Alvin Schwartz, a top writer for DC Comics in the forties and fifties, died the morning of October 28 from heart-related complications. He was 95 and had been ailing for some time.
Born in New York City in 1916, he showed a flair for writing at an early age. His first credit in comics appears to be a story for Western Publishing that appeared in Fairy Tale Parade in 1939. When I interviewed him in the nineties, he recalled that he'd done such an assignment but had no memory of how it came about. The job led to occasional work for Fawcett on Captain Marvel but mainly to a long stint at DC. Alvin began writing Batman comic books in 1942 and the Batman newspaper strip two years later, followed almost immediately by him taking over the writing of the Superman newspaper strip, as well. Until 1958, he wrote for most of the company's comics including Aquaman, A Date With Judy, Buzzy, House of Mystery, Tomahawk, Wonder Woman, The Flash and Green Lantern. The latter two were the 1940's versions. He contributed much to the Superman legend but his best-remembered work would probably be his refinement (and probably, as he claimed, creation) of the character and concept of Bizarro.
In 1958, he got out of comics. His stated reason at the time was that he was having trouble with one editor at DC and that was apparently true. But he was also undergoing what he later called a "spiritual journey," discovering that writing heroic characters — Superman, especially — was giving him issues of identity and a wide array of emotions over his own worth as a human being. His feelings were complicated and though he told me about them directly and I read about them in two books of his — An Unlikely Prophet and A Gathering of Selves, I'm not sure I completely understand his troubles.
Clearly though, he felt he needed to get away from comics and he did, working for a time in market research and also writing novels under an array of names, and motion pictures including several for the National Film Board of Canada. For a long time, he believed his comic book work had been forgotten but several fans tracked him down in the late eighties and he began attending conventions and letting me interview him at several. He was a fascinating man who obviously put a lot of thought into his work before he did it, while he was doing it…and for decades after. He was also a very fine writer and we were happy to present him in 2006 with the Bill Finger Award for his lasting and important work.