POP-A-LOOZA: AMAZING HEROES My Secret Origin As A Freelance Writer

Each week, the pop culture website Pop-A-Looza shares some posts from my vast 'n' captivating Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do) archives. The latest shared post looks back at my brief tenure with the first magazine to ever pay me for freelance writing, a comic book fan magazine called Amazing Heroes.

I've reprised a couple of my Amazing Heroes pieces as blog posts here: a history of the 1960s DC Comics series The Secret Six (my first freelance sale, written, sold, and published in 1984) and "Who's...WHO?!," an A-Z romp through some lesser-known DC characters. My AH experience was part of my freelance reminiscence "Money For Words," and it's a key element in The Road To GOLDMINE, my memoir of trying to survive the '80s, and the start of my twenty years (1986-2006) as a contributor to Goldmine magazine. Comics AND rock 'n' roll--I'm a Renaissance pundit.

I'm still writing, of course; maintaining a daily blog is evidence of that, right? I made my first fiction sales in 2019. In 2021, I finished writing my first book, a non-fiction work about music. That book has a tentative publication date in late 2022. My other big project, the long-threatened book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1), is nearly done--a mere seven chapters (out of 175 +) shy of a complete first draft--but needs professional representation to get to a publisher. I will be shopping for an agent in the new year.

Every story starts somewhere. My story as a freelance writer began in 1984, when I made my first sale to a magazine about comic books. My freelance debut as a contributor to Amazing Heroes serves as the latest Boppin' Pop-A-Looza.

TIP THE BLOGGER: CC's Tip Jar!

You can support this blog by becoming a patron on Patreon: Fund me, baby! 

This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, and on the web at http://sparksyracuse.org/ You can read about our history here.

The many fine This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio compilation albums are still available, each full of that rockin' pop sound you crave. A portion of all sales benefit our perpetually cash-strapped community radio project:

Volume 1: download
Volume 2: CD or download
Volume 3: download
Volume 4: CD or download
Waterloo Sunset--Benefit For This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio:  CD or download

I'm on Twitter @CafarelliCarl.

POP-A-LOOZA: The Secret Six

Each week, the pop culture website Pop-A-Looza shares some posts from my vast 'n' captivating Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do) archives. The latest shared post is my recent look back at my first-ever freelance writing sale: a history of the 1960s DC Comics series The Secret Six.

I originally wrote and sold that piece to Amazing Heroes in 1984, the first of a few things I wrote for AH, and the first of a bunch of things I placed with magazines over the next few decades. My second Amazing Heroes sale was a speculation about a combined DC and Marvel Comics universe; I'll be reprising that piece as a near-future blog post. I've already shared "Who's...WHO?!," my Amazing Heroes A-Z romp through 26 forgotten DC Comics characters. I've also written a reminiscence of my brief time as an Amazing Heroes freelancer, as well as "Money For Words," an overview of my professional freelance writing career (such as it was). That last piece was written in 2017, at a time when I had ceased doing professional freelancing; I have since returned to doing occasional work (and gratefully cashing those checks). 

(And, since I started this whole thing writing about The Secret Six, it's fitting that I also wrote an appreciation of The Secret Six's creator, the late E. Nelson Bridwell, when he was given a posthumous Bill Finger Award For Excellence In Comic Book Writing in 2019.)

But for now, we must answer THE CALL OF THE MOCKINGBIRD! My first-ever freelance writing sale was a history of a DC comic book called The Secret Six, and that's the latest Boppin' Pop-A-Looza.






TIP THE BLOGGER: CC's Tip Jar!

You can support this blog by becoming a patron on Patreon: Fund me, baby! 

This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, and on the web at http://sparksyracuse.org/ You can read about our history here.

The many fine This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio compilation albums are still available, each full of that rockin' pop sound you crave. A portion of all sales benefit our perpetually cash-strapped community radio project:

Volume 1: download
Volume 2: CD or download
Volume 3: download
Volume 4: CD or download
Waterloo Sunset--Benefit For This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio:  CD or download

Carl's writin' a book! The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) will contain 165 essays about 165 tracks, each one of 'em THE greatest record ever made. An infinite number of records can each be the greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. Updated initial information can be seen here: THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE! (Volume 1).

My First Freelance Writing Sale: A History Of DC Comics' THE SECRET SIX

You never forget your first.

I've been a freelance writer since 1984. I have never been a terribly successful freelance writer, but I wrote some stuff, made some sales, collected my meager paychecks, and got some notice. My widest notoriety was connected to my rockin' pop journalism for Goldmine magazine 1986-2006, for Rhino Records' 1997 CD collection Poptopia! Power Pop Classics Of The '90s, for contributions to books like Bubblegum Music Is The Naked Truth and Shake Some Action, and for my proudly biased proselytizin' on behalf of The Flashcubes. Since 1998, I've co-hosted (and written weekly commentary for) This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl. Since 2016, I've pursued the cockeyed notion of daily blogging right here at Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do). I'm currently writing a book called The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1). I'm at least as active now as I've ever been. 

But before I ever started getting money to write about rock 'n' roll, I was paid to write about comic books.



My very first freelance writing sale was to a magazine called Amazing Heroes. In 1984, AH editor David W. Olbrich bought my history of The Secret Six, a DC Comics title which had run for seven issues in 1968-69. 



Success! MONEY! Nearly enough money to buy dinner for two, and a movie! Nearly. But the best thing was seeing my byline in Amazing Heroes # 58 (11/1/84), and knowing that whatever happened or didn't happen next, I had been paid for writing. I really liked that idea.



I did a little more work for Amazing Heroes over the next couple of years, and branched out to Krause Publications with a 1985 retrospective of the 1960s Batman TV series for Krause's Comics Collector magazine. Krause also published a music magazine called Goldmine. That history was told elsewhere, in a lengthy reminiscence called "The Road To Goldmine."

My freelance writing story started here, with a fond look back at a 1960s comic book about five adventurers being blackmailed by the sixth member of their team. But none of them knew which teammate was doing the blackmailing. Until they figured that out, they were obliged to answer the call:






DC did eventually do a sequel series to The Secret Six, published in the late '80s in the pages of Action Comics Weekly. The "Secret Six" title was later appropriated and repurposed for an unrelated group of DC super-villains, and while some of those stories have their moments, they weren't about my Secret Six. 



My Secret Six was important to me. I wrote about them. I sold what I wrote. And I kept writing after that.

In 2019, I sold four short stories to AHOY Comics. I'm working on my book. I'm blogging. I'm writing. And I'm not done writing just yet.

TIP THE BLOGGER: CC's Tip Jar!

You can support this blog by becoming a patron on Patreon: Fund me, baby! 

This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, and on the web at http://sparksyracuse.org/ You can read about our history here.

The many fine This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio compilation albums are still available, each full of that rockin' pop sound you crave. A portion of all sales benefit our perpetually cash-strapped community radio project:

Volume 1: download
Volume 2: CD or download
Volume 3: download
Volume 4: CD or download

Waterloo Sunset--Benefit For This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio:  CD or download

Carl's writin' a book! The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) will contain 155 essays about 155 tracks, each one of 'em THE greatest record ever made. An infinite number of records can each be the greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. Updated initial information can be seen here: THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE! (Volume 1).