Mindy Newell: Reading Is Fundamental

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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1 Response

  1. A few years ago BET Animation aired a satirical video ‘Read A Book.’ It was a funny engaging and like I said, satirical video aimed at young African-Americans in the inner-city many of whom don’t read much if they read at all.

    That is just a fact.

    The extraordinary anger directed at BET was massive. Most of the outcry came from parents of young teenagers who upon seeing the video lost their fucking mind.

    They objected to the tone, style and of all things , the over-the-top yet effective message of the video.

    These are the same idiots who buy their kids $200 sneakers & see nothing wrong in that- but like I said -lose their fucking mind when some genius creative people send a message spoken in the language of the inner-city kids they were trying to reach to simply, read a book.