Keeping on the topic of Broadway musical numbers performed on the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon, here from the 1980 telethon is Sandy Duncan performing a number from Peter Pan. I saw her do this show with Christopher Hewett as her Captain Hook and she was pretty good…

And now here from the 2009 telethon, we have Cathy Rigby — with more cast members plus flying — performing part of the same number and part of another from Peter Pan. I saw her version of the show a couple of times and she was even better than pretty good…

In the previous post, I said that I didn't think Burke Moses was the gent playing Gaston in the excerpt of Beauty and the Beast performed on the Jerry Lewis Telethon. Well, Galen Fott — who seems to know a lot about such things — wrote me and seems sure that it was Burke Moses. I've decided he's almost certainly right. (By the way, Mr. Moses was not only great as Gaston but I saw him play the title role in Li'l Abner in a limited-run revival of that show in New York and he was real good as a hero, too.)

The fires in Southern California are still awful and still far, far from where I live. The National Weather Service is forecasting somewhere between a quarter and a half-inch of rain this weekend which will be wonderful if it happens. It would be enough to dampen things down but not so much as to create major mudslides. Mudslides are always a problem after big fires.

I'm not watching the news much and have nothing to say about the first days of Trump II that others aren't saying more eloquently and with more outrage than I can muster at the moment. Kevin Drum posted a good scorecard of where this country stood, statistic-wise, on the last day of Joe Biden's presidency. This might be handy to keep around. Inflation, for instance, is at 2.7%. A former friend of mine who loves everything Trump does even if it's illegal, was insisting inflation was at something like 20% under Biden and will be celebrating if Donald gets it down to 5%.

Posting here may be sluggish for a few days but we'll get it back up to speed.

From the 1995 Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon, here's the "Gaston" number from the Broadway/Disney musical of Beauty and the Beast. IMDB says this is Burke Moses, who originated the role of Gaston in New York but I don't think it is. This is probably the national touring company and they were probably parked at the time in Los Angeles, which is where that year's Jerrython was produced…

One year ago this evening, I was in an upstairs bathroom here in my home, getting tidied-up because a lady friend was coming over to spend time with me. Suddenly — for no reason that has ever been determined — I was lying on the tile bathroom floor with a broken left ankle. I did not hit my head or hurt any other part of me but my ankle was screaming like Sam Kinison with his finger in a light socket.

Obviously, I needed help. My cell phone was in the adjoining bedroom and despite the pain, I managed to drag myself across the floor to the phone and dial 911. They said help was on the way. Shortly, the lady friend arrived. Moments later, two firemen arrived. A few minutes later, two more firemen arrived. It took all four firemen to carry me down the stairs and out to an ambulance.

I was very fortunate that I could reach my cell phone. I was also very fortunate that my cell phone has an app on it that allows me to unlock my front door remotely. Things could have been a lot worse for me if those two things had not been true…or if the firemen had not been so prompt and efficient. Or had the folks at the hospital to which I was transported not been so good at their jobs.

I spent four days in that hospital.  I was then moved to a rehab facility where I spent 33 days rehabbing.  Fortunately, I had a couple of real good nurses who took wonderful care of me. During that time, I had my personal assistant and a terrific plumber-handyman make some adjustments to my home so that when I returned to it, I could live upstairs. That's where I am right now — in my office and up here, I also have my bedroom, two bathrooms and a couple other rooms. Since I returned home, that's what I've lived. I only go downstairs to go to (a) doctor appointments or (b) Comic-Con.

So what happens when I need something from downstairs…from, for instance, the kitchen? I have my wonderful cleaning lady Dora here several days a week. I have my super-efficient assistant Jane here several days a week. I have folks who visit me all the time. If I plan a little, I can have someone here when delivery folks deliver or when I need something brought upstairs or taken downstairs. I can get upstairs or downstairs when I have to but it takes a while and I need both hands on the railings so I can't carry anything up or down.

Apart from that, it hasn't been that bad…and that's not sarcasm. It really hasn't been that bad. If you'd told me before I broke my ankle that I was going to break my ankle and spend over a month in a rehab facility and then have very limited walking for much of a year and struggle to get up or down stairs, I would have thought, "Geez, that sounds like the most horrible year I've ever had" but it really and truly hasn't been that bad.

I have a great support team, I spent some money wisely to rearrange my living facilities…and I was going to be spending most of the year at my computer anyway. I would say I'm like 80% of the way back to normal and that I was also lucky to get a great physical trainer. She comes by twice a week and she'll take care of that last 20%.

I am not recommending broken ankles to anyone. But sometimes you have a little catastrophe of which you're able to say, "That wasn't as bad as I would have thought." That's what I'm saying with this update.

I could have picked many, many different books by Jules Feiffer to put next to his photo but I picked the one that meant the most to me. In 1965 when The Great Comic Book Heroes came out, it filled in so much that I didn't know about the history of comics, it was like Information Overload. And along with that information came a ton of inspiration. It showed a respect for the material it covered — in short supply at that time — and this already-successful man was confessing to a love of things that I loved. The book was also, like all his cartoons, written in a witty manner that made instant contact with the reader. I would never claim I ever did it anywhere as well as he did but I sure tried.

Feiffer was a man who did something that then seemed impossible: He moved from lowly-paid work in the lowly-regarded medium of comic books to a prestigious weekly syndicated strip and from there to writing important works for the stage and screen. That became more frequent later on but at the time, it was like golfing on the moon. Obits like this one and this one will explain how he did this.

I only had the privilege of meeting him briefly on a few occasions…never long enough to get to know the man or communicate to him how much I admired his work and how much it meant to me. It meant a lot…and since I have a whole shelf of his works, it will continue to do so.

I'm hearing too much bad news these days.  I need to watch this clip and you can watch it along with me.  The young lady is Celina Smith and the policeman was played by Ben Davis. I don't know the dog's real name…

Before you read Part 2 of this article, you might want to read Part 1.

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If you know anything about comic book history, you know that the business endured a major slump in the fifties. Folks in the industry — some of them, at least — were worried that there would soon be no comic books.  If that sounds insanely alarmist, you need to remember that almost all those people had grown up on pulp magazines and many had worked on them…and by the mid-fifties, there was almost no pulp industry left.

Comics had gotten a bad name because of the more violent and sexy ones, and a lot of newsstands were giving up on comics, plus there was the serious worry of government-imposed censorship. A lot of comic book publishers did go outta business and those that remained were not unhappy to see their competition thin out. In fact, some of them were jubilant. When most of the remaining publishers formed the Comics Code to self-censor comics and improve the image of the field, Jack Kirby believed that the primary goal — and if not the primary then certainly the secondary — was to stop new publishers from getting into the marketplace…and indeed, almost none did.

In the mid-to-late seventies, a new form of distribution took over getting comic books to the marketplace. It was called Direct Sales and under it, comic books were no longer returnable. The retailers bought them and sold them and if they didn't sell…well, that was the retailers' problem. Some would tell you that Direct Sales saved the industry. The old system had become dysfunctional and it wasn't working. The new system did…and there was a key difference once Direct Sales caught on: There were suddenly a lot of new publishers.

Between the time most of the major publishers formed the Comics Code and the time Direct Sales started up, it was almost impossible to start a new comic book company. The major publishers controlled distribution and they didn't let newcomers in. The few companies that tried — Tower, Milson, Myron Fass, Skywald, one or two others — didn't last long. Milson (aka Lightning Comics) published three issues of Fatman the Human Flying Saucer and two of Tod Holton, Super Green Beret before folding up shop.

In the early seventies, I was involved peripherally with two attempts to start new companies. The Edgar Rice Burroughs Estate wanted to publish their own comics of Tarzan, Korak, John Carter of Mars and a few other E.R.B. properties. They had popular characters and the necessary funding. What they didn't have and couldn't get was distribution. They finally decided the only way to get their characters on the stands was to let D.C. publish them and that arrangement did not end well for them.

Almost the exact same thing happened when Hanna-Barbera decided to try and publish their own comics. They wound up having to let Marvel publish them and that didn't end well for them. You might think those deals didn't end well for DC or Marvel either but I think at both companies, there were at least some folks who were very happy to have effectively blocked potential competitors.

There really were no new companies to speak of until Direct Sales Distribution became a significant way to sell comic books. Direct Sales offered something that regular magazine distribution did not. There were no off-sale dates. Comic books were not returned for credit. Like I said, the ones that didn't sell right away became the retailers' problem.

So now let's go back to the example of Action Comics that we talked about in Part 1 of this article. Under the old distribution method, an issue would go on sale and then it was supposed to remain on the racks until it was purchased or until the next issue arrived, at which point the unsold copies would be returned for credit. But that wasn't the way it usually worked. Usually, as new comics came in, the retailer would replace comics that had been on the rack for a while with newly-arriving comics.

After all, most stores didn't have room for an unlimited display of comic books. Comics didn't make them that much money. So that issue of Action Comics didn't get four weeks of display in most stores. It would be lucky to get two weeks and obviously, that cut deeply into sales. At one of the stores where I bought comics in my teens, display space was so limited that comics stayed on sale for one week. They were delivered every Tuesday and Thursday…and every Tuesday, the store sent back everything that was unsold.

The store was open for fifteen hours a day so a comic that arrived in the Tuesday shipment was purchasable for about 105 hours a week and one that arrived on Thursday got about 75. Which brings us back to the Big Town Market located at the corner of Pico Boulevard and La Cienega located — I just figured this out on Google maps — a 2.8 mile bus ride from my home. Here's that photo of the place again…

There were places closer to me that carried new comics…so why did I from time to time hop on a bus and ride to and from the Big Town Market? Because they sold old new comic books. Big Town was a big store and they had a big space devoted to big comic book racks and they didn't return their unsold comics promptly.

They only sent unsold comics back when they were so wrinkled and shabby from kids pawing through them that no one would buy them. If I missed the latest Action Comics at the stores that were closer to where I lived — and it was easy to do that at the store that sent everything back every Tuesday — I could almost surely find a copy at Big Town.

Those who collect current comics in this century have it easy. They may not have a comic book shop near them but whatever store they do get to probably has all the recently-released issues and in good condition. Back in my day — and yes, I know just using that phrase is showing one's years — we had to go to our newsstands at least once a week and then hunt about for what was sold out before we got there. So perhaps once a month, I had to make that long bus ride to and from Big Town. At least I had something to read on the ride home.

And as I said when I started this, I don't think I ever bought anything to eat at that market — not a candy bar or a bag o' chips or anything Just comic books. I know food is a necessity of life but when I was that age, so were the new comic books.

Here's a musical number from a 1958 episode of The Pat Boone Chevy Showcase featuring Pat, Shirley Jones and Dick Van Dyke. Dick has always said that he never thought of himself as a dancer until he won the lead in the Broadway show, Bye Bye Birdie…and yet here he is, two years before Bye Bye Birdie showing himself to be a pretty good hoofer…

…make sure you're aware of this recently-enacted law…

Assembly Bill 413, or California's "daylighting" law, went into effect in 2024 and prohibits drivers from stopping, standing or parking their car within 20 feet of a crosswalk and 15 feet of a crosswalk with a curb extension. During the first year of the law's implementation, violators were let off with a warning, unless the violation occurred in a properly marked area. But that warning period ends Jan. 1.

So as of nineteen days ago, you're subject to a citation if you park too close to a crosswalk. Take care.

I'm not watching — and I shall continue to not watch — any of the inauguration activities. That's not because this country is installing a man who is a convicted felon and a jury-decreed molester and an incredible liar and you can fill in other things that he is for yourself. No, I've never watched the inauguration or related festivities of any president. What I see of them always looks like we're crowning a king, not installing a public servant. My kind of president would probably say, "Skip the coronation and put the money towards something more important. I just want to be sworn in and then I'll go right to work."

I don't expect to ever see that happen…but there are a lot of things about government that I don't expect to ever see happen. I'll bet you have a list of your own. We probably all have our lists of things we desperately don't want to see happen…but in the coming months, will.

You may have heard this story back when the Disney movie The Little Mermaid was first released on home video: The cover for the video was painted by a long-time Disney staffer who'd been told this was his last job for them and thereafter, he was fired and persona non goofy in the Disney organization. Furious and eager to exact some revenge, he painted the required painting but snuck a big phallic symbol into its background. No one at Disney noticed it and they went ahead and printed zillions of the video boxes which all had to be recalled at great expense, giving the ousted artist the last guffaw.

It's a great story. It's not true in the slightest but it's a great story.

Wanna know the true story? The real, honest-to-Walt true story? Well, my buddy Bill Morrison will tell you…and he oughta know. He did the painting.

Garth Gersten sent me this…

Was reading an older interview (2007) with Denny O'Neil where he states, "And I thought, 'Well, I've had a really long run at doing this.' According to Mark Evanier, the longest regularly-working writer in the history of the medium. Maybe it's time to get off the stage and to pass the torch."

In context, I think that it is you saying O'Neil was the longest regularly working writer. But, you've been at it since 1969, and it seems like there has always been some Evanier written comic book being published even when you were writing TV shows. (So, maybe not "regularly working writer"?)

So (1) where do you think you rank on the hypothetical list of "longest regularly working writer?"? and (2) what do you think is the longest gap where there was no Evanier written comic book published?

I'm pretty sure Denny was saying that I said he was "the longest regularly-working writer in the history of the medium" and I'm pretty sure I didn't say that because I'm pretty sure it was never true, especially in 2007. In 2007, Stan Lee was still alive and I don't know if you'd call what he was writing steady but Del Connell and Vic Lockman were still with us and both of them were writing comics way before Denny was. So was Roy Thomas, who happily is still with us. I would think all those guys — and there are probably others — could be said to be as "steady" as Denny ever was. Others that come to mind would include George Gladir, Sid Jacobson and Bob Bolling. I think Steve Skeates may have been writing a bit before Denny, too.

I dunno where I fall on any longevity list but I started getting paid for writing comic books in 1970 and among those who were in before me and are still at it are Roy, Gerry Conway, Marv Wolfman and Cary Bates. There are probably a few others.

As for (2), well: Since about the middle of 1982, there's always been an issue of Groo the Wanderer (or some other project with Sergio) in the works. There are gaps of several months between the time one mini-series ends and the first issue of the next one hits the stores but I'm always working on one of those.

Before that, I was usually working on some comic book even when I was writing a TV show. During the time I was writing on Welcome Back, Kotter — and this is taking me back to 1976 — I think I only wrote one or two comics and they were issues of DC's short-lived Welcome Back, Kotter comic book. The day after I left that TV job — and literally, it was the very next day — I started writing the Hanna-Barbera comic books published by Marvel.

Almost instantly, I realized then how much I missed writing comic books so no matter how busy things got on later jobs, I always made time to write a couple of comic books.  They may not have come out on a steady basis or even out in this country but I was writing them. Does anything I've written here answer your questions?

For the last few decades, the theatrical community has never let eleven minutes go by without a new Stephen Sondheim tribute. Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a little but it sure feels that way. One of the first Sondheim tributes, if not the first, was a one-night concert in 1973 (I think) that also produced a record. Here's a little video about that concert. It looks like it's been processed through one of the A.I. programs like Topaz that enhances the video but sometimes distorts faces or makes everyone look like they've been sculpted out of Play-Doh. But it's still worth watching…

The late Richard Sherman was a delightful man who, alone and with his brother, wrote delightful songs, mainly within the awesome purview of Disney — Mary Poppins, The Jungle Book, many rides at the Magic Kingdom, etc. For a number of years, I always seemed to be at parties where he was present and there always seemed to be a piano and he always seemed to be willing, maybe even eager to serenade the guests. He would perform selections from his vast and vaunted repertoire and the number of tunes he was willing to perform varied between two and All of Them. No matter how many he favored us with, everyone present loved every note he played, every word he sang.

Right above this paragraph, I just put a photo from one of those parties. This one was at Leonard Maltin's house and left to right, we have Ian Whitcomb (the British pop star), Richard Sherman, me and Stan Freberg. If you don't know who Stan Freberg was, you have no business reading this blog.

At such parties — including this one, I think — one of the songs Richard performed was "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" from Mary Poppins. If you recall the movie, there's a point in it where Julie Andrews has to pronounce that word backwards. This is not easy to do. Here are some folks making valiant attempts…

At the parties of which I write, Richard would perform the song and in the middle of it, he would call on someone he knew to say the word in reverse. For some reason, it's pretty easy to say it forwards but tough to say it backwards if you don't know the secret, which is to not try to pronounce it backwards. I actually found the secret of pretending to say it backwards on the Internet and I apologize if me putting this word in this post is causing your screen to format oddly. WordPress is bad at hyphenation, especially of words it doesn't know.

As viewers of Mary Poppins know, "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" is a word that's… that's… well, it's supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. And there's a song about it. And in that song, Mary Poppins says that you could also say it backward, and does so. But how she does so is different between the film and stage versions.

In the recent stage musical, which opened in 2004 in London, and in 2006 on Broadway, Mary does what you might expect: she pronounces the word the way one would if its spelling were reversed. The backward version is suoicodilaipxecitsiligarfilacrepus.

In the 1964 film, however, only the syllables are reversed, with the exception of the first/last syllable. So, super-cali-fragil-istic-expi-ali-docious becomes docious-ali-expi-istic-fragil-cali-rupus. Our guess is that "rupus" was used instead of "super" because it sounded better.

The word does not appear in any of the Mary Poppins books by P.L. Travers.

So one day at the Magic Castle, I ran into Richard and we got to talking. It turned out that the following evening, we were both going to be at a party and Richard expected he would be asked to perform and, of course, he would. Among the songs he would perform was you-know-what. He asked me if I could say it backwards. I said, "No, can you?" And he did. He pronounced it the way Julie Andrews did and then he told me to learn it before the party. He said, "I'm going to call on you at the party to say it backwards and you'd better be prepared."

But he didn't tell me the secret way to do it…so I went home and tried to learn it and unfortunately, I am very, very bad at foreign languages and this, of course, was the most foreign of foreign languages — so foreign as to be non-existent. I might not have even been able to become proficient in saying it the Julie Andrews way but I sure couldn't learn to really say it backwards. I didn't have a video of the movie to study just then.

I gave it my best, which in this case wasn't very good, and at the party, Richard performed the song and at the proper point, he stopped playing, pointed to me in the audience and shouted out, "Mark Evanier, say it backwards!" And I just stammered and fumbled and I don't know what the heck came out of me but it was not a word — not even a made-up word — backwards or forwards or inside-out or sideways or whatever. It was just awful and everyone laughed at my ineptness. My pal Will Ryan, who happened to be standing near me, stepped up and did it properly.

I was shamed.

I thought of immediately leaving the party, going directly home and getting into bed — or maybe under it — and never leaving for the rest of my life. A few caring people assured me that wasn't necessary but I felt great guilt until I learned the syllable trick. Every so often, I brush up on it in case the ghost of Richard Sherman ever turns up and gives me another shot at it. I know that's not likely but I want to be prepared anyway.

What made me recall this story is that I came across the video below. It features Cantor Azi Schwartz, who was among the vocalists in this video I posted here for Hanukkah. Mr. Schwartz doesn't pronounce any of the words backwards. He instead sings the entire song — from right to left…

Actually, I'm not sure this is news but Comic-Con International has again extended its deal or contract or agreement or whatever you call it to remain in San Diego and convene at the San Diego Convention Center. The reason this may not be news is that I keep telling you they ain't moving. They're now committed there through 2027. And the reason I don't think they'll go elsewhere is that I can't imagine the movers 'n' shakers of San Diego being so all-fired stupid as to let this convention get away from them. They may talk tough and other cities may make it sound like they're going to steal the con away from them but I'm willing to bet serious money — someone else's, not mine of course — that the convention will stay where it is.

This year's, in case you haven't marked your calendar, runs July 24-27 with a Preview Night on the 23rd.

Speaking of such things: If you can't wait for Comic-Con (or can't get badges), it's only 72 days until WonderCon starts at the Anaheim Convention Center. It's March 28, 29 and 30…and no, that is not Easter Weekend. Easter falls on April 20th this year.

Run by the same folks who run Comic-Con, WonderCon is a great event…smaller than Comic-Con but with more than enough to see, hear and purchase. I will be there hosting panels. My partner Sergio Aragonés will not be in attendance but he's doing fine.

Three-day badges for WonderCon have been available for a while. Single-day badges go on sale tomorrow. All the info you need is here. A good time will be had by all.