Putting Joe on the shelf

Putting Joe on the shelf 291 291 Paul Levitz

randomI just received a copy of Fantagraphics’ JUDGMENT DAY AND OTHER STORIES Illustrated by Joe Orlando, a book that made me smile on many levels.  Joe had singled out “Judgment Day” as his favorite story that he ever worked on—probably because it cause conniptions between the Comics Code and Bill Gaines, and Joe both hated the Code and enjoyed making trouble.  But I also smiled because the reason I knew it was Joe’s favorite is that he selected it to go in the AMAZING WORLD OF DC COMICS issue about him that I edited.  That made it the only E.C. story to ever be reprinted in a DC publication.

I’m probably overly fond of my own weird statistics, but this is a good place to share them from time to time so you can smile with me (or laugh at me—either one is fine).  I tallied up 890 text pages I wrote for DC, counting letters columns and the like.  Probably the most any one writer has done for the company, as far as I can tell.  It’s a pretty dubious honor, but I made at least one lifelong friend among my regular correspondents and a bunch of more casual pals.  I hated approving the request from the editorial staff to drop the letters pages when I was Publisher, but the argument that the velocity of the Internet had made them obsolete seemed valid.