Why I Can’t Read Nero Wolfe (aka The Real Archie Goodwin)

I can’t read Nero Wolfe mysteries, because of Archie Goodwin. But not for the reason you may think.

I belong to an historical mystery book club, reading classics of the Golden Age. We tried our first Nero Wolfe last year, And Be a Villain, because someone wanted to read the one with “Wolfe’s Moriarty”, Arnold Zeck.

I know several Sherlockians who are Wolfe Pack members, and I’ve been exposed to the theory that the detective is Mycroftian (a favorite character of mine) in some fashion, so I started out interested in finding out more about Nero Wolfe. I had somewhere picked up some very basics about him: that his assistant was Archie Goodwin, that he never left his house, and that he loved orchids.

The book wasn’t bad. I liked the aspects of the radio show and how publicity of the time worked. (I’ve always been interested in media and marketing.) The misogyny demonstrated by the Archie Goodwin character was typical of the period, vaguely quaint and amusing for that reason. (It’s always easier to deal with such attitudes when they took place “a long time ago”.) And it’s in keeping with the “tough guy” ethos of that type of detective story.

However… every time I saw the name, it jarred me mentally. I knew the real-life Archie Goodwin, you see. He was a noted comic book writer and editor, and he was nothing like that.

Archie Goodwin’s many credits include:

• Editor and writer of Creepy and Eerie for Warren Publishing in the mid-1960s
• Writing Batman and editing Detective Comics for DC Comics in the 1970s, including the award-winning Manhunter backup stories with Walter Simonson, and again in the 1990s, with Legends of the Dark Knight
• Marvel Comics Editor-in-Chief, 1976-1977
• Co-creating Luke Cage and Spider-Woman
• Writer of the Star Wars newspaper comic strip and writer/editor for the Marvel Star Wars comics
• Editor of James Robinson’s Starman, a series about superhero legacies that was revolutionary in the mid-90s.

Perhaps more relevant to this audience, Goodwin was published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (July 1964). The magazine told him he couldn’t use that name, due to Rex Stout’s character, but after he informed them it was his real name, that anecdote became the story’s introduction.

Archie Goodwin was also a Batman villain. In the 90s, the three most important editors at DC Comics were Goodwin, Mike Carlin, and Denny O’Neil. In Batman Adventures #10 (July 1993), writer Kelley Puckett and artists Mike Parobeck and Rick Burchett introduce a trio of villains: Mr. Nice, Mastermind, and the Perfesser, based on these editors, respectively. Mr. Nice’s gimmick was that he was super-skilled, but he kept getting distracted by sympathy for other people (and puppies!).

The trio reappeared in Batman Adventures #20 (May 1994) and #30 (March 1995), with Mr. Nice’s final appearance occurring in Batman: Gotham Adventures #13 (June 1999, by Kelley Puckett, Rick Burchett, and Terry Beatty). That last issue, dedicated to Archie Goodwin and titled “The End”, is about Mastermind acting out when Mr. Nice has to go away for some insignificant plot device reason. The important thing is that it was released after Goodwin passed away in 1998 from cancer, and for anyone who knew what the characters represented, it’s a heartbreaking farewell.

See, the most significant thing to know about Archie Goodwin is that he was widely considered “the best-loved comic book editor, ever.” He was a talented man, but more importantly, he was kind. I only had the pleasure of meeting him a couple of times — when I worked at DC, he was only there intermittently — but even with those few encounters, I can attest to his reputation. So it’s difficult for me to read about “Archie Goodwin” being Nero Wolfe’s sidekick when the one I knew was so much more.

(This article previously appeared in The Gazette New Series Volume 2, Number 2, the journal published by The Wolfe Pack, the official Nero Wolfe literary society.)