Monthly Archives: July 2003

Here's a free link to the Wall Street Journal article on Harlan Ellison. (Thanks, Larry) By the way, despite what it says, I doubt Harlan said he would "hawk" his house. I suspect he said he would "hock" his house. The Journal's editorial page is about this accurate.

Big front page article in The Wall Street Journal about Harlan Ellison and his many battles to protect his work, most notably his current lawsuit against AOL. Here's the link but you have to be a paid-up subscriber to read the piece. If anyone finds a free link somewhere, let me know.

Here's another article on the collapse of the company for which I briefly worked. This is a pretty good overview of what seems to have caused the operation to crash and burn.

Next year's Comic-Con International is July 22-25, 2004. Same place, same exhibit hall, higher prices, probably more people. If you're driving there on the 405, leave now.

My friend Tom Galloway just did the following computations. I don't guarantee the math but Tom is usually right, and it sure felt this big…

This year, there were 52 aisles on the Dealer's Floor at San Diego. That doesn't include the Art Show area at one end.

From the floorplans at the convention center website, each hall is roughly 100 yards wide. Let's assume the .25-.33 mile distance from one end of the Dealer's Floor to the other (which took me 7.75 minutes to walk late Sunday afternoon…and that's without stopping along the way) gets lost in the noise of aisles that don't go all the way from one side to the other. And we'll include the Art Show area in that noise as well.

So that means that to walk the Dealer's Floor so that you went through all of every aisle, you'd walk 5,200 yards. Since a yard is three feet, and there are 5,280 feet in a mile, to see everything in the Dealer's Floor, you'd have to walk 3 miles.

And that's not counting how far you'd have to walk to get something decent to eat. Or to find a men's room. Frankly, I think they need to install a monorail.

Paul Krugman discusses the notion that it's said to be unpatriotic to question our leadership in wartime but apparently not unpatriotic for them to "cook the books" with regard to intelligence reports.

About eight thousand people (it seemed) took photos at some of the events I hosted at San Diego, most notably the gathering of Ray Bradbury, Forry Ackerman and Julie Schwartz, as well as the Jack Kirby Tribute Panel. A couple of folks on those panels would love to have copies of such photos, and I wouldn't mind posting a few here myself. If you have such, please send them to me. The e-mail link is at the top of this page. Thanks.

Early Friday evening at the Comic-Con, you may have encountered a mass of people, mostly male, running through the streets wearing red dresses. Amazingly, this had nothing to do with the convention. This was The Original Red Dress Run.

I'm posting this from the carpool lane of the 405, just past the transition from the 5. Traffic is medium-to-heavy all around me as people head north and I find myself wondering how many of them are returning home from a wonderful Comic-Con International. Up ahead, there's a huge U-Haul which looks like it's —

Sorry. I just realized I'm not on the freeway. I'm home. After five hours of driving, I feel like I'm still on the freeway but actually I'm in my office with a comfy keyboard instead of a sweaty steering wheel. The commute was an ordeal both ways but in-between, I had a terrific time and if you were there, so did you. (Matter of fact, a lot of you were there. I was delighted at the number of folks who came up and said you check out this page every day. A few even slipped me cash, saying they didn't have a PayPal account but felt a gratuity was overdue. It felt odd but, hey, you take it where you can get it. There were one or two moments where people tried to engage me in conversation while I was solving some problem relating to one of the 7.320 panels I hosted. If you caught me at one of those moments and I seemed uninterested in what you had to say, my apologies. I was interested in whatever you had to say; honest, I was.)

Today went quickly. At 12:30, my long-time chum (going on 35 years) Tony Isabella and I ganged-up to interview Larry Lieber, who is invariably referred to as "Stan Lee's brother." He is, of course. Just as Harpo was Groucho Marx's brother, Ira was George Gershwin's brother, Robert was John F. Kennedy's brother, etc. The relationship shouldn't utterly obscure genuine individual accomplishment, and Larry was the other writer, the one besides Stan, in the early days of the Marvel Age of Comics. Later, he became primarily an artist and has now been drawing the Amazing Spider-Man newspaper strip for 17 years. That gives him the longest run of anyone who's ever illustrated that character's adventures, to say nothing of the fact that his work has been more widely-circulated than any that has appeared in the comic books. Larry is a fascinating gent and, again, you'll have to wait 'til some magazine prints the transcript to hear all that he said. But the audience (which included another famous brother, Sal Buscema) was fascinated not only with how erudite Larry was on the subject of doing comics but how honest and self-effacing, as well.

Then I had an hour signing my new book at the TwoMorrows booth and that quick, last-minute jaunt around the exhibit hall, followed by several eternities in that carpool lane. It's good to be home but it was very good to be there. Gotta go unpack…

P.S. I took down the sidebar link to the list of panels I hosted at the con. But for those of you who want to see what you missed, here it is.

And still reminiscing. The first comic book convention I ever attended was a New York affair in 1970. Going by the calendar (never a very reliable guide to how long things last), it was three days but from where I was, it seemed like twenty. So much was new, so much was exciting. Now, flash forward to this Comic-Con International, which is ostensibly four days, or four and a half for those of us who arrived the night before. How startling to find it almost over when it seems like a good twenty minutes since Carolyn and I checked into the hotel. Time to start packing, for God's sake. Yesterday went particularly fast, despite the fact that I moderated five (5) panels, one after the other, commencing at 10:30 in the ayem with a panel on the history of Western Publishing Company, Dell Comics and Gold Key Comics. Mike Royer, Maggie Thompson, Len Wein, Frank Bolle, Jerry Eisenberg and I talked and answered questions from a highly-interested audience…and I guess I should explain about Jerry: He's one of the most brilliant designers of TV animation but we didn't have him there to talk about that. His father, the late Harvey Eisenberg, was one of the great "funny animal" comic book illustrators — the main guy for years on the Tom & Jerry books that Western produced, plus he also turned up in the Disney books, the Hanna-Barbera titles and everything else they could get him to do. Like many who labored so anonymously, his work has been much-loved but the lovers never knew whose work it was they were loving. Assuming the con will let me, and I have every reason to assume they will, we'll do more panels in the future about Western and try to shine the spotlight on more such artists and writers.

At Noon, we had the annual Golden Age Panel with Howie Post, Harry Lampert, Irwin Hasen, Mart Nodell, Murphy Anderson and an unusually feisty Julius Schwartz. This was followed at 1:30 by the annual Sergio/me panel, also featuring Stan Sakai and Tom Luth, with whom Sergio and I do Groo the Wanderer and other silly books. Attendees of this panel received the rare and much-coveted honor of watching me eat lunch as we answered questions.

At 3:00, I ran across the hall to moderate a gathering of three legends of science fiction: Forrest J Ackerman, a still-feisty Julie Schwartz…and the incomparable Ray Bradbury. Ray is still confined to a wheelchair due to one or more strokes but from the waist-up, he's still Ray "The Martian Chronicles" Bradbury. I took the three of them through the saga of their three-way friendship: In the thirties, the L.A.-based Ackerman and the New York-based Schwartz struck up a correspondence which led to Ackerman contributing to The Time-Traveller, a small-circulation mimeographed publication which Schwartz produced in 1932 with his friend, Mort Weisinger. It was the first science fiction fanzine ever. Ackerman also participated in a small s-f fan club in Los Angeles, which is where he met Bradbury. Later, when Ray travelled to New York (via a gruesome Greyhound bus) for his first science-fiction convention, it was because Forry had loaned him ninety dollars, which he later paid back by selling The Los Angeles Times on street corners.

It was at that convention that Bradbury met Schwartz who had become an agent for s-f writers. Two years later, Julie sold a story of Ray's — the first one ever to be purchased by an editor. As it happened, Schwartz was planning a trip to Los Angeles anyway, so he decided to deliver the good news and payment in person. He drove to L.A. and his first night there, hooked up with a friend and went out to get some dinner. By coincidence, the restaurant was across the street from where Bradbury was hawking newspapers. Schwartz recognized his client…and that's how Ray Bradbury found out he'd become a professional writer. Julie walked up and handed him a check for $35, less the 10% commission.

Bradbury spoke eloquently and passionately about a range of subjects, including the space program's shameful (to him) neglect of Mars. He's just finished an article for Playboy on the subject, so those of you who buy Playboy for the articles can find out his thoughts on the topic. He also spoke with even greater passion to those in the audience who aspire to write, urging them to follow their own muses and to not listen to "any damned fool" who tells them how and what they should write. It was a short but wonderful hour and I doubt anyone who was present will ever forget it.

Then I ran next door to host the Cartoon Voice Panel with — hope I don't leave anyone out — Joe Alaskey, Rob Paulsen, Lauri Fraser, Kathy Garver, Mark Hamill, Jess Harnell, Billy West, Gregg Berger, Bob Bergen, Greg Berg and Maurice LaMarche. Not much I can say about this except that we had a packed dais and a packed house, and the audience seemed to love what they heard. We read scripts from Fractured Fairy Tales and Pinky & The Brain, and everyone on the panel did about eleven voices and that's about all I have to say on the matter.

I party-hopped the evening away and staggered back here to the Hilton (from whence I am currently blogging) way too late. Got a lot done…but darned if it doesn't feel like this con has lasted about the time it takes to microwave a Hot Pocket. In a couple hours, I go over to interview Larry Lieber for my last panel, then I sign books for an hour and get on the San Diego Freeway. Now, there's a place where time moves like molasses…

See you later from my home computer.

I got to thinking today (yesterday by the time this gets posted) about the first San Diego Comic Book Convention, a then-amazing event that occurred in 1970 and drew, I believe, around 500 attendees. I am now hosting panels that have two and three times that many people in the audience, and some folks are speculating that this year's attendance will top 70,000 or maybe 75,000 — every one of whom will probably be blocking my way as I attempt to make it through the hall tomorrow. Cartoonist Scott Shaw! and I are said to be the only two people who've attended every single one of these conventions. He actually has me beat in that he's been present for at least part of every single day of every con, whereas I missed a few days.

We've both watched as the annual shindig has morphed into this colossal multi-media affair that attracts not only everyone in the comic book business but also key players in animation, gaming, character licensing, Manga and any motion picture that contains a super-hero, alien, robot or other unearthly being. It also changed names a few times in there, emerging finally as the Comic-Con International. (As I understand it, "San Diego" was dropped from the name because when it comes time to negotiate costs and dates and such with the city, it helps to be able to threaten to move the convention to some other locale. Which is kinda hard to do if you're the San Diego Con.)

One thing which hasn't changed is that the best part of it all, at least for me, is just meeting people, talking with friends, seeing friendly faces. I did two panels today but after them, I took an hour to stroll down to the far end of the exhibit hall — otherwise known as New Mexico — and visit the section known as Artists' Alley. It was crowded but I still wonder how many attendees make it down as far as what may be the most interesting section of that room. It's several rows of artists, many of whom self-publish little comics or art prints, sitting behind tables and selling their wares and/or doing sketches. The level of talent is high, and the enthusiasm for comics is unconnected with sales figures or the weekend grosses of movies like The Hulk. The folks in Artists' Alley do comics simply because it's what they want to do. And if no one is rushing to pay them to do comics, big deal. They'll do comics anyway.

To get to that sector of the hall, I had to pass through the toy and gaming areas where companies like Hasbro and Pioneer Electronics have huge displays. For about 300 yards, it didn't feel like the convention I grew up with. It felt like a trade show for some other business. But when I reached Artists' Alley, it was the San Diego Con again.

I did two panels today — three, if you count a brief appearance on the TwoMorrows Panel where I dutifully plugged the heck out of my new book from them, Wertham Was Right. It's another collection of old columns (plus some new ones) about comic book history and collecting. It's out, and you can order a copy by clicking here.

The first panel I moderated was the annual Jack Kirby Tribute Panel, this year featuring Wendy Pini, Stan Goldberg, Sal Buscema, Larry Lieber, Mike Royer, Michael Chabon and our special surprise guest, Stan Lee. The Jack Kirby Collector (another fine TwoMorrows publication) will probably be running a transcript but I have to say it was the best of the eight zillion Jack Kirby Tribute Panels I've hosted, thanks to moving and eloquent words from the dais. When they get me the tape, I'll try and post a few excerpts here.

There is no way I can quote the other panel I hosted — the annual Quick Draw panel, this year featuring Scott Shaw!, Jim Lee, Kyle Baker and the world's fastest cartoonist, Sergio Aragonés. Basically how it works is that I throw out challenges and they have to draw whatever I force them to draw and it's all very funny and the audience has a good time and you'll see it next year if you missed it this time.

Other than all of the above, it was a good day. I even made my annual vow to never again eat a piece of pizza from the convention hall snack bar. (I wonder if when the Republican National Convention was in that building, Donald Rumsfeld had to eat that pizza. Talk about your Weapons of Mass Destruction…)

Tomorrow (today by the time you read this), I host five consecutive panels, one right after another. Check in and see if I live through them. Good night.

Paul Krugman makes what may well be a significant connection: The premise that Bush lied about the economy to justify tax cuts just as he lied about the uranium (and maybe a couple other things) to justify the war in Iraq. Here's a couple of key sentences from Krugman…

There's no mystery about why the administration's budget projections have borne so little resemblance to reality: realistic budget numbers would have undermined the case for tax cuts. So budget analysts were pressured to high-ball estimates of future revenues and low-ball estimates of future expenditures. Any resemblance to the way the threat from Iraq was exaggerated is no coincidence at all. And just as some people argue that the war was justified even though it was sold on false pretenses, some say that the biggest budget deficit in history is justified even though the administration got us here with cooked numbers. Some point out that Ronald Reagan ran even bigger deficits as a share of G.D.P. But they hope people won't remember that in the face of those deficits, Mr. Reagan raised taxes, reversing part of his initial tax cut.

Now, I don't know that all that's quite true or quite fair. I mean, don't most government projections of deficits turn out to be way low? That doesn't make them all fibs. But if Democrats want to paint a negative image of G.W. Bush, there it is: He lies and unlike the previous White House occupant, lies about things that genuinely harm or even end lives. I mean, even a lot of folks who liked Clinton didn't think you could believe everything he said. But the majority of Bush supporters have this thing about his "character" and personal integrity, and if he takes a hit there, it could really do some damage. Right now, he can't really argue that deficits aren't out of control or that everything's going precisely the way he wants in Iraq. If Democrats make those into issues not just of competence but of deception, Bush could be in a lot of trouble.

I'm not necessarily looking forward to that. One of the political tricks I've often thought was underhanded was the selling of a so-called "Pattern of Deception." It usually translates to, "We're not going to be content to convince you that the opposition lied about A and B. We want to convince you that establishes a pattern so you should assume they're also lying about C, D, E and everything else." I don't think that's fair. Wasn't fair when Republicans did it to Clinton…won't be fair when Democrats do it to Bush…

But it does seem to work.

Well, the good news is that as you can see, I got the first-string laptop working again before I left. The bad news is that first time I connected to the Internet, it got infected with what seems to be the "g" variation of the W32.opaserv.worm. This is a nasty little beast that has Norton Anti-Virus popping up every few seconds to inform me that it has quarantined this or that unwanted file. I think I've managed to remove it but then I thought that the first four times.

But forget about that. Let's talk about the Comic-Con International here in San Diego. Let's talk about a convention so big, you could fit ten other conventions inside it and still have room for a Boat Show. Let's talk about an exhibit hall so large that folks look around and figure they'll never see it all, so why even start? Today (yesterday by the time this'll get posted), I wandered part of the area actually devoted to comic books, chatted with friends and hosted three well-received panels. The first was the Seduction of the Innocent panel with Al Feldstein, Kurt Busiek, Grant Geissman and Dwight Decker. Seduction of the Innocent, for those who don't know, was a book written 50 years ago by a man some have called the Josef Mengele of comics. His name was Dr. Fredric Wertham and his premise was that comic books — especially those of the horror and crime variety, the kind Al Feldstein was then editing and writing — were a major corrupter of America's youth. A Senate subcommittee seized on this concept and actually held hearings to determine if the government should censor or otherwise regulate the comic book industry. Wertham was a star witness and the main rebuttal came from William M. Gaines, who was then the publisher of the comics Mr. Feldstein was producing. At the panel today, we showed some video clips from the hearing and also from an interview with Judge Murphy, who was the first head of the censorship board that most of the publishers instituted as a solution to the problem. (Some have said the cure was worse than the disease.)

We followed this with a little treasure — a segment from a 1967 episode of The Mike Douglas Show, on which Dr. Wertham appeared to plug his latest book, A Sign For Cain. The other two guests were Vincent Price and Adam West, and after praising Price as a great actor, the doctor launched into an attack on a recent Vincent Price movie, fixating on the ghastly image of a bathtub full of blood. It was an odd debate with Price making Wertham look pretty foolish — a superfluous task, as the doc was doing a fine job of that on his own. (I wish I'd had time to show more of the interview, or of another appearance Wertham made with Mike Douglas. On that episode, he had his thesis pretty well demolished by Mike's co-host of the week, Barbara Feldon.) I'll write more about this at a later date, hopefully on a disease-free computer.

Following that panel, I did two "spotlights" — one interviewing Sal Buscema, who drew darn near every Marvel comic at one time or another. The other was with Stan Goldberg, who is now the most prominent of the Archie artists but who, at the birth of "The Marvel Age of Comics," was the firm's entire coloring department. Two very fine, fascinating gentlemen.

Not much more to report except that the convention staff is anticipating a staggering turnout the next few days. It was possible to get around in the exhibit hall today. I'm not sure that will be true of Saturday or even tomorrow. There is so much enthusiasm in that room…so many people travelling from all over the world to be there, so much commerce related directly or indirectly to comics, it makes you wonder why most of them sell so poorly.

Well, I had this brilliant idea about trying to post every day from the Comic-Con in San Diego but as I configured my laptop to take along, something went kablooey and I suddenly had no operating system or files on it. Lovely. Fortunately, I have my old laptop to take along so I can work on assignments but I'm not sure I'll be able to post to this page from it. We'll see. If you don't see anything here from me until Sunday night, you'll know I couldn't do it.

As always, there are 7,342 things that absolutely have to be done before the convention. As the time ticks away, most will one by one fall into the categories of, "Well, maybe that one can wait 'til next week" or "Well, maybe I don't need to do that." This will get the list down to about 43, of which 41 will get done…except that halfway down the San Diego Freeway, I'll suddenly remember three more and — well, you get the idea. I'm still hoping they'll decide to delay the entire convention by a week but it's not looking good.

Every moment of my convention is booked with panels, meetings, meals, parties and something else I'm forgetting. Oh, right: Sleeping. Have to do at least a little of that. But I know I will miss checking in on the news three or four times a day as the Internet allows me to do when I'm home. Many years ago, when I was a major wallower in the Wonders of Watergate, I was away at a science fiction convention the weekend of the Saturday Night Massacre. It wasn't a bad convention, as I recall. There was then a short-lived trend that at the costume competition, at least a couple of women would show up without costumes — i.e., naked. I was 21 years old at the time and that was a big deal. Hell, it still isn't a small deal. But when I got home and found that I'd missed a fine chunk of Nixonian History, I wished I'd passed on that convention. In those pre-VCR, pre-C-Span, pre-cable days, if you missed something on TV, you missed it. I missed it. I recall thinking, "There will always, God willing, be more naked women…but how often do you get to see the entire Nixon Adminstration come unglued?"

So ever since, I make it a point to actually turn on the news while I'm at a convention or, more recently, log into a few news sites. I doubt I'll again see the likes of the Saturday Night Massacre. But the way things are going, it does look like G.W. Bush is going to have to throw out a few bodies any day now.

Back to packing…

Leonard Maltin on obliterating old movies because of racial stereotypes and white guys playing non-white guys. I agree with Leonard.