5 Quick Questions with Elliot S. Maggin

Elliot S. Maggin is an American writer of comic books, film, television and novels. He was a main writer for DC Comics during the Bronze and early Modern ages of comics in the 1970s and 1980s. He is particularly associated with the character of Superman, where he worked on both Action Comics and Superman.

Maggin started working as a professional writer in his teens, selling historical stories about the Boer War to a boys' magazine. He attended Brandeis University, where he wrote a term paper titled "What Can One Man Do?" for a class during his junior year. When it received a grade of B+, Maggin disagreed with the assessment, remade it as a comic book script, and sent his script to DC Comics. It was passed around the DC offices, and Neal Adams chose to draw the script. Though the initial grade was not amended, Maggin became a writer for DC, selling his stories to fund a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University.

Maggin is responsible for a number of innovations in the DC Multiverse. Two that continue to shape the worlds of DC are Superboy-Prime (later given greater definition by Marv Wolfman, Geoff Johns and others) and Lexcorp (later more fully developed by John Byrne and others).

In addition to the hundreds of stories Maggin wrote for the DC comics universe, he has also written television scripts, stories for film, animation and journalistic pieces. Many of them have continued to show his allegiance to comic book characters. He wrote two Superman novels, Last Son of Krypton and Miracle Monday. He also wrote the novelization of the graphic novel Kingdom Come based on the story by Mark Waid, and a novel featuring the Marvel mutant superhero team Generation X. He has occasionally sold scripts to non-print versions of superheroes, including Spider-Man (1994), X-Men (1992) and Batman: The Animated Series.

Besides his work in comics, he has received compensation for raising horses, skiing instruction, teaching at various high schools and colleges, writing stories for Atari video games, and working on websites. In addition to on-going freelance writing, he currently works as a developmental learning consultant for Kaiser Permanente.



He agreed to answer 5 Quick Questions


1) What would you say is your greatest achievement in comics?

I like to think I put Superman back on track at a crucial time. I saved Superman. Cool, huh? At the time I started writing comics no one seemed much interested in the character. He was old stuff, and DC was institutionally perplexed enough with what to do next that they effectively put their flagship character in the hands of a couple of kids still in college. Mort Weisinger had just retired, leaving the character to his buddy Julie Schwartz who had very little familiarity with him until he did a good deal of research. Denny O’Neil had just finished a good run on Superman, but he just hated working with the character. He felt he had to de-power Superman in order to work with him, and that was kind of off the point so he didn’t have any idea of where to go next – other than back to Batman. Len Wein did some really good stuff, but he was more interested in making up new stuff than in plowing an already mature field. Cary Bates loved Superman, and the chemistry between us was such that we would compete with each other to do stories that were innovative at the same time as they stayed within the tradition of the mythology. We tried to approach the stories as a scholar would approach classical mythological themes, but we placed them squarely in the modern world. Instead of a magic castle or a gingerbread house we’d involve a subway or a skyscraper as a setting. The idea was to place the wonder in the world with which readers were familiar. I wrote a treatment for a Superman movie and had a hand in pushing the company to revive the character in other media. No one really considered my treatment for a film, but it lit a fire under the management to do something new with Superman. So eventually I expanded the treatment as a novel, Superman: Last Son of Krypton, which was marketed with the first Chris Reeve Superman movie. Oh, and I also made up the phrase “Last Son of Krypton,” which people seem to think has been tagged on the character as long as “Man of Steel.”

I must be in an effusive mood. I don’t usually talk about this stuff. Thanks for asking.

2) Who was your favorite writer or artist that you worked with & why?

Obviously my favorite writer with whom to work was Cary. I didn’t really work with a lot of other writers. I’ve worked with some of the most significant artists in the field. It’s hard to pick a favorite, but I have: Alex Toth. We did only one story together – a Superman-Batman-Luthor free-for-all -- but what I liked about what Alex did was that he was able to translate the intent of my script into the attitudes of the players. I always thought of these characters as just guys interacting with their world, ex officio, hanging out together. That’s the way they talked to each other, and when Alex drew them that was also the way they stood and moved. No one poses for the camera in an Alex story. The iconography is something that results from the circumstance, rather than the other way around. Very few artists are able to communicate that. Almost as few ever try.

3) What character you have never worked .., would you like to do & why?

Kull the Conqueror. Remember him? Kind of a second-tier Robert E Howard creation that had a short run at Marvel in the Seventies. Roy Thomas wrote it and I think John and Marie Severin did the art. It was kind of a little unassuming masterpiece. He was this barbarian freebooter who became king of pre-civilized Atlantis, a walking id who became the most powerful person on the planet. An uneducated Henry VIII. A smart George W Bush. There was great grist there. They made a movie later on with Kevin Sorbo, who was actually pretty good, but overall the movie bit the big one.

4) Who are your influences?

In real life, Julie Schwartz and a guy named Max Lerner who wrote a political column and some great books on American civilization. In my mind, Mark Twain, Thomas Jefferson, Kurt Vonnegut, Homer and – a little bit – Scott Card. But don’t have a political conversation with that last guy; he’ll drive you up a wall.

5) What hero or villain would you like to change if you could and why?

Tough one. I think what I most like to do is change characters back. I like to bring them back to what originally made them successful, before people with outsize egos started screwing with them. I’d like to write the screenplay for yet another attempt to re-create the Hulk for the movies. Neither script got it right. You know what I’d really like to write? Topper. Remember him? He was a stuffy banker who was haunted by the free spirits of the wild, generally intoxicated couple who had previously lived in his house. It was a terrific television series in the Fifties and there have been several unsuccessful, ill-thought-out attempts to revive him, and there’s supposed to be a new movie next year with Steve Martin in the lead. That’s pretty good casting; I’m hopeful. I hope they’ll approach it less as a vehicle for Steve Martin – as they approached Clouseau – and more as an updated version of what worked really well back at the dawn of time. I kind of know how I think they should do it. I hope they nail it. Who else? I wish Kings on NBC had caught on. Had been given a chance to catch on. I’d love to take a crack at King David too. Now there’s an icon for you.

Check out Elliot's own website at elliot.maggin.com