Alvin Schwartz debuted in comics with an issue of Fairy Tale Parade in 1939. He then wrote extensively for Sheldon Mayer at All-American Publications and then for National Comics, two of the three companies which merged to form DC Comics.
Until ending his association with DC in 1958, Schwartz contributed comic-book scripts for such superheroes as Aquaman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Green Lantern, the Newsboy Legion, Vigilante, Slam Bradley, and Tomahawk. He also wrote comic books such as A Date With Judy, Buzzy, and House of Mystery. Among Schwartz's contributions to Superman was writing the first tale of Bizarro, denizen of an opposite, interdimensional world where "hello" means "goodbye", and citizens do good by doing bad. He wrote World's Finest Comics #71, the issue which began featuring Superman and Batman in the same story together. Schwartz left DC after clashing repeatedly with the new Superman-line editor Mort Weisinger.
Corporate work
After leaving DC, Schwartz went into corporate market research and helped develop such techniques as psychographics and typological identification. As research director for Dr. Ernst Dichter's Institute for Motivational Research, he provided structural and marketing advice to corporations such as General Motors and General Foods. He later joined the advisory committee of the American Association of Advertising Agencies.
Other writing
Schwartz wrote three novels for Arco Press, one of which, the detective storySword of Desire, won praise for its takeoff on Wilhelm Reich's orgone therapy, a popular psychotherapeutic technique used during the 1940s and 1950s. His novel The Blowtop was published by Dial Press in 1948. Under the title Le Cinglé, it became a best-seller in France. In 1968, Schwartz moved to Canada, where he wrote documentaries and docudramas for the National Film Board of Canada for nearly 20 years, and created several economic and social studies for the Government of Canada. Additionally, Schwartz wrote and lectured on superheroes, and received a Canada Council Grant for a study on religious symbolism in popular culture, using Superman as a springboard.
Later life and career
In 1997, Schwartz published an autobiography titled An Unlikely Prophet. In it, he wrote that Superman had attained the status of a tulpa, an entity that according to Buddhist beliefs attains reality solely by the act of imagination. Schwartz claimed he had actually met the superhero in a New York cab. In the mid-2000s, Schwartz wrote a weekly web column. Schwartz and his wife lived in the rural village of Chesterville near Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. He died in 2011 of heart-related complications.
