Monthly Archives: August 2006

For years, comic book artists have handed around faded Xeroxes of a page called "Wally Wood's 22 Panels That Always Work." This was said to be a cheat sheet that the late, great artist Wally Wood had compiled for himself and his legion of assistants. Also known as "Wood's Lazy Layouts," it was said to be his repertoire of tricks to use in composing comic book panels, especially when the artist found himself stuck with long, talky scenes.

Turns out that, though Wood himself designed the components of this page, it was actually assembled by one of his assistants, Larry Hama, after Wood's death. This story is told on this page by Joel Johnson who — lucky man — is now in possession of the original paste-up of Wood roughs. But he's also a generous man because he shares some good scans of the material with us. Artists who have copied and recopied their bad stats for years can now rejoice in a fresh, first-generation copy of the page.

Whether it's a good idea for a comic artist to resort to these tricks is, of course, arguable. Wally Wood could get away with repeating compositions but few artists are Wally Wood. It would be interesting to see — here's a homework assignment for someone — if one could find panels in Wood's work (especially the stories that were largely unassisted) to correspond to each panel in the Lazy Layouts chart. And it would also be interesting to see if you could do it with the work of artists like Alex Toth, Jack Kirby and Joe Kubert, who've been famously praised for not repeating panel compositions.

Ed Alexander, who's been quoted before in this weblog, sends the following…

Y'know, I'm not sure that the penalties Mel Gibson will be undergoing aren't more onerous than you make them out to be. No matter what amount the judge might have fined him, there'd be no hardship meeting it, so the penalty couldn't really be financially commensurate with other folks who'd been found guilty of the same thing. As odd as it sounds, I have a feeling that the loss of regard and esteem with which a large percentage of the public held him in is more of a penalty than any fiduciary penalty that he judge might have placed on him.

That said, I wouldn't have minded if probation, loss of license and amount of actual community service he had to perform weren't greater (making an anti-DUI PSA doesn't really take much energy since someone else will write it for him and the crew will film it) but I'm not sure that jail time would be any more appropriate in this case than it would be for anyone else who was stopped and caught during a first offense. Since prisons have essentially become rape factories, I think that a victimless crime should be punished through other venues if there's a damn good chance that would result in there being no repeat offense. I tend to think that the real reason I'm offended by his behavior that evening was more for the offensively intolerant behavior than for the DUI, and I think that the court of public perception is a more appropriate venue for meting out punishment than a court of law. Hopefully that sentence will be appropriate to the offense.

Ed, I'm going to disagree with almost every sentence of the above. First off, I don't think drunk driving is a "victimless crime" — or to the extent it is, it's victimless out of dumb luck, not because of anything the drunk driver did. If someone goes out on his porch and starts firing live ammo around indiscriminately, he might not kill anyone. His actions might be victimless. That guy still oughta be locked up, even if there's zero chance of him doing it again.

Secondly, I'm not qualified to judge whether there could be a repeat offense of Mr. Gibson's inebritated actions…but this was not the first time the man's been pulled over for driving under the influence.

I'll agree with the part about the court of public opinion but only with regard to the reported anti-Semetic remarks. There are laws against getting behind the wheel while plastered and they ought to be enforced with more severity, if only as an example to the next guy who's inclined to break them.

There's a tendency among people who are rich, powerful, famous or some combination of those attributes to think that the law doesn't apply to them in quite the same way it applies to the poor, the powerless, the unknown. They assume many in authority will look the other way and if someone doesn't, a well-coiffed, high-fee lawyer can always put things right. I don't know if Mel Gibson is in this category but the fact that he will get away with no serious impairment to his life will surely heighten others' sense that if they get caught with a bit too much alcohol in their veins, the punishment won't be too severe.

It would be interesting for some reporter to dig into records and find similar cases where a driver with Gibson's history has been pulled over for a similar infraction. Have miscreants without his clout or cash received comparable sentences? If not, something is wrong. If so, something is still wrong but it's a different something.

Marvel is working some sort of deal where reprints of old comic books will be inserted into Sunday newspaper sections around the country. I gather the idea is that the newspapers get them for free and can tout them as a selling point, and Marvel's costs are paid for by the new advertising they sell in the comics. Even if they lose a few bucks on the deal, it's probably good promotion for their characters. On the other hand, it'll probably make the regular comics, which cost $2.99 and up, seem even more overpriced.

I couldn't help but be amused by the item that ran today in the Register-Guard, a newspaper that comes out of Eugene, Oregon. Here's one paragraph…

The first in the Spider-Man collectible series, "Amazing Fantasy: Introducing Spider Man," is dated Aug. 15, 1962, and features the art of celebrated cartoonist Stan Lee. It chronicles the transformation of bookworm Peter Parker into the web-spinning wonder in the blue and red tights.

Someone please explain to these people that Stan Lee is not a cartoonist and that the comic in question was primarily drawn by Steve Ditko, not by Stan Lee. Also, it's a reprint of Amazing Fantasy #15. which was cover-dated August of '62. It's not dated "August 15, 1962."

While I'm on the topic: Can anyone supply me with copies of these reprints? They come free in the Sunday sections so if your local newspaper carries them, it oughta be easy to round up a few of 'em from the neighbors.

Here's seven and a half minutes of one of my favorite movies, only in Spanish.

The thing I'd like to point out in this clip from It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is the scene with Buster Keaton and the lack of English won't matter. In the full version of the movie as it was originally released, Mr. Keaton had a somewhat larger part, including a phone conversation scene with Spencer Tracy. When the film was cut down (as explained here), that scene was tossed. That's right: Someone actually threw away the only scene ever filmed featuring America's greatest dramatic actor and America's greatest comedic actor.

Okay: One of America's greatest dramatic actors and one of America's greatest comedic actors. Fine. Should we argue?

Anyway, everything that's left of his performance in the film is all in this clip and it's very brief. Still, I submit it's evidence of why Buster Keaton was one of America's greatest comedic actors. He is given absolutely nothing to work with and somehow, he makes it funny. Every single time I've seen this movie with an audience — must be twenty times or more — Keaton has gotten huge laughs, just through his body movements.

This is possible because he is not stunt-doubled in a scene where they might have decided to substitute a double. (And it's just a coincidence, by the way, that I'm discussing this and Mr. Keaton's one-time stuntman died recently. I planned to link to this clip and to write about this before I knew that.)

Keaton was 67 or 68 years old when this was filmed — not as agile as he once was — and of course, he was Buster Keaton. Nothing puts a damper on a funny movie better than having a comedy legend killed or injured on the set. Since Keaton was not going to be far from cars that were going to be crashing into one another, someone probably said, "Hey, we'd better put a stuntman in for him," just as — and you sure can tell from the cut — they put in stuntfolks for all the other stars.

And I'm guessing the director, Stanley Kramer, said no. There is no way any stuntman was going to move like Buster Keaton…no way any stuntman was going to get any laugh, let alone a big one, running around the way Buster did. I'd wager Kramer decided to take the risk of putting Keaton close to harm's way, surely after discussing it with the man. From all accounts, Keaton — even in his last year of life — never shrank from taking a fall or smashing into a wall or anything for the good of the scene, and I'm sure he'd not only have agreed but insisted.

The rest of the clip is cars chasing around Southern California. The first scenes start with the cabs coming down to Pacific Coast Highway via a road in Santa Monica called the California Incline. It's one of the few locations in the movie that's still pretty much identifiable if you go there today. The amusement park you can briefly glimpse was a place called (at different times) The Pike or Nu Pike down in Long Beach. The scenes with Keaton were done at Channel Islands Harbor and the shots before and after are on Malibu Road and Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu.

Anyway, enjoy it. Or better still, get the whole movie and enjoy it more in English.

Mick Dillon, who had the great honor of stunt-doubling stars the likes of Buster Keaton and Ringo Starr, is dead at age 80. He doubled for Ringo in the movie Help! and for Buster in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. This obit says that he was the only man who ever stood in for Keaton but that's not true. In the movie College, Buster was unable to do a scene that called for him to pole vault into an upper window so an actual track star was brought in to perform the feat. There are also reports that on Keaton's MGM talkies, the studio wouldn't permit him to tackle some of the more dangerous feats so doubles were quietly used.

In any case, Mr. Dillon had plenty to proud of in the stuntman's profession…and an array of injuries that he somehow managed to survive. (He fractured his skull for a scene in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. You can read about it and others in the obit.)

Another chapter of Peter Sanderson's report on this year's Comic-Con International.

…but a semi-important one. Yesterday, I went and bought myself a new PDA. That was the package Costco somehow managed to get to me about eleven minutes after I ordered it. The PDA is equipped with a wireless Internet capability.

So now the question before us is: Can I wirelessly post to this here weblog from the thing? Can I, if you'll pardon the techie jargon, configure the frammistat to interface with the doo-hickey?

If you're reading this, I can.

Three years of probation…loses his license for ninety days…

But the real punishment has got to be the $1200 fine. Six minutes' income shot to hell.

Oh, well. He's probably lucky that he didn't kill someone while driving drunk. The judge might have given him a stern scolding.

Back in this message, we linked to the rousing opening of the Linus the Lionhearted cartoon show. Today's link takes us to the end credits, which may be the saddest, most funereal moment ever seen in an animated series. Have a hanky ready before you click.

By the way: This is our last post relating to Post Crispy Critters cereal. I don't know why there have been so many because, like I said, I never liked the stuff.

Michael R. Gordon details the current state of the War in Iraq.

A newspaper article about the current state of MAD Magazine.

I ordered a piece of computer equipment from the Costco website yesterday at 4:15 PM. UPS just delivered it.

Just wanted to say that this is not humanly possible. They must be using psychics and shipping this stuff before we order it.

I remember liking everything about Post Crispy Critters cereal except the cereal. Liked the name, liked the commercials, liked the mascot, liked his voice and his cartoons. But the cereal? It was like styrofoam peanuts dipped in sugar. No wonder they stopped making it.

I went through that phase where I had to try every new cereal when it came out…and the phase usually never lasted much longer than a box. Sometimes, half a box…and then it would be back to one of my two all-time faves, Cheerios or Rice Chex. The simple, basic stuff always won out in the end. (Before I drastically altered my diet last May, I ate a lot of my favorite adult cereal, which was Barbara's Shredded Oats. And it just dawned on me that it's kind of like Cheerios and Rice Chex rolled into one.)

Apparently, Crispy Critters is ancient history but before it went away, it had a last hurrah. In '87, Post tried to bring it back in what I believe was a lower sugar version. At least, they call it "low sugar" in the commercial you're about to see, whereas the commercials for the earlier version (like the one in yesterday's link) emphasized sugar as a selling point. I never tried the 1987 version of Crispy Critters but since the sugar was the only reason to eat the sixties incarnation, I'm guessing I didn't miss much. More significant is the new spokescritter who sounds like Jimmy Durante as done by someone who doesn't do a real good Jimmy Durante.

His name was Crispy and he was a…well, I'm not sure what he was or why they selected an unidentifiable animal as their mascot. The appeal of Crispy Critters — and admittedly, this isn't much — was that you could identify each piece of your breakfast cereal as a camel or a monkey or a lion or an orange moose…or something. So why characterize the product with an animal who can't be characterized?

Even great commercials probably wouldn't have saved this product. But they didn't have to be this bad…

Glenn Greenwald has a good article up on Salon about today's court decision in the matter of wiretapping sans warrant. Here are two key paragraphs…

It is important to be clear about what this decision means and what it does not mean — particularly since the White House, among others, is already depicting this ruling as some sort of epic blow to the administration's efforts to fight terrorism. This ruling does not, of course, prohibit eavesdropping on terrorists; it merely prohibits illegal eavesdropping in violation of FISA.

Thus, even under the court's order, the Bush administration is free to continue to do all the eavesdropping on terrorists it wants to do. It just has to cease doing so using its own secretive parameters, and instead do so with the oversight of the FISA court — just as all administrations have done since 1978, just as the law requires, and just as it did very recently when using surveillance with regard to the U.K. terror plot. Eavesdropping on terrorists can continue in full force. But it must comply with the law.

In reading a lot of articles that abhor today's decision, I have yet to see anyone argue that the above is not what the judge's opinion says, nor have I seen anyone argue that this is a bad thing. The arguments all seem to be mounted as if the judge ruled that the Bush must stop all wiretapping, period. Guess that's easier to rebut or something.

So apparently the guy did confess — sort of but maybe not convincingly — to killing the little Ramsey girl, only now some observers are wondering if the confession is legit. At the same time, some others are wondering if the arrest and announcement were premature because the case hasn't been built yet and maybe it's even a stunt to smoke out the real killer and…

Stop.

I was kind of interested in this story the other day for a moment. It was a moment when it looked like all the folks who were damn sure (based on way too little evidence to be that certain) that Mrs. Ramsey killed her daughter were going to have to deal with being dead wrong. I'm not all that interested in who really killed JonBenet Ramsey…no more than you are in who killed a lot of people you didn't know. But I am fascinated by Denial of Reality, or at least by some folks' tendency to pluck opinions out of the ozone layer and then defend them to the death. I think our society abounds in way too many false conclusions.

I'm also interested in the press…in its uncanny ability to get things absolutely wrong and not get called out for it. So when the Ramsey story was briefly about that, I was also interested.

But now, it's all pulled a Geraldo and swung back into Tabloid Territory. We're in "We'll never know for sure" country. No matter what the disposition is of this John Mark Karr guy — even if he comes up with camcorder footage of himself strangling the little lady — there will always be those saying he's innocent, that he was framed, that there was a police conspiracy, yadda yadda yadda. Or if his innocence is proven beyond any reasonable doubt, there will be books about how that miscarriage of justice was engineered. Too many people have too much invested in varying accounts for any view to ever be buried.

So I'm getting off the train. I'll avoid the news stories as much as I can…which probably won't be enough. And I may grumble that, uh, American soldiers are dying overseas but that keeps getting booted off the CNN homepage by the latest Ramsey rumor. But I ain't following this one any more. To those of you who already came to this conclusion because you're smarter than I am: Pardon me for mentioning it at all. I don't know what came over me.