An editor and literary agent, Schwartz’s main love was science fiction. In the early 1930s, he and thousands of others eagerly awaited issues of Amazing Stories, an early scifi magazine. But it wasn’t enough: in 1932, he and two friends created The Time Traveller, the very first scifi fan magazine.
In 1934, he and a friend formed the first literary agency to specialize in science fiction. In 1939, at the first World Science Fiction Convention, which Schwartz helped organize, he met the then-unknown Ray Bradbury. “He sold the first 70 short stories that I wrote from 1941 up until 1947 to the pulp magazines,” Bradbury said. “He was responsible for my early career and the discovery by various critics.”
Other clients included H.P. Lovecraft and Robert Bloch. Later, as an editor for DC Comics in the 1950s, Schwartz resurrected many early comic superheroes, brightening the illustrated book stars who faded after World War II, including the Flash and Green Lantern.
Due to his success with those, in 1964 he was asked to usher another declining hero: Batman. Schwartz is “a major figure in the development of the modern-day superheroes,” says Jon B. Cooke, editor of Comic Book Artists magazine. He died February 8 from pneumonia in New York at age 88; he wrote his own epitaph in his autobiography: “Here Lies Julius Schwartz. He met his last deadline.”