Mort Weisinger
| Mort Weisinger | |
|---|---|
| Nationality | American |
| Area(s) | Writer, Editor |
Notable works | Superman |
Mortimer Weisinger (1915-1978) was an American magazine and comic book editor.
He is most famous as the editor of the Superman line of comic books for DC Comics during the Silver age of comic books. He also co-created such long-running features as Aquaman and Green Arrow, as well as Johnny Quick, served as story editor for Adventures of Superman television series, and compiled the often-revised paperback 1001 Valuable Things You Can Get Free.
Weisinger was the son of a businessman in the garment trade; he was born on April 15, 1915, in the Washington Heights section of New York City, and grew up in the Bronx. At the age of 13, he had his introduction to science fiction, via a borrowed copy of the August 1928 issue of Amazing Stories (featuring Buck Rogers and The Skylark of Space). By 1930 Weisinger was active in some of the earliest fan-club (The Scienceers) and fanzine (The Planet) activities in science fiction. In 1932 he was a prime mover. with Julius Schwartz and Forrest J. Ackerman, in The Time Traveller, which they styled "Science Fiction's Only Fan Magazine." The claim was perhaps more than mere youthful bravado: SF historian Sam Moskowitz described The Time Traveller as the first fanzine devoted entirely to science fiction. The young fans published interviews with SF writers and short pieces by them; in the process they gained extensive familiarity with personalities and situations on the SF scene.
After high school, Weisinger attended New York University, where he worked as editor of the University's newspaper and magazine. He left before graduating, however, preferring business and science fiction. In late 1934, Weisinger and Schwartz formed the Solar Sales Service, the first literary agency to specialize in the related genres of SF, horror, and fantasy. Edmond Hamilton was their first client; in time the agency represented many prominent SF and fantasy writers, from Stanley Weinbaum to H.P. Lovecraft to Ray Bradbury. But while Schwartz continued the agency into the early 1940s, Weisinger quickly moved on; he took a job with the Standard Magazine chain, publisher of a range of pulp magazines. Standard had acquired Hugo Gernsback's defunct Wonder Stories and added it to their series of "Thrilling" publications (Thrilling Detective Stories, Thrilling Western Stories, etc.). Weisinger became the editor of Thrilling Wonder Stories, and bought stories by Hamilton and others from his former partner Schwartz. Weisinger soon was editing a range of other pulps by Standard, including Startling Stories and Captain Future.
In March 1941 Weisinger moved from Standard Magazines to National Comics, later DC Comics, to edit Superman--though his employment there was soon interrupted by World War II. During the War, Weisinger served as a sergeant in Special Services, and wrote scripts for an Army radio show in New York City. He met and married (Sept. 27, 1943) his wife, the former Thelma Rudnick. They would have two children, a daughter and son. Weisinger returned to his job at National after his discharge from military service in 1946, and resumed his editorship of the Superman comics.
Weisinger's tenure on the Superman comics was marked by the introduction of a variety of new supporting concepts and characters, including Supergirl, Krypto, the Phantom Zone, the Legion of Super-Heroes, and a variety of types of kryptonite, among others. A few of the recurring plot threads in Weisinger's stories included plots about Lois Lane trying to prove Superman was Clark Kent, and "imaginary stories" that featured events deviating wildly from the comics' status quo. It has been said that many of Weisinger's ideas came from talking to children in his neighborhood, asking them what they'd like to see, and then using those ideas, uncredited. In fact, although he was initially not aware of his true age, Weisinger even had the writing services of a teenage Jim Shooter whose work from that time included a celebrated run on "The Legion of Super-Heroes" series in Adventure Comics. Weisinger was noted by some for having a micromanaging attitude and a heavy-handed, overbearing treatment of his writers and artists.
Weisinger encouraged a static picture book style of illustration in his stories, and was known for reusing previously published stories as new story ideas; a noted example of this is a 1950s story featuring Superman encountering an alien being he thought might've been his long lost brother being reused in the early 1960s to publish the Superboy story introducing Mon-El.
During Weisinger's reign, the Superman comics maintained a reasonably tight internal continuity, but related little to the rest of the DC Universe. Weisinger retired from his editorial reign over the Superman comics in 1970, and was succeeded by Julius Schwartz.
References
Moskowitz, Sam. Seekers of Tomorrow: Masters of Modern Science Fiction. World Publishing, Cleveland, Ohio, 1996. Ballantine Books, New York, 1967; pp. 107-22.
Schwartz, Julius, with Brian M. Thomsen. Man of Two Worlds: My Life in Science Fiction and Comics. HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 2000.