E. Nelson Bridwell

E. Nelson Bridwell was born on September 22, 1931, and died on January 23, 1987. An American writer whose career straddled humor and superhero comics, he made an early mark at Mad magazine, where a 1958 Lone Ranger parody he wrote produced the now-famous punchline "What you mean...we?" — a line that has endured in popular culture long after its original context was forgotten.

Bridwell spent the bulk of his career at DC Comics, where his encyclopedic knowledge of the publisher's tangled history earned him an informal but telling reputation as DC's self-appointed continuity cop. He brought that same devotion to internal consistency across hundreds of issues, with his most-credited work appearing in titles such as Super Friends, Superman, Superboy, Shazam!, and The Superman Family. He also contributed to the Batman comic strip and was one of the writers behind Super Friends, the Saturday-morning animated tie-in that introduced DC's heroes to a generation of younger readers. Among his original creations is The Inferior Five, a comedy-oriented superhero team that reflected the same satirical sensibility he had honed at Mad.

Over a career spanning from 1958 into the mid-1980s, Bridwell remained a quiet but essential figure at DC — less a flashy stylist than a careful steward of a mythology he clearly loved.