A little while ago, I was talking with my pal Richard Howell about our pal Jim Mooney, who passed away yesterday. (As a point of info: Jim's last regular assignment in comics was inking Soulsearchers, which Richard edited for Claypool Comics.) We were discussing what a great guy Jim was and how he drew so many of our favorite comics…and I remembered something I oughta mention here. One of those personal notes…
I have eighty quadrillion comic books and I don't know what the first one I owned or read was. Probably something Disney. But I do remember the first super-hero type comic I read. I first learned of this guy Superman on the TV series starring George Reeves and then I traded a duplicate issue of something Disney to a friend of mine for a comic with Superman in it. It was Action Comics #250, cover dated March of 1959. I probably got my mitts on it in late 1960 or early '61.
The lead story was a Superman tale written (I later learned) by Bill Finger and drawn by Wayne Boring. In the back were two short stories — an adventure of Congorilla, a strip which even insulted my intelligence at that age, plus a tale of a spaceman named Tommy Tomorrow. That was my favorite story in the issue and it was drawn by Jim Mooney. In a way, he was my first favorite artist.
One of the most prolific artists to ever draw comic books, Jim Mooney, passed away in Florida on Sunday. He was born in 1919 and had been in failing health for some time, especially since the passing of his wife Anne in 2005.
Reared in Los Angeles, Mooney moved to New York in 1940 and was a part of the comic book industry almost from its inception. His first job was probably drawing The Moth, a Batman imitation for Fox Publication's Mystery Men, and he worked for the legendary Eisner-Iger shop which he soon left, he said, because he was intimidated by how good all the other artists there were. He next worked for Fiction House and began freelancing for Stan Lee at Timely Comics (later Marvel), starting an association that lasted on and off for the next half-century. At first, he drew funny animal strips but Lee soon found that Mooney, along with being very dependable, was kind of a utility infielder who could do a little of everything. He was especially good at drawing cute ladies and a lot of his assignments were chosen with that in mind. (Asked how he drew such beautiful women, he usually pointed out that his sister had been a Ziegfeld Girl so he often found himself around lovely ladies.)
Around 1946, he began getting work from DC, where the editors were so impressed with his work on The Moth and other Batman imitations that they hired him to draw Batman. He was one of many artists whose work appeared on that strip under the signature of Bob Kane, though he never actually worked for Kane. For DC he did many other strips, including Tommy Tomorrow, The Legion of Super Heroes and the Superman-Batman team-ups in World's Finest Comics, but his two most famous runs were on Dial H For Hero, which appeared in House of Mystery in the sixties, and his long stint as the artist on Supergirl in Action Comics.
For those who grew up reading comics in the sixties, Mooney was the Supergirl artist. He was assigned to the strip for the most prosaic of reasons — her strip replaced the Tommy Tomorrow strip in Action Comics, and it was easier on the schedule to keep the same artist on that slot. Al Plastino drew the first installment but Jim took over after, making the character his own and drawing her from 1959 to 1968. During much of this time, he lived back in Los Angeles, managing an antiquarian bookstore on Hollywood Boulevard and drawing pages there when he wasn't waiting on customers. At one point, he hired some young art students to help around the store and they occasionally inked backgrounds for him, as well.
By '68, he'd moved back to New York, just in time to quarrel with DC editor Mort Weisinger, who was seeking a "fresher, more modern" look for the Superman-affiliated titles. Mooney phoned his old boss, Stan Lee, and the timing couldn't have been better. Marvel was on the verge of expanding and Stan needed new artists. He especially needed someone who could get the right look on Spider-Man, and that's what Mooney wound up doing primarily for the next few years. At first, he inked the pencil art of John Romita or finished rough layouts. Later, he pencilled Spider-Man stories himself, and also branched out to other strips, working on almost everything Marvel then published at one time or another. He enjoyed an especially fruitful collaboration with writer Steve Gerber, with whom he did Man-Thing and Omega the Unknown.
Jim was so reliable that Marvel didn't hesitate when in 1975, he asked for a contract that would guarantee him steady assignments if he moved to Florida. It turned out to be a ten year deal and after its expiration, he cut back on his work, freelancing when he felt like it for Marvel and occasionally for DC and even several independents. Comic historians have been known to debate who, in the history of the form, worked on more pages of comic art…and while names like Jack Kirby and Gil Kane and Curt Swan are often mentioned, I sure wouldn't bet against Mooney.
In semi-retirement, Jim began making the rounds of the comic conventions, appearing on panels and selling re-creations of some of his most famous covers and pages. We became good friends and I always enjoyed his company. I remember the four of us — he and Anne, Carolyn and me — spending an evening at a lovely seafood restaurant in Seattle with an ocean view. We got to the table just as the sun was setting over the water and it was just spectacular. Jim joked, "It's so frustrating. No matter how hard we try, none of us will ever draw anything a thousandth as beautiful as that." Maybe not…but measured against his peers, Jim Mooney did just fine.
Slate is running a series of articles under the umbrella title, "Fixing It." They're about how to repair the damages done to the world by the Bush administration. And first up, we get two (well, one and a half) Fred Kaplan articles. In this one, he lays down some proposals for putting U.S. diplomacy on the right track. And he co-authored this one, which is about what needs to be done to get our military back to where we want it in terms of size and budget and efficiency.
Whether you agree with Mr. Kaplan or not, these are the kinds of plans I'd love to hear all the candidates weigh in upon. Instead of just saying over and over they'll restore America's honor, I'd like to see them write with at least this level of specifics if not a greater one, how they figure to restore military enlistment and other concerns that need to be put right.
Thanks to about a third of the Internet for suggesting The Jitterbug as the phone I want to get for my mother. Robert Spina was the first one in with the nomination so he gets thanked by name. For the rest of you, we have lovely parting gifts, a copy of the home game and this much anonymous gratitude.
I got a few non-Jitterbug recommendations and I'm going to look into them and then decide. I'll report back on what I learn because it seems like I'm far from the only one with an elderly parent who needs a cell phone for emergencies.
Laura Gjovaag had this to say in a message I received yesterday…
My husband and I live in the Seattle area which has no Souplantation or Sweet Tomatoes restaurants. However, my husband was called to do the Jeopardy tryouts in Portland Oregon on March 29th. Lucky for us, you reminded us of the Creamy Tomato Soup the Thursday before, and we found a restaurant practically on our way in Vancouver Washington (that's the closest one to us!).
Well, we stopped on the way back and both tried the soup. It was excellent. I think I liked it more than my husband, but he doesn't particularly like tomatoes anyway, and he still liked the soup. I had two bowls, and totally broke my diet for the day (which is ok, I recover quickly from such disaster days).
Anyway, when we told them we were first-timers they gave us each a survey card, and we were sure to mention why we drove 200 miles to get to their restaurant and ask that the soup be served full-time.
I'll be blogging about the whole trip over on my blog in the next day or so, but I thought you'd like to know. You converted two more.
And you can read Laura's blog over the next day or so at this link. It's always well worth a click.
Not to talk this Creamy Tomato Soup thing to death — and yes, I know I passed that stage long ago — but I went in on Saturday for a couple of bowls and I also had a mission. Souplantation doesn't give out their recipes but they do have a book you can inspect that lists all the ingredients in each of their prepared items. I decided I'd find out what was in their Creamy Tomato Soup and then, if it didn't seem too complicated, I might try to figure out my own recipe for it.
I asked, every so politely and a nice lady hauled out the book, showed me the list…and right there, I thought, "Well, let's give up on that idea." There were about forty components and even if I'd been able to remember them all and jot them down, I'm not going to try to cook something with that many ingredients. Not only would it be too labor-intensive to gather them all but I'd have too many variables. If it was just tomato paste, carrots, celery, chicken stock and whipping cream, fine. I could experiment with the ratios of one item to another until I found a nice mix. But the Souplantation Creamy Tomato Soup involves all five of those plus about 30-35 others, some of which had chemical-sounding names.
End of brilliant notion. If and when the remodelling of my kitchen is completed — we're still hoping for this century — I may take a stab at conjuring up my own Creamy Tomato Soup. But it would be so much easier if the Souplantation people would just recognize that this blog speaks for all of America, yield to popular opinion and make the C.T.S. part of their regular lineup. And while they're at it, could they get us out of Iraq, please?
Here's a commercial for Kellogg's Sugar Pops. Paul Frees did the voice of the deputy, Daws Butler was Sugar Pops Pete, and I'm tired and unable to place the name of the actor who did the Marshall at the moment. Might be Bob Holt. In any case, when was the last time a breakfast cereal boasted how much sugar it contained?
Carolyn and I went out to hear jazz this evening…the legendary Charles Lloyd has a new quartet, playing with much younger musicians. One of them — a drummer named Eric Harland — was outstanding. I once watched Buddy Rich rehearsing and showing off with the Tonight Show band and that was the last time I heard a drummer this good. Mr. Lloyd was great, too…but that wasn't a surprise. That drummer was.
Okay, here's what I'm looking to buy and this is for my mother. I want one of those "pay as you go" cell phones where you put a few bucks of calling time on it and then you can use it whenever you want — this week, next month, the month after, etc. This is so she has a way of reaching me if her regular phone is out. But I also need one with large buttons. All the ones I've seen have tiny, dainty little buttons that won't do for someone with weak vision. Can anyone point me towards what I seek? Gracias.
Gary Shapiro's radio program From The Bookshelf is heard each and every Sunday night at 9 PM on Central Coast Public Radio, KUSP 88.9 FM in Santa Cruz California. Recently, I chatted with him about my new book, Kirby: King of Comics, and you can hear that chat — it runs a little less than half an hour — over on this page.
Our pal Kim "Howard" Johnson has been slaving away on a book I must have…a biography of Del Close, a man who was to improv comedy what Antonio Stradivari was to fiddle-making. (Come on, Evanier. You can come up with a better analogy than that.) (Not today, I can't.) Here's an article about this forthcoming volume.
It's been a long time since I've written about my waistline. I get lots of e-mailed inquiries about it but I never seem to be in the mood to write about something like that. Today, I'm in that mood.
My girth has been fluctuating over about a ten pound variance with no logical connection to how much I eat or how much I exercise. My doctor says this is not uncommon and that I should not pay it a lot of attention. I go up, I go down…but even up, I'm more than a hundred below where I was two years ago so I'm still happy with me.
One of the things I find amazing is that I had so little trouble breaking food addictions. I have certain faves, including the Creamy Tomato Soup that's available for the next day or so at Souplantation. But I don't actually feel the need to eat anything in particular…or, some days, anything at all.
There was a time I would have bet you serious money that I couldn't kick my habit of drinking a half-dozen carbonated, non-diet beverages per day…and if I could cut back, it would be by chug-a-lugging orange juice or something else with high sugar content. Even before I had Gastric Bypass Surgery, I gave up the Pepsis and in the 18 months after G.B.S., I slowly gave up o.j., lemonade and everything else liquid but for tomato juice and plain, old-fashioned water. I occasionally flavor the H2O with True Lemon or True Orange but otherwise, it's that or the occasional Campbell's Tomato Juice and I don't miss other drinks one bit.
Then one day close to three months ago, my "sweet tooth" completely disappeared…and I can tell you where it happened. It happened in Las Vegas during this trip. On Saturday morning, I brunched at a $7.77 buffet…and yes, I could have gone to somewhere fancier. But given my reduced stomach capacity, I didn't figure to eat enough to make a better place cost-effective and assumed even at a cheapo spread, there'd be enough tasty/edible choices to satisfy my meager dining needs.
There was…and there was also a wonderful dessert. They had a soft-serve frozen custard that was quite delightful and I made a mental Post-It™ note to return before I left to have more of that custard. Monday morn, before heading for the airport, I went to the buffet, ate my fill of fish and rice…and then realized I had no craving for the custard or any of other available desserts. You know those great little one-bite eclairs they always have in Vegas buffets? Didn't want one of them, either.
So I didn't have dessert. It was free and I didn't have dessert. Apart from one recent visit to a Chinese restaurant where I ate a fortune cookie without thinking, I haven't had a cookie, piece of cake or candy, lick of ice cream, slice of pie, doughnut or anything "desserty" since. Obviously, I get a certain amount of sugar or high fructose corn syrup in some non-dessert food items but I am in no way tempted to taste something because it's sweet. I never would have thought this possible.
I sleep better. I walk better. I have occasional odd muscle aches which my doctor says are normal and will subside. I still don't recommend Gastric Bypass Surgery to everyone because I don't think my experiences are typical. But I do recommend losing weight. It has all sorts of unexpected benefits…and every so often, you can surprise yourself with how you can do what you didn't think you could do.
This is the trailer for what I think was the best Deanless movie Jerry Lewis ever made, The Bellboy. As the announcer (who I think is Alan "Fred Flintstone" Reed) says, it was all shot on location at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami. If I recall the history on this correctly: Jerry had finished shooting Cinderfella and Paramount had it scheduled as their summer Jerry Lewis release of 1960. Then Jerry or someone had the thought that because of that film's fairy tale nature, it would do better business as a Christmas release. Everyone at the studio agreed…but they'd promised exhibitors a summer Lewis pic. "No problem," Jerry said. "We'll make another movie in time for summer release."
The boys at Paramount said that sounded great but pointed out that Jerry was committed to play the Fountainbleu for a month and couldn't do that and make a movie in the allotted time. Again, Jerry said it was no problem: "We'll make the movie at the Fontainebleau during the day, and I'll play their showroom at night." The hotel, well aware of the publicity value, made some big financial concessions so the film could be shot very inexpensively…so that made the whole proposition sound very good to the studio.
All they needed now was a script and a director. Jerry said, "I'll handle those." He had not written and directed a film before but he'd been edging in that direction so it was a small leap. Quickly, he came up with the idea of doing a largely plotless movie with himself as a bellhop, wrote a very long script and then — at the hotel — threw out most of it in favor of freshly-improvised scenes based on what was going on there. The majority of the other actors were either members of his crew or, like Milton Berle and Joe E. Ross, performers who were playing Miami at the same time.
Some of the jokes worked and others didn't but the whole thing had a nice, friendly energy and at 71 minutes, you sure couldn't get bored. The same cannot be said for this trailer…
This seems to be New York Times Day on this weblog. In connection with their profile of Al Jaffee (to which I linked earlier in another paper), they have an "interactive" gallery of some of Al's fold-in cartoons. This is the best use of Shockwave Flash I've ever seen on the 'net.
Here's a good article on everyone's favorites, Bob and Ray. Thanks to Paul H. Hill for telling me about this.
If one of the photos looks familiar, it was cribbed from this here weblog. It's a screen capture I did from a game show that ran on GSN. And since they copied my picture, I'll copy one of their links. It's this one, which will take you to a website with 200 Bob & Ray radio shows you can download and enjoy.
