Monthly Archives: April 2007

Fred Kaplan on what can actually be done to solve The Iraq Problem and why George W. Bush won't do it.

A lot of people on the web today are posting their favorite B.C. and Wizard of Id gags in honor of Johnny Hart. Here's mine and it wasn't in a strip. It was the ever-changing title of one of his many paperback collections. In 1975, Fawcett Books brought out Life is a Seventy-Five Cent Paperback.

A few years later when it was reprinted, the series had gone up to 95 cents per book so they changed the title to Life is a Ninety-Five Cent Paperback and in tiny text at the bottom of the cover, it said "Formerly titled Life is a Seventy-Five Cent Paperback."

A year or three after that, the books were up to a buck and a quarter each so when they reissued this same volume, it was Life is a Dollar Twenty-Five Cent Paperback and the text at the bottom said, "Formerly titled Life is a Seventy-Five Cent Paperback and Life is a Ninety-Five Cent Paperback."

That was the last one but you just know that if the paperbacks had kept going, we'd eventually have seen Life is a Nine Dollar Paperback and at the bottom, it would have said, "Formerly titled Life is a Seventy-Five Cent Paperback and Life is a Ninety-Five Cent Paperback and Life is a Dollar Twenty-Five Cent Paperback and Life is a Two Dollar Paperback and Life is a Two and a Half Dollar Paperback and Life is a Two Dollar and Seventy-Five Cent Paperback and Life is a Three Dollar and a Twenty Cent Paperback and Life is a Four Dollar Paperback and Life is a Four Dollar and Thirty-Five Cent Paperback and Life is a Five Dollar and Fifty Cent Paperback and Life is a Six Dollar Paperback and Life is a Seven Dollar Paperback and Life is an Eight Dollar and No Cent Paperback and Life is an Eight Dollar and Sixty Cent Paperback."

You also know that he planned it that way. Notice how he left plenty of space in that word balloon.

He also did this with the British edition. Somewhere here, I have a copy of Life is a Fifty Pence Paperback. Funny man, that Johnny Hart…especially when he wasn't telling my people that we'd burn in Hell for all eternity. Although come to think of it, that's not a bad gag, either.

Johnny Achiziger and Alan Kupperberg both say that the unidentified person in the photo I just posted is comic book writer-artist Jim Starlin. They must know.

As most of you know, I'm currently assembling a big art book and bio of Jack Kirby which will be out later this year from the Harry N. Abrams Company. (If you don't know about it, here are some details.) I'm spending today going over a file of hundreds of photographs from Jack's personal files and collection, selecting some to be included in the book.

I came across the above pic and decided to share it with you all here. It's from the 1975 San Diego Comic-Con's award ceremony and if the above version of it is too small for you, you can see or download a much, much larger version of it here. Let me see if I can identify all the talented folks in this photograph for you because you may never see an assemblage like this anywhere else. I'm going to go right to left…

At far right, partially cut off, is Russell Myers, creator of the wonderful comic strip, Broom Hilda. To the left of Russell is Dick Moores, famed Disney artist who took over the Gasoline Alley newspaper strip. To the left of Dick is Bob Clampett, the great director of Warner Brothers cartoons and the man behind Beany and Cecil.

The man holding an award to the left of Bob is Jerry Siegel, co-creator of Superman. To the left of Jerry is Will Eisner, creator of The Spirit. The gentleman in the flowery shirt to the left of Jerry is the popular comic innovator, Jim Steranko. Right behind Steranko is the guru of Marvel Comics, Stan Lee. Immediately to the left of Steranko is Jack Kirby and right behind Jack, towering over him in fact, is comic artist Gil Kane.

Helluva photo, right? Wait. We're not through yet…

To the left of Jack is the brilliant cartoon voice actor, Daws Butler. To the right of Daws is the brilliant cartoon voice actress, June Foray. I thought I'd taken the only photo ever with Daws and Bob Clampett in it after their 1954 "parting of the ways" but here's another one, even if they aren't together in it.

Standing right behind June is…uh, I don't know. Anyone have any idea who that is?

To the left of June and holding an award is Richard Butner, who was one of the main operators of the convention in its first decade or so of existence. I can't see who's standing behind Richard but I think the gentleman to the left of him is Brad Anderson, who did the comic strip, Marmaduke.

Nothing much to add to this. The photo kinda speaks for itself and when it does, it says something about how you rarely see so many talented human beings on one stage.

Why is the use of cell phones banned on airplanes while in flight? If this article is correct — and I'd be interested in hearing if it isn't — it's not for the reasons you might think.

Here's a nice obit in The Los Angeles Times on Mr. Hart. It quotes him as saying, "The end of the world is approaching, maybe by the year 2010." If he's right, then he's only missing out on about three years.

And here's the Associated Press obituary, which says that both his strips will continue. According to the article, "Family members have been helping produce the strips for years, and they have an extensive computer archive of Hart's drawings to work with." If they said that about some strips, I'd be skeptical. But Hart often reused old drawings and just altered the lettering on them. So B.C. may not change much without him.

Lastly, this obit from the Gannett Service is the longest I've seen and it covers many of Hart's more admirable, unheralded deeds. If you only read one of the three, read this one.

You've occasionally seen me mention the name of Dave Mackey, who among his many skills is an authority on some animation studios of the past. He also, for some reason, knows facts that are not about old cartoons and recently proved it by being a contestant on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. When you do the show, you're sworn to secrecy about how you fared and even about how other games you witnessed at the taping came out. But Dave's episode ran last week so he is now free to discuss the experience. Here's Part One of his story and here's Part Two.

This is Part Two of our two-part series on the startling displacement of Little Lulu with Little Audrey. In Part One (which you can read here), we learned that Famous Studios was making very popular cartoons featuring Little Lulu, a character created by cartoonist Marjorie Henderson Buell. Lulu went from appearing weekly in The Saturday Evening Post to appearing in ads for Pepsi-Cola and Kleenex, as well as these animated cartoons that ran from 1943 to 1948.

Famous Studios watched Lulu become a very profitable and merchandised property during that period and decided that the character's popularity flowed from their animated cartoons, not the magazine cartoons. When their license to make the films neared its expiration date, Paramount approached Buell about a renewal…but instead of offering more money or even the same amount, they said in effect, "Give us part ownership of the character or we won't make the cartoons any longer." Buell refused and Paramount went about creating their own mischievious little girl character…and that was Little Audrey.

They made her look quite different but otherwise followed the same template, including a not-dissimilar theme song and pretty much the same kind of stories. In fact, the first few Little Audrey cartoons, it is said, were originally written for Little Lulu and switched. The last Little Lulu cartoon, The Dog Show-Off, was released January 30, 1948. Little Audrey appeared briefly in a 1947 Christmas cartoon for Paramount (Santa's Surprise) and then they put her in a Popeye cartoon, Olive Oyl for President, which came out the same day as that last Little Lulu short. The first official Little Audrey cartoon, Butterscotch and Soda, was released in June of 1948.

The one that's our video link today is called Tarts and Flowers and it came out May 26, 1950. The voices are by Mae Questel and Jackson Beck, who seem to have been in well over half of all the cartoon shorts made in New York. What you'll see when you click in a TV print released by a company called U.M. & M., which was a partnership of three companies — United Film Service, MTA TV of New Orleans, and Minot T.V. The combine was formed in the fifties to buy up the rights to old movies (cheaply, they hoped) and to syndicate them to the then-new television stations that were popping up around the country.

In the mid-fifties, someone at Paramount decided to unload much of their library to television in a sale they later regretted. Various films were purchased by different companies but U.M. & M. got a lot of it, including many of the studio's live-action shorts and most of the cartoons released before June 30, 1950 with the exception of the Popeye and Superman films. A condition of the sale was that all references to Paramount had to be removed from the films so the titles were replaced with the bland, generic ones you see here.

Audrey was fairly popular. Paramount made cartoons of her until 1959 and she also starred in a couple of comic books published by the Harvey company. In 1961 when Paramount's cartoon studio fell on hard times, they reached back to their past and made another deal with Marge to do Little Lulu cartoons again. One came out that year and one the following year but no one cared by that time.

Here's Little Audrey in one of her better starring performances…

I said in this message that the movie Going My Way was released for Christmas, 1944. B. Baker informs me that it came out in May of '44. A small point but it's worth getting right.

This kind of thing mystifies me. This is Michael Isikoff writing about Attorney General Alberto Gonzales prepping to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee…

…even his own closest advisers are nervous about whether he is up to the task. At a recent "prep" for a prospective Sunday talk-show interview, Gonzales's performance was so poor that top aides scrapped any live appearances. During the March 23 session in the A.G.'s conference room, Gonzales was grilled by a team of top aides and advisers — including former Republican National Committee chair Ed Gillespie and former White House lawyer Tim Flanigan — about what he knew about the plan to fire seven U.S. attorneys last fall. But Gonzales kept contradicting himself and "getting his timeline confused," said one participant who asked not to be identified talking about a private meeting. His advisers finally got "exasperated" with him, the source added. "He's not ready," Tasia Scolinos, Gonzales's public-affairs chief, told the A.G.'s top aides after the session was over, said the source. Asked for comment, Scolinos told NEWSWEEK: "This was the first session of this kind that we'd done."

What mystifies me is not how could Gonzales be so bad. What mystifies me is how does he bring in people to prep him who then turn around and tell Newsweek how bad he was? Shouldn't the Attorney General of the United States of America be able to surround himself with aides who can keep a secret and won't go off and make him look bad in the press for no obvious reason? I suppose it's possible Isikoff made it up but I doubt that since Gonzales's public-affairs chief seems to have been asked to comment and didn't deny anything. I suppose it's also possible that Gonzales did great in the sessions and this is a lie to try and lower expectations for his appearance…but then why isn't he making any live appearances before that?

Seriously. Can't the Attorney General of the U.S. control leaks from his own private rehearsals?

Johnny Hart, who created the comic strips B.C. and The Wizard of Id, and who drew the former has died at the age of 76. This press obit does not cite a cause, nor does it tell much about his two highly successful newspaper strips.

For the record, B.C. started on February 17, 1958 and was a slow but steady success. Later, he launched The Wizard of Id, which was drawn by Brant Parker. That strip started on November 9, 1964. They were both very clever strips that attained high circulation figures…though I always took issue with some of Hart's loftier claims in that regard. He and his syndicate took to claiming at one point that the two strips' combined circulations made him the most widely-read author on the planet. That's a ridiculous claim, though he got some reporters to believe it…and then later cited them as authorities who confirmed it to be so.

Having said all that, I must say that I have a shelf full of B.C. and Wizard of Id paperback collections and they're strips that often made me laugh out loud. I also have two originals of the latter on my wall, not so much for the drawing but because there was something enormously fun about the feature and the characters in it.  There were times when his religious-themed strips seemed to suggest contempt and intolerance for those who did not share his views.  But when he was funny, which was often, he was funnier than just about anyone.

Some women don't want anyone to know their age. Not my mother. For months now, she's practically been stopping strangers on the street to tell them she's going to be 85 years old on April 8. And if they try to correct her to "85 years young," as many of them do, she corrects them right back and tells them 85 is old. Since no one who tries to convince her otherwise is that age, she speaks with authority on the subject.

This evening, the celebration will include taking her to dinner at the restaurant of her choice. I won't attempt to influence her decision except maybe to note that that new Angus Burger at McDonald's sure looks tempting. In honor of the day, I may even let her Super-Size her fries.

Happy 85, Mrs. Evanier. I hope when I'm that age, I'm as happy about it.

Next time you're in McCarran Airport in Las Vegas and you decide to rent a car, you're in for a surprise. All the rental counters at the airport are gone. All that action has been moved to a new building about three miles away. Now, those seeking to rent cars will instead pile on one of the constantly-running shuttle buses that take them to the McCarran Rent-A-Car Center. There, eleven auto rental agencies are up and operating in a 1.7 million-square-foot structure that includes parking for 6,000 vehicles. That's about the same amount of enclosed space as the Empire State Building. The facility also boasts one of the world's largest gas stations with no less than 125 pumps.

The eleven car rental companies there are Advantage/US, Alamo, Avis, Budget, Dollar, Enterprise, Hertz, National, Payless, Savmor and Thrifty.

When you return your rental car, of course, it works in reverse. You go to the Rent-A-Car Center, turn it in and ride one of the forty shuttle buses back to the air terminal. You can also check your baggage at the Rent-A-Car Center for some airlines.

Sounds like a nice idea…and I'm betting that if they don't have slot machines in the place now, they will soon. And someplace to eat. And then maybe they can get some Elvis impersonators and showgirls and pretty soon, you won't have to rent the car. You can just stay there for your entire vacation.

One of our favorite comedians, Lewis Black, just completed a pilot for a new TV series. Our friends at TV Squad were there to cover it.

Today and tomorrow, we feature a two-part video link that will detail the amazing displacement of Little Lulu with Little Audrey. I know most of you have been wondering about this since you were small toddlers and we're delighted to give you the answer. In Part One, we feature a Little Lulu cartoon entitled Bout With a Trout, which I only saw on TV about eight thousand times when my age was in the single digits. This cartoon came out on October 10, 1947 and the main non-singing voice work was reportedly done by Cecil Roy, about whom I know nothing.

Little Lulu was created by cartoonist Marjorie Henderson Buell, aka "Marge," and first appeared in a single panel cartoon in The Saturday Evening Post on February 23, 1935. A series of cartoons followed and Lulu also began appearing in advertising cartoons for Pepsi-Cola and Kleenex paper products. For a long time, she was in all the ads for Q-Tips and numerous promotional items that you could get by mail if you sent in the coupons from a couple of boxes of those cotton swabs. In 1943, looking to replicate the success of its Popeye cartoon series, Paramount Pictures obtained the rights and had its cartoon division, Famous Studios, produce a string of Little Lulu shorts like the one we feature today.

The cartoon features the song, "Swinging on a Star," which was written by Johnny Burke and Jimmy Van Heusen for the 1944 Paramount movie, Going My Way, where it was sung by Bing Crosby. As was not uncommon back then, the song came out as a record well before the film…in this case, in February of 1944. By the time the movie was released, which was in December Correction: May], Crosby's recording was a big, familiar hit. The tune later won the Academy Award for Best Song of its year. Paramount kept flogging it in other films and on the radio shows it controlled and in '47, they had it used in this Little Lulu cartoon. You may note that one of the singers is trying to sound a little like Mr. Crosby.

This was one of the last Little Lulu cartoons made by Famous Studios. The films were successful but when the contract expired, Paramount decided not to offer Marge more money to continue them. I'll tell you all about that tomorrow, plus I'll explain why the title cards on this print are so bland and don't mention Paramount Pictures. For now, here's the Little Lulu cartoon, starting with her theme song, which I always liked…