Mindy Newell: Utopia, Dystopia, Death…and Riverdale

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. Mindy Newell says:

    Just want to point a major editing goof, guys. The first paragraph reads:

    “The movie, based upon Robert Bolt’s play about the fall of, British Lord Chancellor Thomas More, could be considered a science fiction story as it deals with a perfectly harmonious island society that was nowhere to be found in More’s 16th century – or in the 21st, for that matter.”

    A MAN FOR ALL SEASON is about the fall of British Lord Chancellor Thomas More, who refused to take the oath that King Henry (VIII) was the Supreme Head of the English Church, based on his strong Catholic beliefs and principles. (Henry started the church when he grew tired of waiting for the Pope to grant him an annulment from his first wife, Katherine of Aragon, so that he could marry his paramour, Anne Boelyn. Also, and more importantly–im-not-so-ho–Anne was pregnant, and Henry, desperate for a legitimate male heir, needed to have the child born in wedlock.)

    The science fiction story that I originally referred to is the classic UTOPIA, written by Thomas More before he became Lord Chancellor (and I think before Anne Boleyn entered the scene), which described the “perfectly harmonious island society.”

    Hope that’s clear, everyone!

    Sorry about the boo-boo!