Monthly Archives: February 2004

Jimmy Breslin doesn't like George W. Bush and he doesn't like New York's mayor very much, either.

Voice artist Tony Pope died yesterday due to complications during leg surgery. Tony, who was born in 1947, was one of the many students of the late Daws Butler to go on to a successful career doing animation voices and voiceovers. His cartoon career included The Transformers, Zorro, Spider-Man, Tale Spin, S.W.A.T. Kats and The Adventures of Teddi Ruxpin, to name just a few of many, and he did several voices (including Goofy) in the movie, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Most of his work was narration gigs, radio commercials, announcing and especially looping, meaning that he was brought in to add voices and redub other actors in live-action movies.

You heard him many, many times and it's sad that you won't be hearing new work from him. The voiceover community is in mourning tonight.

Here's a link to an interesting article about gun control. It's of interest to me because of what it has to say about finding a middle ground between the notion that the Second Amendment guarantees the right of some psycho to own a Howitzer and the view that the government should (or even could) confiscate every gun in the country. I've long felt that as long as the debate rebounds between those two extremes, it can never truly be discussed, let alone resolved. This article suggests it can move to another level. Maybe.

My pal Larry Steller inexplicably calls himself "Mr. Grooism" and operates his own weblog. Reading the Julius Schwartz obit I linked to in the Telegraph, Larry noticed something that went right by me. It was this line…

Julius Schwartz was born in the Bronx, New York, on June 19 1915, and educated at Hebrew school where he was awarded a gold watch presented by the then Governor of New York, Eleanor Roosevelt.

Eleanor Roosevelt was the Governor of New York? No, she wasn't. Her hubby was. And I just looked it up and noted a tiny flaw in Julie's tale of receiving a watch from the wife of the then-governor in 1928. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected Governor of New York in 1928 but didn't take office until 1929. So maybe Roosevelt wasn't yet Governor or he was Governor-elect when Julie got the watch. Or maybe Julie got it the following year. But I'll bet you the part about him getting a watch from Eleanor Roosevelt was true…even if she wasn't the Governor.

Well, I haven't plugged a new book I have coming out for at least nine hours…so I might as well mention that my third collection of POV columns will be available in the middle of May from the fine folks at TwoMorrows Publishing. This one includes pieces on bad convention panels, cheap comic fans, my infamous "unfinanced entrepreneurs" essays, stupid mistakes in comics, obits on Pat Boyette and Curt Swan, and more. It also includes (and this was planned some time ago) a very long essay on Julius Schwartz…who alas, is now the late Julius Schwartz. Some of the book's new, some is reprinted from the column I did for years for Comics Buyer's Guide and a lot of it is old columns which I've gone back and fiddled with, taking out some of the dumber things I said and inserting all-new dumb things in their place.

And of course, it features a cover and loads of interior illustrations by Sergio Aragonés. You can advance order your copy here and be assured of getting your copy fresh from the printer. (And to answer a question I get a lot: No, at the moment, no one has any plans for a book of my essays about TV and show business. I'd like to do one and have actually been approached by real publishers…but every time, the deal falls through. Maybe one of these days…)

Here's a link to the New York Times obit for Julie Schwartz. (One minor quibble: The 1956 Flash revival started with scripts by Robert Kanigher, not Gardner Fox.)

Also, there's an obit in Newsday and one in the Telegraph.

Also: Since folks are still writing to ask, I want to repeat: Donations can be made to the Julius Schwartz Scholarship Fund c/o DC Comics, 1700 Broadway, New York, NY, 10019.

And another thing we're going to hear a lot about during this election is Halliburton, in particular whether Dick Cheney's former (more-or-less) company sold weapons to Saddam Hussein and/or has been gouging the U.S. on its wartime services. This article in The New Yorker lays out some of the more serious allegations.

In 1983, a new super-hero group debuted on the comic rack, the co-creation of Yours Truly and a superb artist named Will Meugniot. It was called The DNAgents, though an awful lot of people referred to it as "DNA Agents." Will and I had a lot of fun doing the series and then after he went on to other things, I had a lot of fun doing it with a number of other fine artists, and I did it until it stopped being fun and the publishing company got into trouble. (Those two things occurred at roughly the same time and were not unrelated.) It also yielded a couple of spin-off comics including one called Crossfire that I did with yet another terrific illustrator, the one named Dan Spiegle.

Ever since we stopped doing the books, I've been receiving requests to revive and/or reprint them and that's finally going to happen this year. Nat Gertler of About Comics will soon issue the first in a series of paperback collections that will reprint DNAgents and Crossfire in glorious black-and-white. Each volume will contain 176 pages (or around six issues of the original comics) in a 7.5" by 5.5" page format and include an afterword by me and leftover sketches by Will and others. Retail price will be $9.95 for each, and the first DNAgents will be out in June with the first Crossfire collection to follow not long after. I'll post a link here when it's possible to order them, and I hope you will.

I like to try and identify what's going to be "The Big Story," especially in politics, before it becomes "The Big Story." Right now, it's Bush's National Guard service, though it seems to be morphing into a Conservative attack on John Kerry's Vietnam record. Both onslaughts bother me, partly because they seem so irrelevant to possible future presidential actions and partly because the accusers (and often, the defenders) tend to so readily misrepresent old quotes and evidence. There may be something shameful in each man's past but it's not to be found in trying to zero in on which Tuesday in 1972 Bush was on or off the base, or locating a photo of Kerry in the proximity of Jane Fonda.

Between now and Election Day, I'd bet we're going to go through a cycle of recriminations on what actions George W. Bush took on the morning of 9/11…or didn't take. We will hear in righteous condemnation that even when there was clear info that hijacked airplanes were heading for populated buildings, Bush was no leader; that he sat there and read goat stories to children and then was "out of the loop" for hours, allowing others (mainly, Dick Cheney) to make his decisions for him. I don't know if there's a lick of truth to this — and neither do most of the folks who'll be charging or denying this — but we're going to hear an awful lot about it.

In anticipation of that controversy, I refer you to this article by Gail Sheehy. It's primarily about the flight attendants and air traffic controllers on 9/11 — what they knew and when they knew it — but it gets to the question of how government agencies responded that horrible morning. And it raises more questions about just what weaponry the hijackers brandished that enabled them to get through security, then seize control of four airliners.

You know what I heard today? "Classical Gas," the 1968 hit record by Mason Williams. There was a month there, at least at University High School in L.A., where you couldn't take three steps without hearing "Classical Gas." I decided to find out what I could learn about that song and I quickly found a whole website about it.

I will be among the guests at the Wondercon in San Francisco, April 30-May 2. This link will take you to a page crammed with details and you'll note that another guest is my frequent collaborator, Sergio Aragonés. This means we will probably be doing a Groo Panel, as well as another rousing game of "Quick Draw," in which Sergio and several other fast cartoonists act upon the odd challenges I throw their way. You'll want to be there for that event alone so make your plans now. Should be a great convention.

The passing of our friend Schwartz is being noted in venues as far apart as The Independent and The Cleveland Plain Dealer. But the best, most knowing obituary for the man is not yet available on the web. A little while ago, Harlan Ellison faxed me his magnificent 2000 words on Julie that will appear in Locus, The Comics Buyer's Guide and other venues. Keep at least one eye out for this one.

For Harlan, it's been a few days of Bad News mixed with Good: Today, he won an important decision in his lawsuit against America On-Line for the unauthorized dissemination of his work. If you're interested in the details of the case and have Adobe Reader installed, this link will send you a PDF file of today's court ruling. It briefly summarizes the events that led to this day, then remands the case to a full trial, which was what Harlan was seeking. Good for him.

If you're interested in this little brouhaha about George W. Bush and his National Guard days, Richard Cohen has an interesting column about his own parallel situation.

Groo the Wanderer makes an unexpected cameo in today's installment of No Business I Know, a new comic strip by Doug Crepeau and Kevin Hopkins. Here's where you can see it. (Thank you for telling me, Buzz Dixon.)

Throughout the thousands of years Julius Schwartz edited comic books, he worked with a wide array of writers. Some were good and he helped make their output great. Some were not so good and he still helped make their output great…or at least, better than it probably would have been with any other editor. One of the great things about Julie was that he never lost his enthusiasm for what he did. Even near the end of his career, he greeted each new story as a fresh challenge and if it came out good, he was as happy as any newcomer. Happier, even. But though he loved most of the writers who contributed to his comics, there's no question which of them was his favorite. John Broome was the guy Julie called his "best writer and best friend — not necessarily in that order." Back in Julie's agenting days, John had also been a client, and they were an odd pairing. Broome was humble, shy, self-deprecating and never very sure if what he was writing was all that good. Julie was opinionated, enthusiastic, and not at all reticent to tell you or anyone that a given piece of work was good or bad. Most of the time, he told Broome the work was good…and since Broome was too fond of Julie to question his judgment, he figured, "Maybe my writing isn't so bad, after all."

At a time when DC more or less required its writers to come into the New York office for meetings, Julie accommodated John's yearning to travel. They'd sit down one week and plot out not the next story Broome would write but the next dozen or so. Then John would fly off somewhere and bat out Green Lantern scripts while camping out on the Champs-élysées. Julie was happy to make this lifestyle possible for his friend but as he readily admitted, "Part of me wanted to make him stay in New York so we could have lunch together a couple times a week." When Broome finally had his fill of comics and moved overseas to stay, Julie missed him terribly. They saw each other occasionally when Broome was passing through the U.S. of A…but the intervals grew greater and greater.

In 1998, Schwartz and Broome had not seen one another in more than ten years. That was one of the reasons that a comic fan named Rich Morrissey had one of the all-time great ideas in the history of comic fandom. He decided to bring Broome, who was then living in Japan, to a Comic-Con International in San Diego. He wanted to reunite two old friends but there were other reasons, as well, one semi-selfish: He simply wanted to meet the great John Broome, a writer whose work he'd loved, and pepper him with questions about his work. He felt others should also meet Broome and that the writer (who'd never been to a comic book convention in his life) should be honored by one while he was around to be honored.

Unfortunately, Rich got the idea too late to fit into the convention's budget so they told him to wait until the following year. He didn't want to wait so he called a lot of us and dug into his own pocket and somehow through donations, he raised the funds to bring Mr. and Mrs. Broome in from Japan. The moment John and Julie saw one another and embraced made it all worth it. So did a panel I was honored to moderate in which a packed house (most of them, professional comic book writers) listened to John and Julie reminisce, along with artist Murphy Anderson, who illustrated many of their stories. A partial transcript of this wonderful panel can be found here.

As it turned out, we were all fortunate that Rich didn't wait for the 1999 con. John Broome passed away the following March, months before that year's Comic-Con International. (And sadly, Rich Morrissey, though still a young man, died unexpectedly just two years later. Some of us still haven't recovered from that one.)

I thought Rich did a wonderful thing for all of us, getting Broome over here for what John himself called, "the greatest weekend of my life." And if it wasn't the greatest weekend of Julie Schwartz's life, it was darn close. Julie loved being honored but I think he was even happier seeing his friend being honored. I think that may be one of the character traits that is necessary to be a good editor: You have to be willing to see others get the applause and to comfort yourself that you helped make it possible.

I do not particularly believe in an afterlife except for theories like the following: It's great to imagine Julie Schwartz and John Broome being reunited now, getting together and going to lunch…being as happy for all eternity as they were for that weekend. I just hope Morrissey isn't pestering them with too many questions about The Flash.