Want to sell comics? Put a gorilla on the cover. That's timeless advice from Julius Schwartz, a retired DC Comics editor with 60-plus years experience in comic books and science-fiction pulps. In Schwartz's memoir Man Of Two Worlds, the affable octogenarian recalls the highlights of his career, starting with the early 1930s, when he and a handful of New York science-fiction fans practically invented the concept of the fantasy-addled geek. Schwartz and boyhood friend Mort Weisinger self-published one of the first fanzines and organized the first nationwide convention of pulp obsessives. Parlaying his connections with writers into a fledgling literary agency while still in his teens, Schwartz went on to work with some of the brightest lights in the industry, including Ray Bradbury, L. Ron Hubbard, Robert Bloch, and Leigh Brackett. He followed Weisinger into superheroes when the pulps started dying on the vine, and when comics began to fizzle in the wake of congressional hearings about their influence on youth, Schwartz had a hand in revitalizing the industry with snazzy new "Silver Age" versions of old staples such as The Flash and Green Lantern. Man Of Two Worlds is essentially a series of loosely chronological anecdotes, recorded and typed up by fellow fantasy editor Brian M. Thomsen, and the book might have been sharper had Thomsen (or preferably someone less friendly with the subject) abandoned the pretense of autobiography, instead penning a third-person bio with some finely honed analysis of Schwartz's life and work. The book as it is contains lively stories about Schwartz's stints as editor of the "new look" '60s Batman and "relevant" '70s Superman, but there's not enough of the industry veteran's opinions on how comics have shifted from mainstream entertainment to a niche-marketed medium. There's certainly not enough objective criticism of the industry's brutal work-for-hire practices, which robbed creative men of their copyrights for half a century, before the balance of power finally began to shift in the '90s. Granted, Schwartz is one of the best-loved figures in the business, but it would have been nice had his co-author pressed the former agent—and champion of creators' rights—on how it feels to be one of the nicest company men in the history of a corrupt industry.