Monthly Archives: February 2006

On a number of comic books I wrote years ago, I had the pleasure of working with Paul Norris, a fine artist and gentleman. Paul, who is 91 and sharp as ever, has many credits but I'll just mention two. He was the artist creator of Aquaman and then later, he wrote and drew the Brick Bradford newspaper strip for a little over 35 years. Others have said that Paul never missed a deadline in his life and while I can't attest to that, I can tell you that when we worked together, he was never not early with whatever he was drawing.

A few years ago at a San Diego Con, Stan Lee and I were wandering around, talking about something or other, and we wandered into a big auditorium where a panel of veteran comic artists was in progress. Stan mentioned he'd worked with everyone on the panel except one gent and asked who it was. When I told him it was Paul Norris, he said, "You mean, the guy who did Brick Bradford?" And then, with the exact same tone that some geeky fanboys have had when they asked me to introduce them to someone like Stan Lee, Stan asked me to introduce him to Paul Norris. Which I did. Paul couldn't believe that Stan Lee wanted to meet him and Stan couldn't believe that he was meeting Paul Norris.

Paul is a graduate of Midland Lutheran College in Fremont, Nebraska. Opening this week there is an exhibit of his artwork. Here's an article about his life and career, and there's some info there about the exhibit. If you're anywhere near Midland, check it out. But since you probably aren't, just read the article.

Nat Hentoff on the Imperial Presidency. I have the feeling that a lot of people who insist on the right of the president to trump certain laws won't feel that way the next time we have a Democratic president.

Has anyone sent you a sample of Julian Beever's art? Mr. Beever does these remarkable chalk drawings on sidewalks that, when viewed from a certain angle, take on a 3-D effect. This website displays some of them. Take a look at the photos that show what the drawings look like when viewed from the wrong angle in order to fully understand what this man does. It's not humanly possible.

Animator and animation director Myron Waldman died Saturday morning at the age of 97. His career dated back to working as a cel-painter on Betty Boop and Koko the Clown cartoons in 1930. The eminent cartoon historian, Mr. Jerry Beck, has posted a better obit than I could possibly produce. Go here to read it.

Here's a review of a stage production you can't go and see. In fact, I think the last performance is starting just as I'm posting this report on the matinee I saw this afternoon.

The Reprise! company in Los Angeles does these low-rehearsal, low-budget, high-talent interpretations of great Broadway musicals and they're just now finishing two weeks of City of Angels, a very fine show with a book by Larry Gelbart, lyrics by David Zippel and music by the late (and much-missed) Cy Coleman. For those of you unfamiliar with the show, it's about a writer in the forties who's not unlike Raymond Chandler. They're turning one of his hard-as-nails detective novels into a movie and he's selling out a bit of his soul for Big Bucks, working for an a-hole producer-director who's demanding change after change for no good reason. Anyone who's heard Mr. Gelbart discourse on what know-nothing execs have done to his own work will recognize a large part of the passion in his witty dialogue.

The stage is usually bisected. On one side, we see scenes from the novel as ace gumshoe Stone functions in a film noir environment, with costumes and sets in black-and-white to suggest that kind of world and movie. On the other, we see novelist Stine, who leads a more-or-less full-color existence, battling the idiot producer, cheating on his wife, breaking up with that wife and wrestling with his own rather confused conscience. Most of the actors in the show play at least two roles, one on each side of the stage, and both narratives get quite complicated, especially when one mirrors the other or they outright intersect. Somehow, the storylines resolve each other and the audience goes home very happy. At least, all the folks this afternoon who fled the Super Bowl to see City of Angels up at U.C.L.A. did. Gelbart's words are extremely clever and Zippel's music matches him, pun for pun and double entendre for double entendre. I think he even managed to get some triple and quadruple entendres in there.

Stephen Bogardus was Stine, Burke Moses was Stone and they both were terrific. So was Stuart Pankin, who played the producer who glories in messing with the writer's prose. I'd rave further but it would just make you sorrier you can't go see it. I'd go back and see it again if I could.

I've had the time to read up on the situation with the Danish cartoonists and I still don't have anything to write here apart from the obvious. What's more, I haven't seen any other bloggers write anything that I wanted to link to or even pass off as my own observations. Yes, cartoonists everywhere have a right to draw what they want. No, it may not be the smartest thing in the world to publish drawings that are going to get that many people that mad. Those two thoughts are not mutually exclusive.

I won't be watching the Super Bowl today. Carolyn and I are going to a play. You can get real good seats when you go on Super Bowl Sunday.

Sorry to read of the passing of Sonny King, a great entertainer who worked with Jimmy Durante and was a Vegas fixture for many years. He is most often mentioned for the historic achievement of introducing a kid named Jerry Lewis to a singer named Dean Martin. But Sonny, who I saw perform a few times when I first started trekking to Nevada, deserves to be remembered for more than that.

Lastly for now, this reminder: The WonderCon convenes in San Francisco this coming Friday. Unlike last year, when rain made for a messy weekend, the forecast calls for naught but sun, at least through Saturday. So that's a good sign. I'll be moderating a (for me) modest slate of panels and since I went to the trouble of making up the banner, I'm going to post it again…

I never had the opportunity to really meet "Grandpa" Al Lewis, who has just passed away at the age of 95. [Correction: He was 82.] For several years, he fronted a restaurant in Greenwich Village where the main attraction was not the food but being seated and insulted by the man who'd played Grandpa Munster on The Munsters. On one trip to New York, the fine cartoonist Carol Lay took me there because, she said, all her friends loved going there and bantering with Grandpa. As it turned out, we arrived at the place only hours after it had closed forever.

It was a disappointment because I'd always found Al Lewis to be a crusty but colorful character. This obit will tell you the story of his career but basically, there were two high points: Car 54, Where Are You? and The Munsters. Car 54 was one of my favorite shows and Lewis was brilliant on it playing the chronic kvetch, Officer Leo Schnauzer. He was so good that at several points during the show's two season run, when the producers were having troubles with co-star Joe E. Ross, the decision was made to fire Ross and to elevate Lewis to co-star. Had the series returned for a third season, that would probably have happened.

It was The Munsters that made him famous and gave him his lasting nickname. I remember taking the Universal Studios tour at the time and seeing Grandpa Munster, in full blue-green make-up, coming out to sign autographs for folks on the tram. He managed to act quite cranky while obviously loving every second of it. Before and after that series, he had some fine screen roles, especially that of the hanging judge in Used Cars, a 1980 comedy that didn't get nearly enough attention.

Even into his nineties, Lewis remained an outspoken pain-in-the-butt to many, running for public office, broadcasting a local radio show in New York, and giving outrageous and outraged interviews whenever possible. It's sad to lose someone like that because he really was one of a kind.

This article in the L.A. Times [might make you register] discusses how the Disney folks are trying to resuscitate the popularity of Kermit, Miss Piggy and other Muppet characters. They'll be in two new commercials on Super Bowl Sunday.

The reporter probably didn't intend it as such but there's a sentence in the article that may nail the problem. It's the one that goes, "Every division at the company is contributing ideas to the renewal project." I have no inside info on what's going on over there but I do have some experience of seeing great characters get battered about in intra-corporate custody battles. The main problem those characters face is that they will never have another person as creative as Jim Henson guiding their fortunes. Even if someone that brilliant did come along, he'd never get the kind of authority and control that Henson had.

Speaking of Muppets: You may recall that last December, we noted here that the Internet Movie Database said that I had played the role of Ernie in his brief cameo in The Muppet Movie. I sent the folks there a message that said quite clearly that I had nothing whatsoever to do with that fine film and that the puppet (which did not speak in the movie) was operated by my friend, Earl Kress. Well, I'm pleased to note that the Internet Movie Database has changed their listing. Unfortunately, they've changed it to say that I just did the voice while Earl operated the puppet. In light of this, I'm going to do what any reasonable, sane person would do in such a situation. I'm going to give up.

Hey, we haven't checked lately to see if Abe Vigoda is alive.

The following message is from Bob Rivard. I'll meet you on the other side of it and reply.

I'm curious why the lack of commentary in support of the Danish cartoonists now hiding in fear for their lives from Islamofascist butchers? I know that threats of beheading and torture aren't quite as "chilling" as when conservatives merely criticize Doonesbury, The Boondocks, or Tedd Rall, but maybe the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund could divert some resources from protecting America's fearless cartoonists from Chimpy W. Hitler and offer support? I seem to recall your speaking up on behalf of cartoonists every once in a while, or is that some other website I'm thinking of?

Did I miss school the day the Danes invaded Iraq, supported Israel or suppressed Palestinians? Surely those notorious Danish imperialists brought this on themselves? Or maybe…just maybe…there really is, embedded in almost every country now, a death-welcoming fanatical murdering cult out there. One whose fundamental precepts, as they themselves express them, are really…get ready for a four letter word…evil. A cult which cannot be appeased, ignored, or convinced to accept diverse co-existence. One whose fundamental belief asks us to convert, supplicate, or die.

Does this make it any more clear what we might be fighting about in the middle east? Or 5 years ago in Manhattan?

In response to your first paragraph, there are two reasons I haven't posted anything yet about the Danish cartoonists. One is that I've been awfully busy with non-blogging concerns, including a script that's due and some personal and more pressing matters. I've had time to post fluff but not to really read up on the threats against these cartoonists and then — and here comes the second reason — to figure out what, beyond the obvious, I could add to the dialogue. I mean, we're all smart enough to operate computers. Don't we know that beheadings and torture, and threats thereof, are always wrong? They're wrong when used against cartoonists. They're wrong when used against non-cartoonists. Do you really need a guy who writes a weblog about possums in his backyard and Groo the Wanderer to come out against beheadings and torture? That's really going to make a difference.

And if you think I've discussed anyone's criticisms of Boondocks or Tedd Rall (isn't it Ted?) then yes, I think you're thinking of some other weblog. I have suggested that people who believe Doonesbury skews exclusively liberal are overlooking its savaging of Bill Clinton, Ted Kennedy and others but that's not at all an issue of government censorship. (I also didn't get around to writing anything about the Joint Chiefs of Staff of this country protesting a recent political cartoon by Tom Toles. If I had, it would have been that I think they have every right to protest such things but that all they're doing is looking thin-skinned and making a hero out of Toles.)

Frankly, I've never found your four-letter word very practical for discussing real-world problems and their possible solutions. Something motivates people who commit terror and atrocities and it isn't that Satan gives them marching orders and sends them out to destroy lives for no reason. I think my attitude is more like, "Okay, they're evil. Now let's move past that and figure out what to do about them."

No, I'm afraid it doesn't make it any clearer what we might be fighting about in the middle east. In fact, I'm finding that with each passing week and every Bush and/or Cheney speech, I'm less clear on what we're hoping to accomplish in Iraq and I see even less connection to 9/11. It isn't that I don't think there aren't folks out there — more than ever, I'm afraid — who pray for more American deaths. It's that I'm losing the thread of why what we're doing over there is making things better. Judging from the polls, I'm not alone.

I'll write more about this when I get more time. Which may not be for a while.

I was intrigued by Paul Davidson's identification of Danny Teeson as the dancer who played Mr. Six, the elderly gent in the Six Flags commercial, and I decided to do a bit of Internet sleuthing on my own. The top picture above is a cut from the website of Professional Vision Care Associates, which is a firm here in California that specializes in unusual contact lens sets and other eye-related special effects for movies. On their site, they have a Client List and as you can see, it says that they did some work for Mr. Six in a Six Flags commercial. Okay.

The second picture above is from the Google cache of that page, meaning that it's what Google saw on the site a few days ago. As you can see, in the exact same place, the client is identified as Danny Teeson. (The colors on the various words indicate that those were the search words I used to find the page.) Here's a link to the cache page, though it will probably be gone very shortly.

There are a couple of possibilities here, one being that some expertly-crafted hoax is at work here…though I can't imagine why. But it sure looks like Mr. Six was played by Mr. Teeson and also that someone had the Professional Vision Care people change their website in the last few days to remove his name. And that's all the detective work I have time for now. Good night.

This fine specimen of possumhood was caught nibbling cat food on my back steps not ten minutes ago. Nice of the neighborhood cats to leave him some of their dinner, don't you think?

Hey, remember those commercials for the Six Flags amusement parks that featured an extremely-senior citizen dancing his heart out? The character's name was Mr. Six and at the time, there was a colossal mystery as to who was playing him under all that make-up. Six Flags seems to have dumped the campaign but blogger Paul Davidson was determined to find out who portrayed the spry Mr. Six…and he claims to have the inside info.

The schedule is up for programming at this year's WonderCon, which commences a week from tomorrow in San Francisco. Here's the list for Friday, here's the list for Saturday and here's the list for Sunday…but you needn't click on any of them. If you're attending, you'll only want to attend my panels. You can get a list of them by clicking below.

Today on our sister site, Old TV Tickets, we offer up one from The Danny Thomas Show. And that seemed like as good a reason as any to post the covers to the two Danny Thomas Show comic books published by Dell. The great Alex Toth was hired to illustrate the one at left and, he says, that meant taking the artwork over to gain the approval of Mr. Thomas, himself. Though Danny had made a lot of money mocking the size of his own nose, he complained (Alex says) it was too large in the comic…but grudgingly allowed it to go to press as Toth drew it. The second and final issue was drawn by Russ Manning.

Please note: These are real covers of real comic books that were actually published. I did not whip them up in Photoshop.