Monthly Archives: July 2006

This year's Comic-Con International is a thing of the past. Some thoughts in no particular order…

• A tip I should have given you was to wander way, way, way down to the end of the hall that included the area known as Artists' Alley. Lots of talented creators — including some real veterans — were there, most selling published art and sketches. It was the part of the con that most felt like a COMIC BOOK convention.
• Some woman was heard incessantly on a very loud, piercing public address system, making unnecessary announcements and scolding people who did naughty things like pulling a wheeled suitcase through the hall. (John Romita, a legendary comic artist in his seventies, told me he was admonished twice for this.) I know the lady was only doing her job but ten more of those announcements and I think someone would have formed a posse to hunt her down.
• Stop complaining that the food that's available in the convention center sucks. It's supposed to suck so you'll go out instead and patronize the local merchants. It's only there for people who really, really can't get away and have to be satisfied with sucky food.
• Why is it I couldn't locate the ten or twelve people with whom I had to talk business but I couldn't take twelve steps without running into Len Wein?
• The surgeon who performed my Gastric Bypass Surgery has a long waiting list and is in no need of more patients. But if he ever is, he could find plenty of candidates by setting up a booth at the con.
• Shopping carts. We need shopping carts. And one of those services like they have in some malls where when you're done shopping, you take all your purchases to them and they deliver everything to your home for you.
• I attended the first San Diego Con in 1970. There were fewer people there that year than I saw lined up yesterday to get into the DC display area.
• There were some great panels and presentations at the convention…and I'm not just talking about the twelve I was on. If I hadn't done them, I could have found way more than twelve I wanted to attend.
• It's always nice when I get to meet a veteran comic artist I've never met before but whose work I've always admired. Everett Raymond Kinstler is a charming, classy gentleman.
• Please, people…and this isn't just about parties at comic conventions. It applies to all parties everywhere. If people are going to be standing around talking, we don't need music. We really don't. You can never hear it and it always makes it harder to hear the folks you want to chat with. I especially feel sorry for live musicians, sitting or standing there, playing their hearts out…and no one can hear what they're doing well enough to enjoy it.
• Kyle Baker is brilliant. Everyone should buy his books.
• There were lots of other brilliant creators in that hall. I'll try to mention some more of them in the coming days.
• Hotels in San Diego must all be fabulous. At the Quick Draw! panel, looking for a "pet peeve" to use as the basis of a cartooning challenge, I asked anyone in the audience who had poor accomodations to raise their hands. In a room of several thousand people, no one did.
• Remind me to tell you about the gorgeous, stunningly-built super-heroine parading through the hall…who I think was a guy.
• Lastly: I'm weary, I'm tired of fighting my way through crowds, my feet hurt, I spent way too much money…and I can't wait 'til next year. If you weren't there this time, you might want to block out July 26-29 on your calendar. And start looking for a hotel room now.

I managed to avoid the main hall for most of yesterday…my reward for doing all those panels upstairs. But reports of people jammed together like (make up your own analogy) were common. Reportedly, the convention closed off registration at 1:00 PM and radio stations began telling folks not to bother showing up if they didn't have advance registration.

Apart from the crush, everyone seems to be having a very good time. The only unpleasantness I've witnessed in 3+ days here stems from people who are hired to direct traffic (foot traffic within the convention center, the automotive kind outside) and somehow turn into screaming, power-mad maniacs. You could almost forgive them if they actually seemed competent at controlling that traffic but the ones who yell the loudest are the ones who are making the problem worse, not better, especially at the intersections outside the con. Something about donning an orange vest seems to drain civility and I.Q. points from a man's mind.

I was very happy with my panels yesterday even though the most memorable part of the Golden/Silver Age gathering was probably Irwin Hasen, the artist responsible for Wildcat and Dondi, telling of how a gangster once got him a prostitute. Talk about your Secrets Behind the Comics.

Got a business-type meeting at ten so this will have to do for now. Stay cool, everyone.

From the National Weather Service…

What a day Saturday! Highs were between 108 and 115 in most valley locations. Woodland Hills (formerly known as the Canoga Park/Pierce College site) reached 119 degrees…an all-time record since records began there in 1949. After a preliminary look at weather records…it appears that this may be the highest temperature ever recorded at an official observation site in Los Angeles County.

Amazingly, after abnormalities like this and Katrina, I still get "form" e-mails from Conservative friends telling me that there couldn't possibly be such a thing as Global Warming because Al Gore says there is, and Al Gore's the guy who said he invented the Internet and was the model for the hero in Love Story. That and a few quotes from scientists on the Exxon payroll seem to be the entire counter-argument, at least in my mail.

One of the things that really annoys me about politics these days — to the point of my doubting the moral integrity of those who pull this scam — is this rush to spin everything an opponent says as a lie, even if you have to misquote them a little to do so. And worse is when they make the leap to "And if he lied about this, we can presume everything else he says is wrong." I don't even believe that about Bush and Cheney and, God knows, many of their public utterances could be easily classified as falsehoods.

Supposedly, we had to invade Iraq if there was even a 1% chance that terrorists had Weapons of Mass Destruction. That's setting the bar pretty low but if we buy that, we have to take the threat of Global Warming seriously if there's even a 1% chance that it's valid. And does anyone think there isn't even a 1% chance of that? If so, I bet they weren't in Woodland Hills yesterday.

Alas, I have awakened too late to do much con blogging this morn. Have to scurry over to the convention center, machete my way through the masses and keep business appointments and do panels. Friday didn't seem as crowded as some feared but I've got a hundred bucks that says today more than makes up for it. As usual, I was happy with all my panels yesterday…but especially with the annual Jack Kirby Tribute Panel. Wait'll you see the transcript of this one in The Jack Kirby Collector.

Had a nice talk last night with Frank Miller. The biggest news out of the convention so far, I guess, is that Frank's signed to direct a forthcoming movie based on Will Eisner's The Spirit. I knew about this weeks ago but the announcement was embargoed, as they say, 'til now. Can't think of anyone better for the job.

Also, it was announced yesterday that the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon series, on which I worked eons ago will be coming out — all three seasons in one high-quality DVD set plus extras — in November. This is another one of those things I've known about for some time (and so did you if you read between the lines here) but was not allowed to announce. (One thing I learned and didn't know is that Garfield and Friends reruns are returning to TV. They join the Boomerang schedule in November.)

Have to get going. I'll try to write more tomorrow.

Be afraid. Be very afraid. The Wednesday evening "Preview Night" was four times as crowded as last year's sneak peek at the main exhibit hall. It's usually a low-key, lightly-attended time to prowl the venue without elbowing your way through teeming hordes. It could have passed for Thursday afternoon…and Thursday afternoon could have passed for Friday. If today looks like Saturday, then Saturday will be tens of thousands of people all standing around, packed together like a Kellogg's Variety Pak, inching their way up the aisles at the speed of glaciers.

So there you have my first "Boy, is this place crowded" wisecrack. There will be more to come.

A friend used to always ask me, "What's the mood of the convention?" Near as I can figure, the mood of this one is summarized by the phrase, "Well, here we are back at the San Diego Con." The event itself seems to be more important (and certainly more impressive) than anything being exhibited here. But one of the problems with covering this mega-gathering is that it's really about forty conventions in one. The anime fans are excited about guests and announcements that are meaningless to me…and this morning in the hotel elevator, a lady was all aglow at the prospect that today, at a panel, she will meet…

…well, I'm not sure. It's some actor I've never heard of who's on a TV series I've never watched. This may well be the high point of her year but I'm as uninterested in her passions as she probably is in mine. Which is kind of an awkward way to make the point that once you get to the convention center here, you pretty much have to find the parts of the convention that matter to you. If you do, I think you can have a very good time.

Spent yesterday talking to a batch of people and doing three panels that went quite well. The usual stuff.

This morning, I hiked over to the Ralphs market on 1st Street to stock up on provisions and found its aisles full of con-goers. I felt out of place without my badge on. The Ralphs (they spell it without the apostrophe) has actually become part of the con, and I think if you got shut out of the main hall, you could experience a lot of the con — at least, meet some interesting people — by hanging out near the bottled water section of the market. Two years ago, I received a very nice job offer near the deli case. It's also not as crowded as the convention center, plus they have fresh, hot barbecued chickens.

Don't expect a lot of posting today. It's Getting Ready for Comic-Con International Day! I'll do what I can to report from the con…which generally means a lot of posts about "Boy, was that place crowded" and "All my panels went well," plus lists of some of the people I talked to. But hey, that's what passes for a convention report.

If you attend, try to go to some of my panels…and if you see me walking around, say howdy. If I look like I'm terribly busy, that's probably an act to make people think I'm terribly busy.

If you don't attend, please don't write and ask me how you can obtain a tape of that great panel you missed. I can't help you with this. Sorry.

Oh…one more tip. If you live to the north of San Diego and you're considering going down there for a day or two, consider the train. The Amtrak station in San Diego is not far from the convention center and taking the choo-choo saves you having to find a place to park. It also saves you having to pay for gas, which may be its greatest appeal.

Gotta go pack. Bye now.

Before he hosted his unreal "reality" show, Jerry Springer dealt in the even tawdrier world of politics. He was elected to the Cincinnati city council in 1971, then forced to resign in 1974 when the police broke up a massage parlor ring and unearthed a check he had written to a young lady engaged in a very old profession. I'm not sure if Springer was more humiliated by the revelation that he'd been to a prostitute or by the fact that he was dumb enough to pay by check. Either way, he did an apology tour that impressed voters enough that he won back his seat in 1975. Later, there was an opening for Mayor and the City Council appointed him to serve in that post for a year.

In 1982, he ran for governor of Ohio and came in third. That was the end of his political aspirations. He went into broadcasting and soon became a top-rated news anchor and commentaor, which led to the job he holds today. Our video link today is a commercial he did for his gubernatorial run. His opponents were either hammering him with the old prostitution scandal or about to, and Springer made this ad to try and deal with that problem and perhaps turn it into a positive. It didn't work but it was nice try.

The Comic-Con International commences Thursday in San Diego. Somewhere between (this is a guess on my part) 110,000 and 125,000 fans and creators of comics, animation, fantasy films and television and video games will be descending on the convention center. Roughly (this is another guess) 500 will be wandering about in some sort of costume, in some cases because some exhibitor has paid them to dress that way to promote a product. There will also be 7,000 video reports and news stories that will make it look like half the people there are dressed like Vampirella or Klingons to live out some sort of personal fantasy.

I attended my first comic convention in New York in 1970 and later that same year, attended the first comic convention in San Diego. I'm among the handful of folks who've been to every San Diego gathering. Shortly after one of them in the seventies, my aunt saw a TV news report on the con and asked me, "What did you go dressed as?" It took me a minute to figure out the question but when I did, I told her, "Myself. I dressed like I always dress…shirt, jeans, shoes…"

"But I thought you had to dress like Superman or Batman to get in," she said.

I explained to her the reality of the situation…but later, I saw the same TV news segment she saw and I could sure understand why she thought what she thought. Since then, a majority of the press coverage I've seen has at least exaggerated the number of people who wander the aisles in super-hero costumes. It's getting to the point where I'm thinking of wearing my Hawkwoman suit to the convention. If you can't beat 'em…

Another piece by Fred Kaplan on what's going on in the Middle East. I haven't seen any other articles on the topic I thought were link-worthy.

Today, we link to the opening of The Alvin Show, a 1961 prime time cartoon series starring Alvin, Simon and Theodore (aka The Chipmunks). The show is rarely seen these days, which is a shame because it was a pretty clever show with some very nice graphics by the folks at Format Films, a company that mainly did commercials. Each half hour featured an "adventure" of the three helium-voiced rodents, plus two short cartoons which were built around their pre-existing recordings. Those records, made by and starring Ross Bagdasarian (aka David Seville) were quite wonderful and they seem to have inspired the animators to match their energy and fun.

Each episode also featured a cartoon lecture by the eminent genius, Clyde Crashcup, voiced by Shepard Menken. As a kid, I recall being bored by Crashcup but I saw some recently and thought they were pretty funny.

Someone oughta put the 26 episodes of The Alvin Show out on DVD. Until they do, you'll have to settle for the opening, which I think has one of the jazziest theme songs in TV history.

Colonel Sanders is getting a makeover. They want him to be younger and more modern. I guess that's easier than making the food better.

Here's another in the never-ending series of articles about the sexuality of some super-hero, in this case Batwoman. This essay is rather funny but for the most part, I have little interest in any of these pieces that don't address the matter as what it usually is: A marketing gimmick. And I think the author is fundamentally correct or darn close when she says that in comics these days, if not in life, "You are either a midriff-bearing, gum-snapping, engagement ring-chasing girly girl or you are a probable lesbian."

Of course, it's not much better for men in comics: You can either be a tortured hero or a tortured villain…or sometimes, both. Or I guess you can be gay, too. So maybe they do have a few more options.

I'm not sure I ever made it all the way through a Mickey Spillane novel. I liked his no-nonsense talk whenever I saw him interviewed and I admired the success of this one-time comic book writer. But I think I got to I, The Jury a couple of decades too late. By that point, he'd been imitated and parodied to the point where it all seemed hokey to me…and of course, what was titillating and shocking when the book was first published in 1947 was almost Disney fare by the late sixties. Still, it was easy to see why he'd sold umpteen zillion copies of it and subsequent novels and why he'd spawned a legion of mimics, striving to achieve the two-fisted reality that came so naturally to Spillane.

I don't have any personal anecdotes. Only met the man once — at a San Diego Comic-Con International — and the conversation was brief and unremarkable. I think I advised him on good places to eat around the convention center and told him it was an honor to meet him. Which it was. He was a giant in his genre and one of the most-imitated writers of his century. Here's a link to an obit.

The National Weather Service is still calling for highs near 80° and lows near 70° in San Diego this coming week and Tom Spurgeon's list of convention tips is still better than mine. You can get all sorts of great facts about the con including parking and shuttle info over at the convention website. You can also read the Programming Guide but really, all you need to know is when my panels are. Here's one more plug for that list…

Greg Ip and Deborah Solomon in The Wall Street Journal explain what's going on with the American economy. Short summary: Tax revenues are up largely because the wealthiest Americans are making more than ever and therefore paying more in taxes. The non-wealthiest Americans aren't doing so well.