Howard Chaykin Interview

Howard Chaykin is one of my heroes. An idol, actually. He created American Flagg, a seminal work in my lifetime, and others which I didn’t follow as closely. In this interview with the Birmingham Mail from about a month ago, he talks about Wally Wood, his pitch for doing Superman, and a host of other items. The interview is brief but direct, as Chaykin is. Excerpt below:

Chaykin has settled into marital comfort in a small, affluent Californian town, although he grew up on the streets of New York, navigating his way around the rotten core of the Big Apple.

“I grew up a cowardly kid in a tough neighbourhood,” he says. “You could say I came from a Jewish family with deeply Italian sensibilities.

“Lots of people I knew were Jewish mobsters.

“My stepdad was a runner for Murder Inc, and the world I remember back then was a pretty mobbed-up place.”

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