After a successful career of editing science fiction magazines featuring the work of luminaries like Frederick Pohl and Ray Bradbury, Schwartz went on to create comic books. However, when real-to-Earth-1 heroes like Batman and Superman started actually appearing, demand for his works of fiction dried up. The headline news was actually more exciting than anything he could dream up.

Demand for his work gone, he ended up a vagrant by his 70th birthday. His despair eventually grew so great that he tried to find a way to kill himself. Superman, having discovered that Schwartz was an old friend of Perry, became his guardian angel during these suicide attempts.

Eventually, though , a villain named Olaf managed to find a way to reduce Schwartz to pure imagination. His physical form dying, Schwartz asked Superman to take him to Earth Prime. There, he transferred his imagination into the Earth Prime Schwartz. Thus, the Earth 1 Schwartz lived on in the body of the Earth Prime Schwartz.

Notes:
Schwartz holds the distinction of being the first DC character to die in the presence of his counterpart from another Earth. (He "died" in the arms of—or to be more precise faded into—Julius Schwartz of Earth Prime.)

He has an ambiguous status post-Crisis. Is there such a thing as a post-Crisis Julius Schwartz? He certainly has appeared in stories that post-date Crisis on Infinite Earths. However, they have all had a retro feel to them that make them seem somehow "outisde" the post-Crisis continuity. It's easy enough to imagine these as Earth 1 stories told after the formation of the post-Crisis Earth.

First Appearance: None listed.

Favorite Characters:
Julius Schwartz is a favorite character of 1 user

View a chronological listing of this character's appearances

Issue Appearances:
Action Comics (1938)