Monthly Archives: September 2003

Mike Guerrero (who has his own weblog here) writes, in reference to my previous item…

I think what bothers me is the fact that if you work on a comic book, there's usually a box of credits that list who did what, i.e. pencils, inks, and even breakdowns and finishes. Articles in newspapers will usually list others who contributed along with the actual writer. But a comic strip usually has just one name, leading one to believe that one person thought up the idea for the strip, drew it, inked it, and lettered it. I don't really care if the strip was a team effort or not, but there is a slight case of misrepresentation going on here. Probably none of those artists mentioned would deny that they don't have help creating their strips. But they probably don't make too much noise about it, either. When the strip says "Mother Goose and Grimm by Mike Peters" shouldn't it be true? Or should there be an "executive producer" credit instead?

I'm all for honesty, but let's remember that media credits are not always complete or (sometimes) even accurate. I've written for comedians who went on The Tonight Show and did jokes I thought of, and no one stopped to say, "Oh, by the way, Mark Evanier thought of that." Major motion pictures often have many uncredited writers. On a TV show, five producers and eight story editors may have pitched in to rewrite the script and all contributed material that got on the air…but the "Written by" credit went to the first writer. Almost all forms have some tradition of ghost writing or of the credited individual receiving some unbilled help. When I see something like "Mother Goose and Grimm by Mike Peters," I don't presume it means that every word and brushstroke is Mike's work. I think it means that Mike produces the strip, and writes and draws most of it. "Executive producer" seems less accurate to me because it implies he's not writing or drawing it, and he is. For the most part.

That said, there have been strips thay were so totally the work of a ghost that it has seemed wrong to me, if not as a matter of historical record then because it looked like some guy was getting screwed. In some cases though, it hasn't seemed to bother the anonymous guy and I can think of at least one instance when he actually preferred it that way. His attitude was that he was drawing in someone else's style and subordinating his viewpoint, and he didn't want his name associated with the work in question. He only wanted his name on work that he felt was truly his.

For what it's worth, I've ghost-written for a few newspaper strips, more for fun (and to help out a friend in need) than as a job. It didn't bother me that my name was absent. Strips are cramped for space without having to cram in extra names, and for some, full credits would mean four or five names. (Supposedly at one point, the Napoleon and Uncle Elby strip was being written by two people and drawn by six others.) Since not all contributions are equal, true accuracy would require that you not just list names and that you differentiate those who did a lot from a little. For example, Milton Caniff created Steve Canyon and always wrote it. He'd have Frank Engli (and later, Shel Dorf) letter the strip, then someone like Dick Rockwell would pencil the whole strip and ink everything but the main characters. Then Caniff would ink main characters, touch up the rest of the strip and sometimes redo whole panels. I'm not sure how you'd explain all that in tiny credits and also make clear that Caniff was the auteur.

Lastly, even comic book credits do not always tell the whole story about who did what. Background inkers are frequently not in that credit box, and many artists occasionally have an uncredited friend pitch in and help them meet a deadline. Back before I did the business an enormous favor (for which I have never been properly thanked) and gave up drawing, I sometimes did anonymous art assists on comics. When I look back on those stories today, I'm not entirely sure what I did. Still, I'm pretty sure none of it was significant enough to warrant diminishing the credit of the guy who did the vast majority of the job.

The current storyline in the Zippy the Pinhead newspaper strip has its cartoonist, Bill Griffith, lecturing Zippy on the art of cartooning. (Here's a link to a page where Griffith displays recent efforts and offers the originals for sale.) In the 9/4 strip, Griffith proclaims, "Any cartoonist who doesn't do th' final drawing for his or her comics is no cartoonist at all in my book." And in the 9/5 one, which may not be posted yet, he takes off after cartoonists who use assistants and don't even do their own lettering.

So according to Bill Griffith, Elzie Segar was no cartoonist at all. Neither were (or are) Milton Caniff, Al Capp, Jack Kirby, Will Eisner, Frank Miller, Alex Raymond, Mort Walker, Hal Foster, Floyd Gottfredson, Garry Trudeau, Dik Browne, Chester Gould, Roy Crane, Hank Ketcham, George McManus, Leonard Starr, Johnny Hart, Chic Young, Mike Peters, Harvey Kurtzman, Steve Ditko, Burne Hogarth, Neal Adams, Roy Crane and…well, you get the idea. Some of those folks did their work solo for a time, especially early on, but usually chose to employ letterers and/or assistants. Even Mort Drucker, Sergio Aragonés and Jack Davis have had others do their lettering, and Carl Barks sometimes had his wife inking backgrounds and doing lettering.

In one panel, Griffith asks, "Did an assistant drip the paint for Jackson Pollack?" Apparently not, but Rembrandt, Rubens and Michelangelo had help with some rather acclaimed work. I guess Rembrandt was no painter at all.

Actually, I think it's great when a cartoonist does his or her work without help if they're able. Some aren't, especially some of the folks who did daily strips back in the day when they involved a lot more labor than a strip like Griffith's does today. Some aren't very good at lettering and/or figure that the time they save by having someone else letter or ink backgrounds is time they can put into writing or the main drawing. Some simply find that they don't work well in isolation and that working with someone else spurs their creativity. Milton Caniff needed a letterer because he was left-handed and if he lettered his strip himself, he was always smudging the wet ink.

Griffith's sentiments cause me to wonder if he is aware how many great cartoonists haven't done it all alone, or if he really thinks none of those men produced good comic art.

If I were in New York on Sunday, I'd probably brave the crush and attend "Broadway on Broadway," a free concert being performed in Times Square starting at 11:30 AM. Almost every musical playing on Broadway (and a few about to open) sends over a couple of performers to do a number from their show, and they're sometimes quite wonderful. Here's a list of the tentative line-up.

All of the announcements say that the concert will be taped and chopped down to an hour for broadcast on NBC4 New York on Tuesday, September 9 at 7:00 PM. This should mean that thanks to my satellite dish, I'll be able to pick it up. But so far, no one has told TiVo about this event. It still thinks Extra is airing at that time, followed by Access Hollywood. I may have to settle for watching (but not hearing) via this link to a webcam that's pointed at the stage.

One man was killed and ten other folks were injured this morning when something went amiss on Disneyland's Big Thunder Mountain Railroad roller coaster. It's sad, it's shocking, it's awful and you just know Disney execs are convening, even as you read this, to discuss how much it's going to cost them in lawsuits and bad p.r. The park has a pretty good track record for safety (though I believe there was one previous accident on this particular ride) and they'll probably take steps to make it even better.

Nevertheless, they ain't getting me on one of them things. I don't mind a gentle Haunted Mansion or Pirates of the Caribbean but the whole concept of a roller coaster strikes me as masochism of the first order. A roller coaster, to me, is where you pay money to have them do something to you that, if it happened on a bus, you'd sue the company.

The rhetoric of roller coasters always reminded me of recreational drugs. I used to have acquaintances who'd offer me stuff and say, "Here, try this. It'll make you feel like your entire stomach is leaking out of your ears." My reply was usually along the lines of, "You know…I think I just might be able to live my entire life without experiencing that." Other friends (and even some of the same ones) would try to get me to go on roller coasters by saying, "On the way you feel like your head is inflating and on the way down, it's like someone stuck a pin in it." The descriptions always made me wonder what they'd say if they were trying to convince me it would be unpleasant.

I'm sure there's some kind of joy there for some, but I'm afraid it eludes me. I also don't understand why apparently rational human beings get pierced or tattooed or jump out of airplanes or eat squid, smoke cigarettes or go to Pauly Shore movies.

Here's David Greenberg in the Columbia Journalism Review on how reporters cover presidential lying.

The script I'm working on will be twenty minutes late because that's how long I spent this evening browsing the Esquire Magazine Cover Gallery, an online display of every cover in that publication's robust history. Of special note are the ones from the late sixties when George Lois was in charge and coming up with incredible designs and cover concepts. (The insides of the magazine were pretty good back then, too. But it was often worth buying just for what Lois put on the front of it.) The cover I picked out to display above left from October, 1969 wasn't one of the cleverer ones but it was by the wonderful Marie Severin and it adorned the issue that contained a wonderful feature on Marvel Comics, back when the whole world hadn't heard of the X-Men. My favorite was probably the one above right from May, 1968 with Nixon in make-up for that year's presidential run. But I also liked March, 1969 (fake paparazzi photos of Howard Hughes) and April, 1968 (Muhammad Ali as St. Sebastian). And look around. A lot of them are wonderful.

Alan Simpson gives us a rather reasonable view of gay rights. At least, it's reasonable for a former Republican senator.

Coming up in the Doonesbury comic strip is a sequence about masturbation that some newspapers are choosing not to carry. In this interview over on Salon, Garry Trudeau talks about such controversies. And if you don't subscribe to Salon or don't feel like sitting through its advertising to read the last two paragraphs of this short piece, Trudeau says some of the same things over at Daryl Cagle's comic strip weblog.

Thousands of imitations of MAD Magazine have come and gone: Sick, Nuts, Up Your Nose, Blast, National Review, Crazy, etc. The longest running, which is still hanging in there, is Cracked. It started in 1958 and still manages to push out an issue once in a while. Here's a link to the magazine's website. Here's a link to a gallery that claims it will eventually display every single cover from the magazine. And here's a link to an article about the current publisher and the state of his magazine. I admire the endurance and at times, even the contents.

It's a little out of date but here's a video link to Lewis Black's commentary on the New York blackout. RealPlayer required and all that.

I always enjoy a visit to Jim Hill Media, a fun site devoted to cartoons — primarily Disney but others, as well. You'll find a lot to read there but I'd like to recommend…

• A report on the recent ASIFA tribute to the late 'n' great Daws Butler. I was unable to make it to the evening, which was also a kick-off party for a new book of scripts that Daws wrote for his acting workshops. (You can order the book over here on Joe Bev's Daws Butler website, by the way.)
• My old pal Jim Korkis was once commissioned to author a history of the American comic book. It didn't get printed then so he's serializing it here. Here's a link to the first part.
• Jim Korkis also authored this piece about Walt Disney and his appearance before the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
• The story of how Splash Mountain at Disneyland came to be.

Since the site uses frames, some of those links may not work in all browsers. But if you go to the site's front page, you should be able to find those articles (and much more you'll enjoy) from there.

One fun thing about watching Game Show Network's "Black and White Overnight" programming block is that you often get a chunk of history as it was happening. Last night, GSN ran a What's My Line? from September of 1959 and one of the guests was Branch Rickey, a major behind-the-scenes figure in the history of baseball. Rickey had a brief career as a player but he moved into coaching and also got a law degree. Eventually, he ran a number of baseball teams, including the Brooklyn Dodgers where he helped bust the color barrier by signing Jackie Robinson. In 1959, he was engaged in an attempt to start a third major league — the Continental League, which was to compete alongside the American and National Leagues. On the What's My Line?, we heard Bennett Cerf ask him, "How about that third league?" and Rickey replied, "Inevitable as tomorrow morning." He had then filled five of the new league's projected eight-team roster. Deals were in place to launch teams in New York, Houston, Denver, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and Toronto, and Rickey said he had other cities lining up, and that the Continental League would play a full schedule in 1961.

It didn't. Though the Continental League filled out its list with projected teams in Honolulu, Atlanta and Dallas, there were battles with the already-established leagues, battles in Congress and lawsuits. A compromise was finally worked out whereby the National and American Leagues would each expand by two teams, some of them in cities that had been slated to have Continental League squads. (The planned New York team, which had already signed to play in Shea Stadium, became the Mets.) That was the end of the Continental League, and Branch Rickey died a few years later. In 1967, he was elected to the Hall of Fame, largely because of his work in bringing black players into the ranks of the major league.

Today, in lieu of buying him a present, I note the birthday of my longtime pal, Scott Shaw! I believe I met Scott at Jack Kirby's home in 1970 and, yes, he even signed his name with the exclamation point back then. Our meeting came at a time when Jack and his wife Roz had an unfortunate habit: If anyone called up and said, "I want to meet Jack Kirby," they got an invite. A few folks rather grotesquely abused the Kirby hospitality. (Once, an acquaintance asked if he could bring some of his friends along, Roz said yes, and the guy not only showed up with 20 people but expected to stay the entire day and be served lunch.) But it was worth it for Jack and Roz when, as often happened, they got to host and encourage a young writer or artist with talent, and then see that person blossom into a full-fledged professional. Such a blossoming occurred with Scott who, though he has rarely ventured near the kind of comics that Kirby made famous, certainly learned something from proximity to Jack and managed to apply it. To celebrate Scott Shaw Day, why not drop by his Oddball Comics site, read some recent listings and post a message on the message board? And if you really want to commemorate the day, take a gorilla to lunch.

Later this week, instead of buying Sergio Aragonés a present, I'll note his birthday, as well.

I'm watching the gubernatorial debate at the moment and a couple of things leap out at me. All five candidates (Bustamante, Huffington, McClintock, Ueberroth and Camejo) agree that there is massive fraud in areas like Medicare and unemployment but cannot say where it is or how to root it out. Also, all five are in favor of medicinal marijuana. Otherwise, I haven't heard a lot of consensus.

Peter Ueberroth, who had impressed me before the debate, has lost me by steering almost every question to two premises: Californians have to expect less, and we have to give businesses enormous financial incentives to relocate here. That sure sounds to me like, "Let's cut education to fund corporate welfare." Arianna Huffington seems more interested in promoting her status as a columnist and Bush-basher than in becoming governor — probably a wise move, given where her future will lie. Tom McClintock is running right down the conservative wishlist while Peter Camejo is handling the liberal one. Cruz Bustamante sounds more like a lieutenant governor than a governor.

But then so did Gray Davis in his part of the debate. As I've said here, I don't think much of him as a governor but I think less of the recall effort. It also bothers me that a lot of his unpopularity may flow, not from anything he's done in office but because he's bad on television. If you just listened to his words, he didn't make a bad case for himself but he just looked awkward and failed to project the image of a guy on top of things. At one point, he made an odd left turn and got onto the notion that people need to vote against the recall to stop the Republican Conspiracy to Steal Elections. I guess surveys are telling him that issue resonates with voters but it would be nice if he could effectively defend his own record.

I don't know if he's going to survive or get tossed out on his ass. But I have an awful feeling that whatever happens, it's not going to be because of how good or bad a governor he's been.