Episode 23 – Voice From Krypton – An Interview with Ed Gross
This time out I am not doing what I said I was going to do last time and for that I apologize. However, I wanted to have something out for Superman Day (Greek Orthodox) since it is his 85th birthday.
(I talk about this during the episode, but I thought about doing something big for the 85th birthday, but in both 2013 and 2018 I had big plans and bad things happened in my personal life, so I thought I would just kick something out at the very last moment as to not tempt fate.)
Anyway, for this episode I reached out to writer Ed Gross, who has written or co-written a number of pop culture related books as well as being an entertainment writer for the past forty years. This June, Ed has a new book coming out all about Superman titled Voices From Krypton: The Unofficial, Unauthorized Oral History of Superman. Ed conducted hundreds of interviews with actors, writers, directors, and fans (including me) and has put together a 700 plus page oral history of the Man of Steel also features a foreword by Brandon Routh and an afterword by Mark Waid. Ed and I talk about his history as a Superman fan, why he wanted to write this book, why he likes doing oral histories, and so much more.
You pre-order Voice From Krypton by clicking on this link and after that click on this link to be taken to Ed’s author page on Amazon to check out his other books.
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The opening and closing theme to the show is titled Journey and was composed by Pontus Rufelt. It is licensed from Shockwave-Sound.
Next Time: More than likely it will be an installment in this year’s JLMAY. Then…I promise…I will do the two-part Top 10 thing.
Thanks for this episode. I really enjoyed your interview/conversation with Mr. Gross. As a result of this, I’ve already pre-ordered Voices from Krypton, and I’m looking forward to reading it when it comes out in June.
I chuckled when you described the experience of your younger co-workers’ being somewhat mystified by the idea of “single” records, and your having to explain the switch for the different record speeds. When I was a young boy, we also had “talking records”, which were the same size as 45s, with the large hole, but played at a slower speed (16 2/3 RPM, usually shown as “16” on the switch), which were spoken word recordings of short stories or poems.
I have made a pilgrimage years ago to Metropolis, but not during the Superman Celebration. Even without the festivities, I found it a truly wonderful place, although I often say, “It’s called Metropolis, but it’s more the size of Smallville.” I wish every Superman fan could visit at some time.
Also, as a side note in response to your mentioning recently that you’ve been having problems with “Apple Podcasts”, I want to let you know that, on my computer (I don’t have any podcatcher apps on my phone), I still have “iTunes”, and all of the podcast episodes seem to show up there on their normal release days. I don’t know if the old app title makes a difference, but there it is, for what it’s worth.
Once again a great episode of my favorite podcast. It was an odd sense of kismet that I listened to this episode celebrating 85 years of Superman right after finishing your Superman at 75 the Celebration of a Legend episodes from Views from the Longbox. In this episode I think you mentioned it might’ve been called Persistence of a Legend, I think this however was the title of something from the 50th anniversary of Superman. Great episode, I always love to hear new episodes of this show!