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Stan Lee and Paul Levitz

Taschen’s Creed Poulsen forwarded this account of the recent book party in Los Angeles for 75 Years of DC Comics: The Art of Modern Mythmaking, Paul Levitz’s amazing history of DC Comics. The pictures make it.

To continue the celebration of TASCHEN’s acclaimed fall title 75 Years of DC Comics: The Art of Modern Mythmaking, the TASCHEN Store Beverly Hills hosted legendary comic book writer and Editor Paul Levitz, who made his third and final stop of the year for the DC book launch tour. Over 200 guests were treated to beer and wine, and given the opportunity to take their picture with Batman (who showed up in his mint condition Batmobile, a replica from the 1966 Television series), Superman, or take pictures upstairs in the DC inspired photo booth which was provided by Sammy’s Camera.

For the second night in a row, three award-winning American comic book writers: Marv Wolfman (creator of Blade for Marvel Comics), Len Wein (co-creator of DC’s Swamp Thing and Marvel’s Wolverine characters), and Mark Evanier (Author of the Jack Kirby Biography) came to a DC Comics event to show their support for the book. A special appearance was also made by actor Aaron Smolinski, a DC cult favorite who appeared in both Superman 1 and Superman 3 films, and many members of the press, most notably The Los Angeles Times, Bloomberg News, Esquire, OUT, E! Entertainment, The Wall Street Journal The Hollywood Reporter, as well as Getty and Wire images, and Film Magic Images.

The highlight of the night however, came when comic book legend Stan Lee (Founder of Pow! Entertainment and Co-Creator Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, X-Men, Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, and more) made an appearance at TASCHEN Beverly Hills to support both Paul and the book. As a number of cameras flashed outside the store, Stan Lee was overheard by TASCHEN Art Director Josh Baker saying to Paul Levitz, “Anybody who can lift this book is a superhero.”

TASCHEN America would like to thank Paul Levitz for traveling all the way from New York to support the book both last night at The Hammer museum, and tonight at the TASCHEN Store Beverly Hills. His participation as well as all those in attendance made our last event of the year a successful one.

(Photos Courtesy Amy Kaplan)

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Batman with Batmobile
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Marv Wolfman, Paul Levitz, Mark Evanier, Len Wein, Don Glut
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Superman
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Nina Wiener, Paul Levitz, Josh Baker

1 COMMENT

  1. Don Glut?

    C’mon, seriously- if he could get up there to ham it up with four of those legends then I’d probably would have had no problem posing for a picture with those guys.

    I mean, what was his big contribution to DC lore? Marvel – I’d understand since he scripted a good many Spidey animated episodes – but DC, what the heck did he do?

    Yeah, I had an invite to this party – but I couldn’t even muster up the pocket change for busfare into Beverly Hills last night.

    I passed by this Taschen store last week on my way to a job interview and got a little peek into massive tomb. It’s absolutely gorgeous and the clerk there asked me if I wanted an invite to this cheeky little soiree.

    Would anyone minding spotting me a few hundred dollars?

    ~

    Coat

  2. Gorgeous book: I found it at one of our local bookstores, but I’m moving house in a couple of months and I have enough books already to move so I’ll wait.
    And I wouldn’t want to piss of my new post man by ordering it from Amazon soon

  3. My family and I attended last night. It was a not disappointing that it was only Levitz signing with the list of guests who were walking around.

    My 13 year old son (who was wearing a Nightmare Before Christmas sweatshirt) met Stan Lee out front while my husband and I were inside. We’re trying to find out if anyone may have a picture of my son with Stan Lee. Stan was very kind to him and signed an autograph saying, “Sure son.” It made his night!

    So, when is the Marvel book going to come out?

  4. Paul’s smiling in all three pictures!

    What I wanna know is, where’d the mustache go? Was it an upper-management mustache, and had to stay with the company? It wouldn’t work freelance?

  5. Paul had the mustache since at least ’75 when I started to work at DC. It was a shock to me when I saw him without it at the NY Con.