Last summer, I had Maggin on to talk about Superman. He recently sat down for another discussion to talk about his latest novel, LexCorp. The full show is now available on YouTube.
FCF: I’m curious, did you see the new Superman movie last summer?
Elliot S! Maggin: Sure. Yeah.
FCF: Did you like it?
Elliot S! Maggin: I did like it. I liked Corenswet. I liked his relationship with Lois. It was very frank. My brother told me he didn’t like the movie because he thought Superman was too human. I said, I’ve been trying to make Superman human for 50 years. So that’s a good thing. I liked the fact that he wasn’t as self‑assured as Julie Schwartz always wanted me to make him.
FCF: And he wasn’t so super at the start — he gets beat up early on.
Elliot S! Maggin: Yeah. He wasn’t as arrogant or as self‑important or self‑involved, and I like that.
FCF: How about Lex Luthor?
Elliot S! Maggin: He was good, too. He wasn’t my Luthor, although he is closer to Martin Luthor than Gene Hackman or any of those guys. He was more of a businessman, which I always wanted to make him. He became that after I left. He had people working for him. He was the center of activity. The thing about Luthor is he’s
only a criminal because Superman is taking up too much space in his intellectual real estate. Free rent in Luthor’s brain — which is a lot of space. He’s the greatest human being in the world except for Superman, who may or may not be a human being.
FCF: How do you feel about them teaming up in the next movie?
Elliot S! Maggin: That’s kinda what I did in Last Son of Krypton 10,000 years ago. They should be teaming up once in a while. They have common interests. They have common loves. They’re both interested in staying on Earth. It’s a good place to live if we don’t mess it up too much.
FCF: Remind me — your first DC story?
Elliot S! Maggin: The first story was the Green Lantern/Green Arrow story, “What Can One Man Do?” I did that as a term paper and ended up selling it because I didn’t like the grade I got. And then “Must There Be a Superman?” That was my first Superman story. Julie leaned across the desk and said, “You think you’re ready to do a Superman story?” And I said, “Yeah.” I lied, but I did it.
FCF: Was the idea yours?
Elliot S! Maggin: I keep ascribing it to Jeph Loeb because we had a conversation about it. I had a list of 15 story ideas on a legal pad. Julie dismissed most of
them. When I got the idea that Superman was doing damage to the Earth by helping us, that turned him on. He called people in from the hall and had me repeat it. We worked it out for over an hour or two. His sessions tended to be very long.
FCF: How do you feel that story is still referenced everywhere?
Elliot S! Maggin: I like it. I was still in college when it came out. I had an honors advisor, John Matthews, who read it. The first thing he said was, “I look forward to seeing all the sequels you’re gonna do to this.” He gave me the idea that it was a premise for a lot of stories. And that’s pretty much what I did for the next 15 years.
FCF: How do you feel about DC not reprinting more of the Bronze Age?
Elliot S! Maggin: When I left as an editor — I was an editor for about two years — it was an awful job. I quit. Apparently, people down the hall had been badmouthing me. A producer told me people at DC had been saying bad things about me. I don’t know why, but I have suspicions. I had a better education than anybody else in the office, and that was a pain in the ass for a lot of people. There was a conscious effort to start over. Because of my association with Superman, anything I wrote after that point couldn’t have Superman in it. They wanted to dissociate from that period altogether.
FCF: And LexCorp?
Elliot S! Maggin: I created LexCorp 40 or 50 years ago and didn’t get much chance to do much with it. They used it everywhere — movies, TV shows — and never credited me until years later. I kept knocking on them about it. Eventually, they did. Then Gunn decided to use “LuthorCorp” instead. Same thing. They took the wiki entry out.
FCF: Did you get any thank‑yous in the last Superman movie?
Elliot S! Maggin: No. It was a long list. I’m looking at it thinking, “I was on this list. Somebody took me out.” I don’t know who. I don’t know why.
FCF: Why return to LexCorp now?
Elliot S! Maggin: I wanted to write it. I came up with an idea, liked it, wrote the book, and dropped it on them as a fait accompli. They said DC isn’t publishing novels anymore. So I published it myself. They told me, “Just don’t use Metropolis and don’t use Lex Luthor.” I said, “And don’t use Superman.” I didn’t use Superman, but you can’t do it without Metropolis or Luthor. So I just did it.
FCF: Does it connect to the Superman mythos?
Elliot S! Maggin: It’s in that world. It refers to incidents, original incidents. He keeps referring to Superman as “the alien.” That’s how he would refer to him.
FCF: What kind of Luthor is in the book?
Elliot S! Maggin: It’s a human Lex Luthor. He’s got a girlfriend. He’s disaffected, moody. Rich despite himself. He doesn’t care much about his empire — he cares about the projects. The project he takes on is solving the climate crisis. He has three specific steps. He wants to save the world. It’s his world. It belongs to him. He’s the best thing in it. And nobody has the right to spoil it.
FCF: Is this your final dip into Metropolis?
Elliot S! Maggin: When I stopped writing Superman, people asked if I had more stories. Of course I did. I wanted to go into the relationship between Superman and Lex. This d
oes it from Lex’s point of view. If they decide to publish novels and came to me, I could do more. But it would start with this.
FCF: How long were you working on it?
Elliot S! Maggin: Thinking about it forever. I sat down and wrote it maybe a year or two before I brought it up.
FCF: Where can fans get it?
Elliot S! Maggin: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Alibris. I haven’t done much to promote it. What I was doing when you called was recording the last chapter.
FCF: For an audiobook?
Elliot S! Maggin: I did. I’m doing it as a podcast. Elliot Makes Stuff Up. I did audio versions of Last Son of Krypton and Miracle Monday years ago. They’re still out there. I’m going to put in about 24 more when I finish this Luthor book.
FCF: Did you hang out at DC in the ’70s?
Elliot S! Maggin: I hung out there. After I made friends, I was there quite a bit.
FCF: Did you and Julie Schwartz argue a lot?
Elliot S! Maggin: Oh yeah. They were so much fun. Every once in a while, we’d have a big blowout and stop talking for a month. People were intimidated by Julie, but I argued with them.
FCF: Who else did you spend time with?
Elliot S! Maggin: Al Milgrom was my roommate. Cary Bates — we’d go to lunch, go out for coffee at three in the morning. Whenever I did a Batman story, I ran it by Cary. Batman needs a tight plot.
FCF: Give me a Julie story you haven’t told much.
Elliot S! Maggin: He came to my brother’s house for Passover the year after he lost his wife. My father would pick up the book and say, “What can we skip?” The youngest is supposed to read the Four Questions. Robin wasn’t interested. Julie got impatient, picked up the book, and read the whole thing. I said, “When’s the last time you did that?” He said, “I think 40 years ago.” He had a watch with Hebrew on it — he got it for being the outstanding Hebrew school student. Eleanor Roosevelt gave it to him.
FCF: Did you interact much with Carmine Infantino?
Elliot S! Maggin: Oh yeah. Carmine was great. Not much of a businessman, but maybe the most talented designer of art I’ve ever met. He designed covers — 50 a month. He got a bad rap because he tried to rise to an occasion he wasn’t suited for. They made him president because “editorial director” sounded important. He kept designing covers. He was way out of his depth in business.
FCF: Was it a shock when he was fired, and Jenette Kahn came in?
Elliot S! Maggin: It didn’t come out of the blue. It was because of the Siegel and Shuster mess. Carmine didn’t mishandle it — he just didn’t handle it. Jay Emmett handled it. Carmine didn’t distinguish himself. They brought in Jenette. She knew publishing, but children’s literature wasn’t what we were publishing.
FCF: Did you co-create Superboy‑Prime?
Elliot S! Maggin: Superboy‑Prime, yeah. I didn’t mean for him to be ongoing. Len Wein used to call his house the house that Lucius Fox built. He told me about creator contracts. I never signed one. He said it’s a space suit — if you don’t have one, you die. When you create a character, he goes off on his own. They made Superboy‑Prime a bad guy, a good guy, an ugly uncle. It’s cool, but not unexpected.
FCF: Are you aware he’s back in the comics?
Elliot S! Maggin: Yeah, I heard that.
FCF: Your last Superman story was Superman #420, “We Are the Dreamers of Dreams.” Did you know it was your last?
Elliot S! Maggin: Yeah. I probably could have done a couple more, but I knew it was the last one. I put my brother‑in‑law in it — the Wayne King character. That was all. I’ve got a big 80‑inch television now, and I just don’t read the comic books anymore. I don’t follow them. I’ve moved on to other things.
FCF: Elliot, thank you. It’s always a pleasure talking with you.
Elliot S! Maggin: Thank you. It’s been fun.
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