On the passing of KC Carlson

I was very sorry to hear about the death of comics editor and writer KC Carlson.

I had never met Carlson. I knew him primarily as the husband of long-time writer-about-comics Johanna Draper Carlson, who has been writing about comics and pop culture at her site Comics Worth Reading since 1999, as well as contributing all over the Internet, including at, among the sites I read or have read, The Savage Critics, The Beat and Good Comics for Kids. 

Secondarily, I knew Carlson as a well-liked former editor of DC's Legion of Super-Heroes comics in the early '90s. 

Having never really been much of a LOSH reader or fan, though, I didn't think Carlson had any impact on my personal comics reading experience. But as I've been reading remembrances and obituaries of him this week (like this one from my Good Comics for Kids editor Brigid Alverson at ICv2 or this one from Heidi MacDonald at The Beat) and looking more closely at his editing credits, I see he did indeed have an influence on the comics I read in the '90s, when I was first forming my love of the medium. 

He was the assistant editor on 1989's Deadman: Love After Death, a book drawn by former Micronauts, Action Comics Weekly and First Comics artist Kelley Jones, a book where the man who would eventually go on to become one of my favorite comics artists really seemed to find and start to perfect his own unique style. (Jones mentioned the importance of Carlson in his career here). 

In 1990, he was the collections editors for some of the publisher's earliest of the then still-emerging format that we would come to call graphic novels, including V for Vendetta, Swamp Thing: Love and Death and The Sandman: The Doll's House. I don't have to tell you how important that format would go on to become for the North American comics industry and the medium itself, and those early, more literary DC Comics trade paperbacks went a long way toward popularizing it. 

In 1992, he edited the excellent if short-lived Eclipso, a then-unusual comic series that featured a villain as a lead (and which could really use a collection). 

In 1994, he edited Dan Jurgens and Jerry Ordway's Zero Hour: Crisis in Time, a favorite of mine among DC's crossover event series, and a story I was just re-reading as recently as last December. 

In 1996, Carlson replaced Mike Carlin as the editor on the Superman line, helping guide the character for part of what proved to be a creatively and financially successful decade in his history. 

And in 1997 he was the editor for the launch of Adventures in the DC Universe, a consistently great title that gave the Bruce Timm-style "animated series" look of Batman: The Animated Series and Superman: The Animated Series to the rest of the DC Universe, the appealing artwork paired with inviting, all-ages stories that proved perfect introductions to the characters that populated the publisher's line at the time (and which could also really use a collection). 

So I guess it turns out that a lot of the comics filling up my long boxes got there thanks in part to the work of KC Carlson.

In addition to his work as a DC editor, Carlson held many and varied jobs related to the comics industry during his life, including writing about comics for, among other places, the Westfield Comics blog, Comics Worth Reading and The Beat...where he contributed an oral history quite relevant to what I've mostly been blogging about here lately. 

My sincere condolences to Johanna, and to Carlson's friends and family and the many comics creators and professionals who have worked with him.