E. Nelson Bridwell - Career

Career

Bridwell's early childhood interest in mythology and folklore stayed with him throughout his professional life and permeated much of his work. He credited his fame to his third grade teacher, Ryan Samuel, for interesting him in comics. Bridwell "was one of the first 'comics fans' hired in the industry after the long, bleak 1950's,". Although his first published work consisted of a text page in Adventures into the Unknown #9 (Feb.-March 1950) published by the American Comics Group, he had since he "was still a kid" created various characters who would later evolve into those used in comics such as The Inferior Five.

In 1962, while still residing in Oklahoma City, Bridwell submitted to the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction his first idea for a Feghoot adventure, a specific type of shaggy dog story that ends in a humorous and unexpected play on words. His story was promptly accepted by the feature's pseudonymous author, Grendel Briarton (Reginald Bretnor) and shortly followed by yet another submission from Bridwell which was also accepted ("Dr. Jacqueline Missed Her Hide" and "Nude Rally Tea Pact", respectively.) Besides F&SF, both stories would appear in the various Feghoot anthologies to follow.

After writing a few stories for Mad and for Katy Keene, Bridwell began working for DC Comics in 1965 as an assistant to editor Mort Weisinger, "on the Superman titles, eventually becoming an editor himself (Lois Lane, and later Superman Family)." Jim Shooter (who also worked with Weisinger) recalls that Weisinger did not always treat his assistant well, saying that his "assistant was Nelson Bridwell and boy, he tortured Nelson. He just was awful to Nelson." Bridwell, however, recalled in 1980 an important lesson learned from Weisinger, that:

"You've got to keep in mind that while there are a lot of people who've read about the characters before, there are always new people coming along, and you've got to realize that you can't count on them to know the whole legend of the character."

This lesson set him in good stead both when he helped DC produce three 1970s anthologies — Superman from the Thirties to the Seventies (1971), Batman from the Thirties to the Seventies (1971), and Shazam from the Forties to the Seventies (1977) — and when he wrote for the comic book series based on "one of the best rated TV shows on Saturday morning", Super Friends.

Concurrent with his duties for DC, Bridwell "was submitting material as a freelancer to Mad", some of which was illustrated by Joe Orlando, who would later be suggested by Bridwell as artist for The Inferior Five.