Monthly Archives: April 2007

Fred Kaplan on why Bush is looking for and cannot find a "War Czar" to…well, part of the problem seems to be that no one is quite sure what this guy would do besides take some of the blame for things not going well in Iraq.

I'm going to write a little more on this topic of continuing newspaper comic strips after their originator quits or dies, and this probably won't be the last post about it. An e-mail this morn from my buddy Jim Korkis made me realize I may be guilty of oversimplifying this discussion to a useless degree. First off, here's Jim's message…

Aren't there some comic strips that actually were more popular or better received after the original creator passed away? While I know that comic strip historians love Frank King's version of Gasoline Alley, I much preferred Dick Moore's version. Many prefer Burne Hogarth's Tarzan to Hal Foster's. Some don't survive as well. I preferred Stan Lynde's original Rick O'Shay to the team that took over when he left the strip.

First off, I think we ought to differentiate something. There are comic strips that are essentially team efforts, if not when they start or achieve fame, then certainly by the time their creator exits. Often, three or four people are responsible in a serious creative capacity for a strip and when the creator dies, those collaborators are probably perfectly capable of carrying on the strip as essentially the same work. The worth of the material may be high or low but it isn't plunging because one guy died so that should not be the determining factor in its continuation. There are also cases where a whole new writer-artist — or writer(s) and artist(s) — come in and the strip is carried on by a stranger or strangers. I think those are two separate situations.

Yes, I think there are strips that were better received when in the hands of someone other than the creator. Sometimes, that's a matter of the new guy morphing the strip into his own. Fred Lasswell was picked by Billy DeBeck to assist on Barney Google and inherited it after DeBeck died…and eventually Fred turned it into the highly-successful Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, with the focus wholly on the latter. Ernie Bushmiller took over the Fritzi Ritz strip and it evolved into Nancy, which many hail as a classic of the funny pages. I don't believe Bushmiller was selected or trained by the originator of Fritzi Ritz, Larry Whittington. I think he was just a guy the syndicate hired to continue a strip they wanted to keep going.

But to me, the question of whether a strip is better or worse under new hands is a false question. The question to me is whether the new version is any good…or as good as the alternative. I never thought Hogarth's Tarzan was as wonderful as Foster's but I see no reason to expect that if they'd cancelled the Tarzan strip instead of giving it to Burne, what would have been in that space instead would have been better than Hogarth's Tarzan. (That's kind of a convoluted sentence but it's as clear as I can make it this morning.) And some of the other versions — Russ Manning's, especially — struck me as very good strips. An editor of a comic page has to pick from the best of what's available and if I'd been in such a position at the time, I'd sure have wanted Manning's Tarzan on my page. It was easily the best adventure strip of its period.

For the record: I thought Dick Moore's Gasoline Alley was one of the all-time great newspaper strips even if he didn't create it. I thought Secret Agent X-9 by Archie Goodwin and Al Williamson was as good as any previous incarnation of that strip, maybe better. Floyd Gottfredson did not start the Mickey Mouse strip but for at least a decade or two, it was one of the best things in the newspaper. I'll probably think of more examples before I'm sick of this topic.

I agree with you about Rick O'Shay, which is one of those cases where a strip was handed to strangers. My inclination, and I haven't done the math on this, is to say the following: In instances where a strip is essentially a team effort — where the creator has reached the stage of working with or delegating to other writers and artists — the strip can usually be carried on without much (if any) loss of quality. In instances where it's turned over to folks who weren't already involved in its creation, it's very much a hit-or-miss decision. Then again, from the standpoint of the syndicates and newspaper editors, so is replacing that strip with a wholly new creation.

I think there are also strips that are such personal creations that it's hard to conceive of them controlled by others. I can't imagine Doonesbury without Garry Trudeau, who has done it since the start, aided only by a guy who inks and letters. I can imagine B.C. as done by the other guys who've written hundreds of gags for it and done a lot of the drawing.

I have to run out to a meeting so I'll post this and continue this discussion when I get back…or maybe tomorrow. I don't know. This may take a while. I probably need to discuss what I see as some of the intrinsic realities of the marketplace here and how it's pointless to discuss what "should" happen from a fan's point of view. See you later.

A number of websites are now offering the opinion, sometimes in the form of outright pleas, that B.C. not be continued since Johnny Hart has passed away. Here's one such plea and here's another.

I largely disagree with this wish. If I were the person making the decision, I'd ask two questions, the first being what the creator wanted. This is never a mystery. Johnny Hart owned B.C. and could very easily have left instructions that it not be continued or, like Charles Schulz did with Peanuts, that it only be continued via reprints. Hart did not. Most cartoonists do not wish that. Imagine if your father had opened a successful restaurant. Would he want closed down when he died? I don't think it's ignoble, when you create something that's very lucrative, to want it to continue making money for your family and associates. You may also just like the idea of your creation living on and remaining current.

Which brings us to the second question: Can a strip still be produced that will have a value to readers? This is really the only other consideration that ought to matter — the quality of the finished product. If you scan message boards about comic strips, you'll see occasional messages from folks arguing that comic strip creators should never have assistants; that they should do it all by themselves or not do it at all. I have a certain self-interest here since I've ghost-written a couple of syndicated strips…but even before those jobs, I thought it was a phony argument. Most of the great newspaper strips have been to some extent the work of assistants or ghosts, including a few that claimed otherwise. So what? If the strip's good, it's good. If it's not, the fact that it was done by one person doesn't make it any better.

Nor does the fact that a strip is still done by its creator. I admire the fact that Mr. Schulz did it all by his lonesome for half a century but if at some point he'd decided he needed help, I wouldn't have thought less of him. Not as long as I still liked what he and that aide produced.

Johnny Hart's two strips have long featured the participation of other writers and other artists. If those folks can keep producing a strip of the same quality, I see no reason why it shouldn't get the same reception. Let the Free Market operate. I think Blondie, to name one, maintained the exact same level of quality after Chic Young passed away…and why not? Long before he died, he had a good crew — trained by him — writing and drawing it. After he left us, the strip was being produced by almost the same creative force as before. If it was unworthy of publication after its creator died, it was probably unworthy for ten or twenty years before.

It continued on, before and after Young's passing, because people liked it and editors perceived that people liked it. I don't see that his death affected that equation…or how Hart's will necessarily make people not want to read B.C. They might if it becomes less entertaining — but that would be true if Hart was still alive and his skills were declining. And in fact, that did happen a little while he was still at it. A number of key papers decided he'd lost his funny and dropped the feature.

That's how it works with strips and how it oughta work. I don't want newspapers or the Creators Syndicate to drop the new B.C. just because it will be done without Hart's participation. I just want the people doing the strip to make it as good as it ever was…and it's the readers who can and will decide if they've succeeded.

Here we have a commercial for Soaky toys…and what's interesting about it is that it has a Walt Disney character (Donald Duck) and a Warner Brothers character (Porky Pig) in the same ad. They don't meet and I'd be fascinated to know if that was a condition of the deal…if Disney said they wouldn't allow Donald to appear in the same scene with a non-Disney character or what. It also looks to me like the two halves of the commercial have different animators and could possibly even be the work of separate studios.

In any case, here are the voice credits: Donald Duck is voiced by Clarence Nash. Porky Pig is voiced by Mel Blanc. And the Soaky Kid is voiced by Dick Beals…and by God, I think it's been a whole eighteen days since I last linked to a commercial with Dick Beals in it. I'll try not to make it so long until the next one.

One of my frequent correspondents here is a gentleman named James H. Burns. He just sent me this and I thought it belonged here…

I'm pretty sure we had been in a few of the same places, over the years. But the only time we met, was almost exactly two years ago, over at Manhattan's York Theatre, for their concert presentation of his God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.

At intermission, I made my normal bee-line for the exits, looking to catch my smoke. The elevator was completely down, which didn't particularly affect me, as I'll normally do that Bataan death march of stairs, a few flights up, through the veins of the church. But I was more than surprised to find the eighty-something Vonnegut already on the stairs, ahead of me. (I couldn't help but reflect on the theatres' inherent cruelty to our seniors.)

But those of us who are addicted to tobacco will not only walk a mile but do it uphill, and I think Vonnegut and I both found it odd to be
outside St. Peter's, two guys so seperated by decades, smoking the same filter-less brand. We chatted on the sources of addiction, and how it might well be tobacco, in tandem with other chemicals, that affect some folks, and not others…and how so much of everything, might just be based on genetics. He also told me something I had forgotten, how during World War II, a soldier's mess kit, his K-rations, rather, also included some smokes. We also chatted a bit, I think, on how some people have taken their stance against smoking as a license to rudeness…

But the overwhelming effect, the presence of the man, was one of gentleness. As we spoke of other things, within the strange camaraderie of those whose addiction has driven them to the streets, I knew that he was also delighted that at that very special night in the theatre, he was able to share it with his daughter.

If the aliens ever do land, or some future sociologist — terrestrial or otherwise — tries to make sense of what was once the twentieth century, he'll find Vonnegut a particularly humanistic purveyor of the future, and worlds that a sidewise slip in time might still find a-borning.

Jonathan Cohn on why the usual arguments against Universal Health Care in this country don't hold water.

I've quoted this before but someone once asked Kurt Vonnegut to explain the meaning of life. He said…

Well, I have a son who writes very well. He just wrote one book; it's called The Eden Express. It's my son Mark, who is a pediatrician and who went crazy and recovered to graduate from Harvard Medical School. But anyway, he says, and I've quoted him in a couple of my books, "We're here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is."

Mr. Vonnegut's writing helped a lot of people to get through this thing, whatever it is. It's a shame to lose him but at least we, and succeeding generations, still have the books.

Jerry Beck has the happy announcement not only that a DVD of Walter Lantz Woody Woodpecker cartoons is on its way but that it will be done right — with well-chosen cartoons properly restored. (Well, almost right: I can't help but look at the cover art and note that when I did the Woody Woodpecker comic book, a drawing like that would have prompted a polite but serious phone call from Mr. Lantz himself, admonishing the editors that Woody's eyes do not cut into his beak.)

My pal Jerry is too modest to tell you about all the lobbying and consulting and suggesting he did to make this happen. So I will.

I'm happy this stuff's coming out even though I'm not the biggest fan of Woody Woodpecker. I once was. As a kid, I loved his TV show but I think what I loved most about it was that Lantz did these little "how to draw cartoons" segments. As I grew older, I'd occasionally catch a Woody cartoon and wonder what it was I ever liked about most of them. I have a VHS tape I picked up once in K-Mart for four bucks that Universal put out many moons ago. It contains all the cartoons Tex Avery directed for the Lantz studio plus five or six good Woody Woodpecker cartoons. I used to tell friends it had every good Walter Lantz cartoon on it.

"Pish and tosh," they'd tell me. Well, not really. I don't know anyone who says "Pish and tosh." But that was the kind of disagreement I heard from animation buffs. There were many wonders from that studio, they'd insist…not just the few on my tape. Well, I'm eager and quite willing to be convinced.

What has Mark found this time? Hmm…how about a Post Alpha-Bits commercial with Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd? This one was done for inclusion in the prime-time series, The Bugs Bunny Show, which ran on ABC from 1960 to 1962 before being relocated to Saturday morn. I think Friz Freleng directed this ad or at least supervised its direction. Mel Blanc, of course, is voicing Bugs Bunny. The Fudd voice is by Hal Smith, who most people will remember best as Otis the Town Drunk on The Andy Griffith Show. Hal did an amazing amount of animation voicing in his long career without ever becoming associated with a famous character.

This commercial does not make me want to buy Post Alpha-Bits. In fact, it suggests that if you do, you're likely to drive off a cliff. But it's interesting that in it, they're touting a new formula for the product. For fifty-some-odd years now, whenever I've seen a commercial for Alpha-Bits, it always seems to be announcing a new formula. This may be the only cereal to change the outside of the box less often than they change what's inside it.

This is an outsider's perception but it's always seemed to me that Post lucked into a great name for a cereal and a great gimmick — the letter shapes — but they've never found an actual cereal that can be sold in those shapes and under that name that people like. I remember trying it a couple of times when I was a kid, usually when a little box of it came in one of those "Post Ten Trays" with individual servings. It tasted a lot like eating plain table sugar. Even when I was ten, it was too sweet for me. For a time there, it was even called Frosted Alpha-Bits.

About two years ago, the Post people reconfigured its recipe for the umpteenth time, removing all the sugar and adding in whole-grain oat bran. It's now supposedly just like Cheerios except that you get the 25 other letters in the box, as well and the ads now tout its fiber content…an amazing transformation. And now, here are Bugs and Elmer…

A bunch of "loose ends" to tie up tonight…

• Jackie Estrada, who's one of the folks who brings us the Comic-Con International each year, says it's definitely Russ Manning in that photo. How does she know? Well, she took the photo. That's a pretty good reason to listen to her.
• Two different folks who attended tapings of Thank God You're Here confirmed my suspicion that the spontaneous sketches were somewhat edited for broadcast. The scenes felt edited so even if they weren't, that's not a good thing. The ratings were not wonderful for a heavily-promoted debut so the question now is whether NBC will try to fix it or bail. If they try to fix it, I'd suggest three words — do it live — but they'll never do it. One of the things that I think will eventually doom most reality shows is how little "reality" is in them. At least, I haven't seen a moment yet which the producers couldn't have anticipated, prepared for or even configured.
• I haven't written anything about Don Imus because…well, I don't watch Don Imus. The few times I've caught a few minutes of his show, he seemed like a guy who didn't like anything: Didn't like his guests, didn't like the topics, didn't like his employers. I remember the guy when he was starting out and he was occasionally funny and insightful back then. At some point though, the sour curmudgeon act seems to have consumed him and now he just sits there and says nasty things about everyone and everything. The only surprising thing about his recent racist/sexist remarks is that he got called on them. Instead of suspending him for two weeks, they oughta punish the guy by forcing him to say only positive things for two weeks. His face would probably shatter.
• I erred. I said the other day that my appearance on the Time Travel radio show this Friday would be at 4 PM West Coast Time. It's actually 4 PM East Coast Time so you can figure out when it happens where you are. Sorry. I've corrected the earlier posting.
• Lastly, one of the things you learn from having a weblog is that some people don't know how to read and some have no sense of humor. Every time I post anything even vaguely political, I get some insightful, reasoned rebuttals but I also get at least one message from someone debating a position I neither wrote nor hold. I also get an amazing number of e-mails from people who seem to be taking jokes seriously. So just to make sure everyone understands: I did not take my mother to McDonald's for her 85th birthday. My mother is a wonderful lady and she deserves the best. I took her to an Arby's.

Yesterday in this post, I gave you a photo taken at the Inkpot Awards Ceremony at the 1975 San Diego Comic-Con. Back then, the awards ceremony consisted only of the Inkpot Awards, which were bestowed by the convention committee. Later on, they added in the Eisner Awards and eventually, the Eisners squeezed the Inkpots out of their own ceremony. The Inkpots are now presented at daytime panels and other events. Also, in case anyone's puzzled about this: The Comic-Con International used to be called the San Diego Comic-Con, among other names.

Yesterday's photo was interesting because one rarely sees so many important, creative people in one snapshot and I was able to identify all but two of them. One, we've subsequently fingered as Jim Starlin…but there's another person in the photo whose face is blocked from the photographer's angle by Richard Butner, the convention chairperson. That's Richard you see with the beard in the above detail from the photo. A lot of my correspondents are now trying to guess who that person is behind Richard.

Many of them tried to guess by looking at the list of that year's Inkpot recipients. That year, the convention presented them to a couple of the convention committee members…but I can recognize all those people and I'm pretty sure it's not them. There were also Inkpots presented posthumously…to Vaughn Bode, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Rod Serling and Larry "Seymour" Vincent. It's none of them, obviously. (Larry Vincent was a great horror movie host, by the way. Here's an article I wrote about him.)

The professional recipients in '75 were Brad Anderson, Robert Bloch, Daws Butler, Will Eisner, me, Gil Kane, Dick Moores, George Pal, Joe Shuster, Jerry Siegel, Barry Windsor-Smith, Jim Starlin, Jim Steranko and Theodore Sturgeon…and no, I don't know what I was doing in a list like that, either. I think someone had been watching them play "One of these things is not like the others" on Sesame Street. We've already identified Anderson, Butler, Eisner, Kane, Moores, Siegel, Starlin and Steranko in the photo so it's none of them. I don't think George Pal or Barry Windsor-Smith were at the convention. Windsor-Smith might have been but anyway, it doesn't look like him. It also doesn't look like Shuster or Sturgeon.

It's not me. I'm taller than that and never had hair or a jacket like that and anyway, I didn't go to the award ceremony that year because I found out in advance that I was getting one. (They were badly-kept secrets back then. I think Alberto Gonzales's staff was in charge of security.) Anyway, I'll tell you some time why I didn't attend but for now, you just need to know it isn't me.

I thought it could be Robert Bloch, the author of Psycho, among other works…and I'm not 100% certain it isn't. But then Bob Foster sent me an e-mail and he's sure it's Russ Manning. I'm not positive but that's a much better guess. True, Manning didn't win an Inkpot that year but then neither did Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Bob Clampett and June Foray, all of whom are in the photo. All of them, like Russ, received Inkpots in 1974, which was the first year of those awards. I think in '75, the convention got all the past winners who were present up there to pose with the new recipients and I'm pretty sure Russ was present. In fact, I believe he accepted the Inkpot for Edgar Rice Burroughs. Russ was then drawing the Tarzan newspaper strip.

So in the absence of more or better evidence, I'll say it's Russ Manning. Anyone got a better deduction? If it's Russ and if you could see that, it would make the photo even more impressive.

I remember one of the many times I attended the taping of what turned out to be an unsold pilot. The Big Network Guys sat through the whole thing and then (I heard later) went to the producer and said, "There's a good show here but you haven't found it yet."

I felt that way about the first two episodes of Thank God You're Here, which aired last night on NBC. If you didn't see it, here's the premise: An actor is dressed in a costume and then shoved into a sketch with no preparation. It's not exactly improv because the other actors in the scene have rehearsed and been provided with what I assume is a loose script, configured to force the unprepped actor to furiously ad-lib. Dave Foley, formerly of Kids in the Hall, sits as a kind of judge and at the end, he awards a trophy to whichever of the four actors in that hour has done the best job of making up his or her part on the spot. David Alan Grier is the host.

The "game" here is not new. It's played often in improv classes, though usually the scene isn't as structured and no one (not just one actor) has had any rehearsal or prep. I also, oddly enough, recall this was a recurring feature on the 1963 Jerry Lewis talk show where Jerry showed uncommon courage in being the unprepared actor in a weekly sketch that was broadcast live. The sketches on Thank God You're Here are not live, of course, and I had the sense that they were taped long and edited. I hope I'm wrong.

So how'd I like the show? I liked some of each episode. I thought Edie McClurg and Wayne Knight were the best improvisers in the two hours though neither got the trophy from Dave Foley. (I'm not sure what qualifies Foley to judge. Then again, what qualifies Simon Cowell?) But my main problem was that the games were overexplained and overhyped and then underperformed. Most of the scenes just didn't live up to the created expectation. To tell the truth, I was most impressed with the skills of the "ensemble cast" — the other actors in the scenes: Nyima Funk, Maribeth Monroe, Brian Palermo and Chris Tallman.

I have the TiVo set and I'll watch, at least for a while because I love good improv and this has the potential to turn into it. But it's going to have to be more than just a show about clueless actors struggling to get to the end of a sketch. We've had enough of that on Saturday Night Live.

By the way: The show makes a big deal about the fact that there's no script…and indeed, no writers are credited, nor did I see any job descriptions there like "program consultants" or "creative consultants" that are traditionally used to disguise a writing staff. But the end credits did list a Script Supervisor, two Script Coordinators and two Script Assistants. So, uh, why do you need those five people if there's no script?

We have here a terrific concert performance of "A Little Priest," the Act One closer of the musical, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. I guess most of you know that this is the play with a book by Hugh Wheeler and songs by Stephen Sondheim. The next paragraph is just for those of you unfamiliar with the plot…

Sweeney Todd is a man who has returned to his home town after fifteen years in a penal colony on bogus charges. Having lost everything, he now lives only for revenge on humanity in general and more specifically on those he blames for his ordeal. In this scene, he's making a pact with a lady named Mrs. Lovett who operates a store that bakes and sells meat pies. Their partnership will be based on him killing people and her using their remains to make pies. A lovely arrangement.

Mrs. Lovett is played here by Patti LuPone, one of the great stars of the musical stage. Mr. Todd is played by George Hearn, one of my favorite musical performers. I had the pleasure of working with Mr. Hearn years ago and told that story here. This clip may give you a little idea of why I was so enthused about writing something that he'd be performing…

My friend Marv Wolfman has been watching his TiVo. What's so remarkable about that?, you may wonder. Well, the TiVo is in Marv's home in Southern California and Marv is in Australia. That's kind of remarkable. If you don't know about the Slingbox — the only piece of video, audio or computer equipment on this planet that I do not own yet — read this weblog posting to find out how it works for Marv.

Here's another chance to hear Yours Truly talk about Yours Truly. I'll be the guest this coming Friday on Time Travel, a fine radio program hosted by Dan Hollis and Jeff O'Boyle, and heard on WRNJ, which is an oldies station. The program airs at 4 PM East Coast Time and you can find out more about it over on this website. [Warning: Music that plays automatically.]

Listen online at the WRNJ site or you can wait until they archive the show and make it available for downloading on their Archive Page [Same Warning!]. While you're waiting for it to show up there, you might like to enjoy some of the past programs, which have included interviews with Lee Mendelson, Marty Krofft and other people who've been foolish enough to hire me.