Monthly Archives: May 2004

Michael Moore has this new movie he's made all about alleged links between the Bush family and the Saudis. And now it's being alleged that the Disney organization is trying to kill the film's distribution so as to not endanger certain tax breaks that the company receives, especially in Jeb Bush's Florida. Read all about it.

Someone is selling the contract that Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy signed to authorize the publication of the Laurel and Hardy comic book that came out from St. John in 1955. Here's the link and here's some history. What's interesting is that the contract is written as if this is a new relationship and the St. John folks are about to begin creating the material. In fact, St. John had published three issues of a Laurel and Hardy comic book in 1949 and the only thing issued under the terms of this 1955 contract were reprints of those three issues. It may all have been a matter of timing for St. John. The firm launched a rather successful Abbott and Costello comic book in 1948 and — I'm guessing — grabbed up the rights to Stan and Ollie figuring they might do just as well.

But in '49, Laurel and Hardy were pretty cold. Their last major American movie (and maybe their worst), The Bullfighters, had come out in May of '45. By 1949, the act was so inactive that Hardy went off and made a movie, The Fighting Kentuckian, without Laurel. They still had their own production company — the entity with which this contract was made — but it never actually produced anything. And their comic book obviously didn't do very well. In 1949, if a comic lasted three issues, that meant that the publisher cancelled the book after seeing the earliest sales reports on the first issue.

By 1955, the St. John comic book company was in serious decline but Laurel and Hardy were actually enjoying an upswing in fame, especially among youngsters, due to their movies being released to television. I'll speculate here that Mr. St. John noticed this and thought it would be a cheap gamble to reprint the old issues. At the time, reprints were frowned upon by both readers and distributors but he probably figured the first go-round had gone so unnoticed that no one would realize he was recycling. I'll further speculate that he had someone just retype the 1949 contract and got Stan and Oliver, via their current reps, to sign it again for another payment. Perhaps if we could see the middle page of this 3-page contract, which is not on the auction site, we'd know more. I'd be curious to learn how much they were paid but that info was presumably on Page Two.

The comic probably didn't sell any better in '55 than it had in '49. St. John was pretty much out of business the next year. None of the subsequent Laurel and Hardy comic books from other publishers (there were several) sold well either, even when the Hanna-Barbera cartoon series of The Boys was on the air and the comic was a tie-in.

The three St. John issues were primarily drawn by an animator named Reuben Timmins, sometimes credited as Rube Timinsky and other permutations. His career stretched from working on Betty Boop for Max Fleischer (1931) to A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965) and the animated Star Trek series (1973). He passed away in 1994 and apparently did very few comic books, all for St. John, beyond the three issues of Laurel and Hardy. A pretty good artist. [Thanks to "Paskegren" for calling my attention to the auction.]

When I travel, as I just did, I take along a modular phone cord so I can hook my laptop into a telephone line. I've been using ones with little reels like the one above. They're handy when they don't break, but they break too often to suit me. The little plastic tab that you press to release the plug from its socket is always breaking off mine. This happened to me in San Francisco and it's happened to me too many times before.

When that little tab breaks, it renders the whole thing largely useless unless I want to haul out my modular plug crimping tool and put on a new one, which I don't. Does anyone make one with unbreakable modular plugs? Say, made out of metal? I'm really tired of being in a hotel and having one of these snap on me.

My friend in the Washington press corps writes to say he thinks this article in Salon is one of the most important pieces he's seen. It's about how a lot of folks close to George W. Bush have been deceived by a man named Ahmed Chalabi who has a definite personal agenda for Iraq.

Reader Jon Weltz writes the following with regard to our recent discussions of the current continuity in the Gasoline Alley newspaper strip…

I followed your link and read it and I'm glad I did but it's very frustrating that they're arranging funeral services and actually having the funeral and they haven't told us yet for sure who died. Over on his blog, Peter David said he thought this was "bad writing." You seem to think it is good writing and since you and Peter are two of my favorite writers, I am intrigued by the different views. Could you elaborate? And can you tell me how you would have handled this story?

Well, I'm not sure it's good writing. Unlike my pal Peter, I'm waiting for the payoff before I say it's bad, and he may turn out to be right. The writer-artist, Mr. Scancarelli, seems to have something deliberate on his mind and I'm as curious as anyone as to what it is. (Actually, one might argue that anything that gets people to go out of their way to read Gasoline Alley, a long-ignored strip, is good writing but I assume that's not the kind of "good" we're talking about here.) How would I have handled it? I have no idea how I would have treated the whole notion of killing off Walt and/or Phyllis. I wouldn't have done it the way Scancarelli is going about it, but that certainly doesn't mean he's wrong. For one thing, he knows these characters a lot better than I could ever pretend to, and he's probably been planning this for years. However, if I suddenly had to take over right now and plot the ending, here's what I would do…

Let us review. Years and years ago, in the defining moment of his life, Walt Wallet adopted an abandoned baby named Skeezix. Walt later married Phyllis and they've had a very long, happy life together. By some estimates, Walt is pushing 105. Finally, Phyllis says it's time she tells him the secret of the abandoned baby…a secret she has somehow kept from her husband for 83 (!) years. Despite his coaxing, she says she'll tell him tomorrow…and then in the middle of the night, we have the death of someone or maybe two someones, and we haven't seen either Walt or Phyllis since then.

If I had to pick up those plot threads now, it would turn out that Phyllis died. If Walt died, then he died without his beloved wife telling him an important secret, revealing something vital she knows about his past. That's very unsatisfying. It's almost like she did something cruel to him by drawing it out and not telling him sooner, knowing full well that either of them could go at any minute. So what I would do is say that Phyllis died in the middle of the night and Walt made the mysterious phone call in the middle of the night to Skeezix.

Then Walt himself had to be hospitalized because of grief or shock or illness, which would explain why we don't see him in the funeral sequence now being played out in the strip. I would have someone, probably Skeezix, go from the funeral to his bedside and say, "It was a lovely service. Too bad your doctor wouldn't let you attend." Or maybe I'd have a shot of him in a wheelchair at the graveside and indicate he's been in the hospital for the last few days and was let out briefly to attend the funeral…and then he has to go back to his hospital bed.

Either way, you then have to have someone tell him the secret of how Skeezix was abandoned. Scancarelli has set it up for revelation and it would be very mean to the readers not to reveal it…which means that regardless of who died, the surviving characters in the strip have to learn it. If Phyllis died, she had to have left behind a diary or a letter or someone who was authorized to tell Walt in case she predeceased him. It would have been very thoughtless for her not to have done that. So in my version, someone comes to Walt's bedside and says, "Phyllis left this letter with me, just in case" or "Phyllis wanted me to tell you…" Perhaps another child of Skeezix's mother could come see him, thereby introducing Skeezix to a sister or brother he never knew he had.

Then the secret is revealed of how and why Skeezix's biological mother abandoned him. Once he learns this secret, Walt can pass away in peace, thereby reuniting him with his beloved Phyllis. (Some have suggested that it will turn out that by some incredible machinations, Skeezix is actually his biological son. But I can't imagine Phyllis keeping that a secret from both of them for 83 years because of a promise to an outside party, even the mother.)

This is the only logical ending I can envision to what's recently happened in the strip. If Walt died, then Phyllis would have to live with the guilt that she didn't tell him sooner. That would be an awfully negative way to end one of the happiest marriages in the history of comics. If Phyllis died and didn't make provisions for him to learn the secret then she did a heartless thing to the love of her life. Again, a bad way to end that. If both died together, then she still didn't tell him something he needed to know. The only thing that makes sense to me is if she died, Walt learns the secret and then he joins her.

Which is not to say this is how Mr. Scancarelli is doing it. Several comic strip websites seem pretty sure that Walt has died and they sound like they have inside information. What I have here is not a prediction. It's just the way I see the storyline wrapping up. In a day or two, we'll see what actually happens over at this website.

Robert Kagan has been a big backer of the War in Iraq and the general "neocon" worldview. So his current position — that Bush is letting that war be run by people who are botching it up beyond belief — is more than a little interesting.

And as a companion piece, you might want to read Seymour Hersh on reports of Americans torturing Iraqis. There are some pretty brutal photos there but you can read the article without seeing the pics if you prefer.

Lastly for now, Terry Jones (who is inevitably referred to as "Terry Jones of Monty Python fame") has a clever article about the terminology of the current war.

Okay, I'm back home now from a very good convention. Sunday afternoon, I wandered about for a while chatting with folks, then moderated a panel remembering the late Julius Schwartz. Mike Friedrich, David Spurlock and I told stories. Members of the audiences told stories. Julie would have liked everything about it except that he wasn't on the panel.

WonderCon is moving to February next year, swapping weekends with the APE, which is the Alternative Press Expo, a smaller Bay Area convention that focuses on small press publications. Try and be there.

And yes, I got to meet Sid Haig. He turns out to be a very nice man, which makes me all the more impressed with him as an actor. You see, he usually plays very nasty men so convincingly that you figure maybe he's not acting. Here's a link to his website so you can see his picture and go, "Oh, yeah. That guy."

The C-Span website currently has among its online videos, a one hour speech that Jim "Garfield" Davis gave recently at the National Press Club. They rotate these videos so it may not be there for long. If you'd like to view it, this direct link to the video should work for most browsers. If it doesn't, go to the C-Span website and look on the first page.

As we noted the other day, the current storyline of the Gasoline Alley newspaper strip involves the death of a long-time character, probably Uncle Walt Wallet but perhaps his wife Phyllis and perhaps both of them. Writer-artist Jim Scancarelli has artfully taken us through the mourning without telling us just who is being mourned. This non-disclosure has reportedly irritated many fans but according to this article, all will be revealed in the May 5 strip. You can read today's at this link. I will admit to a little frustration at how Scancarelli is drawing things out but I have the feeling he will wrap things up in a satisfying way.

Also, we note that to the surprise of no one who knows how these things work, the cast of The Simpsons has signed a new four-year contract to voice Homer, Bart, Marge and all the rest. For a time, a brief panic ran through some channels of the animation industry, the fear being that the actors' demands would torpedo production of the series and put a lot of artists out of work. I understand how people can be fearful of unemployment, especially at a time when things are so shaky in the industry. But realistically, there was never much of a chance that The Simpsons would stop…or if it had, it would not have been because of the actors.

Boy, I wish I had more to report about this fine comic convention I'm attending this weekend. I'm having a very good time but not in a way that yields gobs of anecdotes I can post here. Saw Russ Heath and Bob Burden today and spent some time talking to Tom Yeates, who is doing a very nice job drawing Dark Horse's new Conan comic book. I picked up a lovely new book that Manuel Auad has assembled of the work of Spanish comic artist Jordi Bernet, and chatted with the widow and son of another great comic artist, the late Alfredo P. Alcala.

Met a lot of people who read this weblog and that's always nice. Especially fun was to meet in person a sharp lady named Rephah Berg whom I have otherwise known only through e-mail. Whenever I post something here that contains a typo, which is way too often, there are about five folks who immediately send me a message about it so I can correct it before most of you see the thing. Rephah is one of my most valuable typo-catchers. If anyone reading this needs a great editor-proofreader, drop me a note and I'll send you on to her.

I didn't get to meet him (too big a crowd) but Sid Haig is at the show. Sid Haig is one of those great character actors who works all the time, almost always playing villains, impressing all who become aware of him. I first noticed him giving a standout performance in an otherwise dreadful Roger Corman film called The Big Doll House, all about women who are sentenced to prison and to the taking of showers. My friends and I all became big fans of his. I remember when we went to see a revival screening of Diamonds are Forever. There's a scene where a bunch of gangland-style hoods move in to surround Sean Connery and we all muttered, "Look! Sid Haig is about to kill James Bond!" If by some chance I find him unmobbed tomorrow at the con, I'm going to barge up to him and get an autographed picture. I don't actually collect autographed pictures but I'd like to shake his hand and tell him how many things I've seen him in.

We did a round of our Quick Draw! game with Sergio Aragonés, Kyle Baker, Scott Shaw! and Steve Leialoha and I think a good time was had by all. This is fast becoming one of my favorite parts of any convention, and I urge you to see the competition we're planning for the Comic-Con International in San Diego.

This evening, I dropped in on a party where the music was so loud that I could only hear about 20% of what friends were trying to say to me and I strained my throat, yelling back to them so they could hear me say that I couldn't hear what they were trying to say to me. I left quickly, then ran into some other friends who said, "Come with us to a party." They took me to another cluster of con attendees where I also couldn't hear, so I decided to come back up to the room and work on an article that's due shortly. I frankly have never understood why people feel compelled to have music at all, let alone at deafening levels, at parties where the main intent is for folks to communicate with one another. A few people were dancing at the second gathering but there still didn't seem to be any excuse for the volume. I am blessed/cursed (hard to tell which, sometimes) with the kind of hearing that picks up noises from all around whatever space I am in, so I assume it's not as bad for some others as it is for me. Still, when I become the Absolute Ruler of All Mankind, I intend to banish music from any party where the main premise is not to listen to music. I will of course also make Karaoke punishable by death but I assume everyone's in favor of that.

Tomorrow: One more panel and I'm off to the airport. I'll see if I can meet Sid Haig before I go.

The Moscone Center in San Francisco is filled with comic book fans, comic book creators and comic books. There are also a few actors and models and one hapless lady who has been assigned by the convention center folks to go up and down the aisles with a pushcart of snacks to sell. So far, she's the only one who doesn't seem to be having a great time. There's no real event to report and I don't expect there will be, but I'm enjoying myself.

Wandered the halls in the morning, did back-to-back panels with Sergio Whatzisname and Paul Dini. Saw a lot of fine comic book folks including Brent Anderson, Tony deZuniga, Dave Stevens, Al Gordon, Steve Leialoha, Trina Robbins, Kyle Baker, Darwyn Cooke, Bruce Timm, David Spurlock, Howard Chaykin, Scott Shaw!, Nick Barrucci, Batton Lash and Jackie Estrada. Whoever I left out, forgive me. It's late.

One thing I've learned, not so much about conventions but about myself is that I enjoy cons more when (a) I have no business to transact, no person that I have to see about some project. And (b) I enjoy cons more when I don't go to too many of them. There's a sense in which they blur together since one convention hall full of dealers and their tables doesn't look all that different from another convention hall full of dealers and their tables. There was a time when I'd arrive at one, walk in and have an overwhelming sensation of déjà vu, as if to say, "I've been to this convention before." For a while, I'd feel so privileged when some con offered to fly me in and put me up that I'd say yes, get there and think, "Why am I here?" One reason I've come to enjoy hosting panels and events at these things is that every one of those is a little different.

Favorite Moment So Far: A kid with a pad of paper comes up to a noted artist (one of those named above) and says, "I'm a big fan of your work. Would you do me a little drawing?" The artist asks which of the many characters he draws the kid would like him to draw…and it is instantly obvious that the kid has no idea who this artist is. He's just out to get free sketches, hoping someday one of them will be worth something. He stammers and says, taking a wild guess, "The X-Men?" (He even said it with the question mark on the end with kind of a hopeful note.) The artist says, "I've never drawn the X-Men" but he uncaps his pen to do the kid a drawing anyway. He puts down what look like the opening strokes of a Batman and the kid says, "Batman! I meant Batman!" After I post this, I'm going to check and see if it's on eBay yet.