Mindy Newell: Take A Lesson

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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3 Responses

  1. Martha Thomases says:

    I’m out on a limb here (or maybe a bad feminist), but I didn’t hate McFarlane. I thought he was being McFarlane. The people who hired him had surely seen his shtick before. And you can’t improvise big production numbers. Someone must have okayed a script. The comments about Jews came from Ted, and his mistake was in thinking that enough people had seen the movie to get the character.

    And I didn’t hate the “boobs” number either. I thought it made fun of the adolescent boy behavior, not the women in the movies.

    Also, watching Joseph Gordon-Levitt dance was divine.

  2. George Haberberger says:

    “In fact, most of his spiel offended me. Although I do think he’s very smart, and I tend to agree with him when he’s on Bill Maher…to tell you the truth, I’d rather he’d stick to political commentary – I just don’t find him funny.”

    Well I prefer if MacFarlane stuck to comedy and refrained from political commentary, but that’s just me. And if MacFarlane didn’t offend, he would be doing something wrong.

    And coincidentally, here is story about a time when MacFarlane was on Bill Maher with Andrew Breitbard. Give it a read.

    http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Hollywood/2012/03/05/toast-to-seth-macfarlane-andrew-breitbart-father

  3. mike weber says:

    “It all started when Johnny hit me back first.”