actually use on the CBR editions of this column, but I do use them when I collect them all on legendsrevealed.com!
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