Marc Tyler Nobleman's Blog, page 109

75 years ago today, the Boys of Steel changed pop culture

A week that brought horror in Boston and shame in Washington also includes an unlikely positive: according to court records, it was 75 years ago today when Superman debuted in Action Comics #1.


Thanks to the Boys of Steel for changing everything, even still: this month inaugurates an (admittedly clunky) tweak to the credit line in Superman stories: 

 from Justice League #19 (first appeared in Action Comics #19, 4/3/13)
If you think it trivializes real-life struggles to juxtapose them with a fictional character, go back to 1938: when America was caught between two of its greatest challenges (the Depression and WWII), Superman brought hope literally to millions...

It couldn't hurt to give the sky more than a passing glance today.

Jewish Museum of Maryland

On 3/31/13, I had the honor of speaking about the mystery behind the majority creator of Batman at the Jewish Museum of Maryland.

The museum hosted the traveling Jewish-creators-of-superheroes exhibit, which includes a Bill Finger script that Jerry Robinson donated. The bio on this placard gets a few details wrong (starting with the city in which Bill was born), but I am thrilled that such an exhibit exists:



Note that address.
Jerry Robinson

The only three celebrities

Having lived in New York for seven years and Los Angeles for almost three, I have come across a few celebrities (not counting musicians at concerts, famous faces at fancy functions, or fellow kidlit authors). I must admit that I have not kept in touch with any of them.

But I did get my picture taken with three (only one of whom was in NYC or LA at the time). How is this for an unlikely trio?

Elle MacPherson, 1991, New Haven (I had just had my wisdom teeth out)

Dan Aykroyd, 1994, Los Angeles (I had just had a bad haircut, apparently)

Sumner Redstone, 1994 (yes, he counts!), Waltham, MA
Some of the ones who got away...

New York:

Paul Simon (on the street)
Jennifer Aniston (on the street)
Ric Ocasek (on the street)
Christopher Lloyd (at a sidewalk café)
Kevin Spacey (in a hotel lobby)
Donald Trump (I held a door for him...at Trump Tower)
Tyra Banks (I held a door for her)

Los Angeles:

Michael Keaton (coming out of a tanning place)
George Clooney (in restaurant at the table next to me)
Cindy Crawford (at the table on the other side!)
Barry Manilow (in a glossy stage outfit…in a Borders)
Michael Crighton (also in a bookstore)
Donald Sutherland (in line at the post office)

on a plane:

Al Gore
LeAnn Rimes 

other:

Debbie Gibson (at an amusement park where I worked)
Micky Dolenz (in a hotel bar)
Lindsay Lohan (in a restaurant)

Will you be next?

The Pulitzer and “Bill the Boy Wonder”

Here is a photo of Junot Diaz, winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, posing with Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman…and numerous other titles he is also not paying attention to:

Comics Alliance
Congratulations to today's Pulitzer Prize winners.

Kevin Smith tweeted me about Bill Finger

Now word is really spreading:

I wanna get Fingered on FAT MAN ON BATMAN. Hear @marctnobleman is just the man to do it! amazon.com/Bill-Boy-Wonde… Wanna talk Bill Finger, sir?
— KevinSmith (@ThatKevinSmith) April 15, 2013

Another tweeter responded that he'd rather be Fingered than Kaned. Ain't that the truth (not something Kane was known for...).

The date of a paperweight

As an author of nonfiction, authenticity is my co-pilot. But co-pilots make mistakes.

Half a year after Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman came out, I realized that my determination to visually include a particular detail obscured the possibility that I was including that accurate detail in an inaccurate period.

Among my most treasured possessions is my lone possession that Bill Finger used to own: a bronze-colored scarab paperweight his second wife Lyn purchased for him at the American Museum of Natural History.

I asked Ty Templeton, artist of Bill the Boy Wonder, to show the paperweight in a scene of Bill at his desk, and the illustration was based on a photo of Bill’s actual desk circa mid- to late-1940s.


However, Bill and Lyn were not married at that time; in fact, they may not have even met yet.

So the paperweight is an authentic detail…only a decade or two too soon.

Though not a goof that will jeopardize the integrity of the book as a whole, it did make me shake my head for a moment. However, it’s such a lovely little piece of the real Bill that, even had I realized the chronological misstep before we went to print, I think I would have left it in.


A flourish like that is worth its (paper)weight in gold (or bronze).

IRA 2013: Invasion of Nonfiction Picture Book Authors

Chris Barton.

Shana Corey.

Brian Floca.

Megan McCarthy.

Me. (I am still in alphabetical order this way.)

On 4/21/13, from 3 to 5:45 p.m. (yes, almost three hours!), at the International Reading Association Convention in San Antonio, we five authors, moderated by Susannah Richards, Associate Professor of Education at Eastern Connecticut State University, will panel-discuss the importance of unconventional nonfiction...the stories that are not yet widely known, the people who are not textbook names.

Please join us. This group has never assembled before, and may never again. Therefore (speaking of nonfiction), history will be witnessed. Unconventional nonfiction will be glorified.


And, of course, books will be signed:


I am signing two more times on Monday 4/22/13: 

Anderson's, booth 1003, 10-11 a.m.Overlooked Books booth, booth 2519, 11 a.m.-12 p.m.

Facebook is also Findbook

When authors need to track down specific people to interview, quite possibly the best tool these days is Facebook. I’ve been using it for this purpose for about five years. (Funnily, in 2007, I reached the most pivotal figure I would uncover in my Bill Finger research…via MySpace.)

Sometimes Facebook instantly leads to direct hits. More often it takes some detective work to wend your way to who you want, especially with common names (like Howard Murphy) or with people who aren’t on Facebook under their own names, not to mention people with some degree of celebrity.

Facebook may not always get you all the way to your target, but it sure can help shorten the route quickly. The person you seek may not be on Facebook—or may not even be alive—but people who know that person are…and they may agree to put you in touch (if the person is indeed alive).

Looking for more than one person (i.e. members of a former band) is almost easier; there is a greater chance that any potential contact will know at least one from the group. This is, for example, how I found some of the Sea World skiers.

In such a case, finding only one can be all the lead you need; the first can then point you toward others s/he knew, and the leapfrogging begins. You can also skim his/her friends list for other names on your scavenger hunt.

If I don’t hear back from certain people, I may randomly ask some of their friends if they would help. You do encounter a lot of non-responders (unfortunately, there is sometimes a perception that a person in my position is after more than he says—the telemarketer syndrome). But as mentioned, it takes only one hit.

Speaking of which…

Recently, I tried using Facebook in a different way to find people. This way is easier, but also riskier.

However, my first experiment with it was a resounding success.

Facebook helped me find two people who appeared in non-speaking roles in a 1984 music video—and whose names I didn’t know.

I’d been searching for them on and off for several weeks without luck, and within three hours of posting an unusual call to action to my 1,800 Facebook friends on the morning of 2/27/13, I had both names. Within three more hours, I had contact info for both.

Not everyone is online. And not everyone online is easily findable, even when you know his or her name. (And not everyone findable wants to be found, but that’s another story.)

Yet Facebook is a game-changer when it comes to the human connection. Call it eighteen hundred degrees of separation.

As for why I was searching for two people from a 1984 video, stayed tuned (and find a hint in the Labels)...

Readers choosing book covers

Best-selling author Elizabeth Gilbert took to the net to determine which of three covers would grace her latest, a novel called The Signature of All Things.


(The winner.)

I love when we do this. Not like it happens very much at all.

I sort of did it for Vanished: True Stories of the Missing; I had only one cover to show, but I was asking for readers’ opinions. (Namely, if it was too creepy.)


I also sort of did it with Thirty Minutes Over Oregon; that time I had seven covers to show (one of which is immediately below), but I was asking for readers to weigh in not on those covers but on the project as a whole.


And if given the chance, I’d love to make like Gilbert in the future, since the web allows publishing to be more collaborative than ever. Readers as co-creators.

Do you know of any other authors who polled the public on a choice of book covers?

Reinventing white superheroes as nonwhite

In 2005, I wrote what is, so far, my only magazine cover story.

The Weekly Reader publication Know Your World Extra ran it.




Hard-hitting, it was not. But it did have a good angle. 

The article addressed the trend (still in effect) of comic book companies (particularly the one with which I’m most familiar, DC Comics) taking the name of an established white superhero and creating a new, nonwhite version.

Firestorm became black.

Blue Beetle became Hispanic.

The Atom became Asian.

The Crimson Avenger became (no, not crimson) black…and female. Now female in the New 52: the Atom (Hispanic, too), Shadow-Thief, Wotan...

Numerous other examples exist.

The Justice League of All of America.