Julius Schwartz

Julius "Julie" Schwartz (June 19, 1915 – February 8, 2004) was a comic book editor, and a science fiction agent and prominent fan. He was born in The Bronx, New York. He is best known as a longtime editor at DC Comics, where at various times he was primary editor over the company's flagship superheroes, Superman and Batman.

He was inducted into the comics industry's Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1996 and the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1997.

Early life and career

Born on June 19, 1915, Julius Schwartz grew up on 817 Caldwell Avenue in The Bronx, to his Romanian immigrant parents Joseph and Bertha who emigrated from a small town outside Bucharest, Romania. He graduated at Theodore Roosevelt High School in The Bronx at age seventeen.

In 1932, Schwartz co-published (with Mort Weisinger and Forrest J. Ackerman) Time Traveller, one of the first science fiction fanzines. Schwartz and Weisinger also founded the Solar Sales Service literary agency (1934–1944) where Schwartz represented such writers as Alfred Bester, Stanley G. Weinbaum, Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, and H. P. Lovecraft, including some of Bradbury's first published work and Lovecraft's last. In addition, Schwartz helped organize the first World Science Fiction Convention in 1939.