Mindy Newell: Sundry Summer Ruminations & Contemplations

Mindy Newell

These days Mindy Newell knows that if she could do it all over again she’d have gone to college for screenwriting and film editing. Instead she became a nurse to please her parents and pleasing your parents was what it was all about for nice Jewish girls who graduated from high school in 1971. But the creative larva was in her soul, and when the cocoon broke and the butterfly emerged, it flew to DC’s New Talent Showcase program. Under the auspices of legendary editors Karen Berger, Len Wein, Julius Schwartz, Paul Levitz, and ComicMix’s own Robert Greenberger, Mindy learned the craft and art of writing comics, including Tales Of The Legion, V, Legionnaires 3, Amethyst, Lois Lane: When It Rains God Is Crying, and numerous other comics, including a Superman story based on a dream Mindy had as a child. She also worked on Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg! and other independent comics. All this time Mindy continued to work as a nurse while being a single mom to her daughter Alixandra, until the late and dear Mark Gruenwald hired her as an assistant editor at Marvel, while writing stories of the Black Widow and Daredevil. She edited NFL Pro Action, a licensed kid’s magazine about football with the NFL until Marvel imploded in 1996. Returning to full-time nursing, she she also co-wrote a story for 2000 A.D. with her then-husband, British artist John Higgins. A few years ago Mike Gold called and asked her to join the team of columnists here at ComicMix, where her topics freely range from comics to pop culture to politics; she even wrote a piece about the great American thoroughbred Secretariat, which caused editor Mike to tell her that she had won the prize for the most off-topic column ever written ComicMix.

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12 Responses

  1. Martha Thomases says:

    Taking care of sick parents is a pain in the ass and a gift, all at the same time.

  2. mike weber says:

    “Queen Of Outer Space” was from a story by Ben Hecht, with screenplay credit to Charles Beaumont.

    However, IMDB also lists “Edward Bernds (uncredited)” – the director.

    Checking his career, he apparently directed a lot of Three Stooges shorts and the like, and “Return of the Fly”.

    I think we can absolve Beaumont of any real guilt in this.

    • Mike Gold says:

      I’m a big-time Hecht fan. Can’t tell you the story, although I can’t say I know all his stuff by heart. Maybe this was something he came up with while under studio contract?

    • Mindy Newell says:

      Yes, Mike, I know that it was from a story by Hecht (like Mike, I love his work!) and scripted by Beaumont (his name is familiar, but I can’t place any of his work.)

      Btw, all the costumes and props were borrowed from FORBIDDEN PLANET, a great, classic movie (for which Disney won the “especially created” Special Effects Oscar) starring Leslie Nielson, Anne Francis, and Walter Pidgeon. And of course Robby the Robot.

      It’s really an amazing movie (FORBIDDEN PLANET, that is, not QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE), tackling forbidden love and incest and sex.

      “Creatures from the Id.”

      • Mindy Newell says:

        That first “Mike” is to you, Mike WEBER. The second “Mike” is referring to Mr. Gold. :-)

      • mike weber says:

        Beaumont wrote 22 “Twilight Zone” episodes, the screenplay fro “7 Faces of Dr Lao”, screenplay for “Masque of the Red Death”, the original stories for the “Miss Belle” and “The New People” episodes of the much-lamented, short-lived Hammer series “Journey to the Unknown”.
        .
        A 2000 short, “Miss Gentilbelle”, was based on the same story as “Miss Belle” – one of the truly creepiest modern-Gothic horrors i’ve ever read or seen. (“Naughty girl – must be punished…”)
        .
        (Do NOT go to the IMDB page for “Miss Gentilbelle” if you have never read the story or seen the “Journey to the Unknown” adaptation – which you can watch at http://youtu.be/LTsm6jC24Hk; if the opening credits don’t creep you out at least a little, well, there’s no hope….)
        .
        He died at age thirty-eight.

  3. mike weber says:

    BTW – for young female fantasy readers, i cannot too highly recommend Tamora Pierce’s books; an excellent starting point would be the “Protector of the Small” quartet (“First Test”, “Page”, “Squire” and “Lady Knight”).

    Also, of course, Lloyd Alexander’s “Prydain” books (ignore the Disney abomination of “The Black Cauldron”), which might begin (“The Book of Three”) at a somewhat simpler level than her current reading level (based on what she’s already reading), but progress nicely, or his “Westmark” trilogy (“Westmark”, “The Kestrel” and “The Beggar Queen”). Most of Alexander’s work explores some fairly serious ethical/moral questions without beating the reader over the head with Aesops.

    If you (or she) are fully cognisant of these books, i apologise for wasting your time – but i bet there are other people who might read this who aren’t…

    • Mindy Newell says:

      Thanks, Mike! Isabel’s birthday is coming up, and you’ve just solved my problem of what to get her!!!!