Monthly Archives: April 2008

Most folks know the late Will Eisner for his work on The Spirit, a legendary comic strip/book soon to be a Major Motion Picture. But from 1951 'til 1972, Eisner's big project was PS Magazine, the Preventive Maintenance Monthly. It was a magazine he did for the Army that basically taught soldiers how to care for their equipment, with a special emphasis on the Motor Pool. It included a comic section and the mildest of pin-up girl drawings and is interesting primarily for Eisner's skill in using comics to educate. You can get a look at this work at a new website that has scans of many issues.

Something worth noting: This magazine represented a heckuva lot of work. Each month, Eisner had to take technical notes written by experts, distill it all down to comic and visual format, then take the layouts in for severe scrutiny. Army officials would go over every millimeter of every page and demand numerous corrections…and to hear Eisner or his successors describe the process, it sounds like every freelance artist's idea of Hell. Still, Will felt it was a better existence than doing conventional comics for DC or Marvel. That should tell you a lot about the comic book industry of the fifties and sixties.

I have one semi-correction. The website lists some of the artists who worked on PS and makes it sound like my frequent collaborator Dan Spiegle worked for Eisner on it. Not so, and it's kind of interesting what happened. PS was a government contract, back when the bureaucracy used to insist that companies bid on such projects instead of just awarding them as lucrative no-bid deals to Halliburton. Every few years, the contract was up for bids and Eisner had to compete with any other party who was interested.

In '72, Will decided to give it up and let someone else have it — Murphy Anderson, the fine artist who'd been doing a lot of the drawing for him in the previous few years. Murphy set up a whole studio to produce the magazine and did it for a time…but in the late seventies, he lost the contract to a man named Zeke Zekley. Zeke, whose obit you read on this site some time ago, was an old hand in comics — a one-time assistant to George McManus on Bringing Up Father. He had a company called Sponsored Comics that designed comics for advertising purposes, and he went after the PS contract and managed to underbid Murphy and wrest it away.

So Zeke set up an operation to produce it. To draw the bulk of the book, he sponsored the immigration of Alfredo Alcala, the gifted Filipino comic book artist. To draw the color comic sections in the center, he hired Spiegle. (He offered me the job of writing 'em but when I saw what it involved, I passed. I think Don R. Christensen wound up with the job.) Zeke and his crew did PS for several months of what he described as "doing every issue over and over a dozen times until the Army would give approval." He finally called Murphy Anderson and talked him into buying the contract from him and taking PS back.

Anyway, the point is that Spiegle didn't work for Eisner. I guess I could have just told you that but I find it fascinating that the magazine involved so much labor and so many corrections. And that for twenty years, Will Eisner managed to produce a monthly book that, no matter how well it paid, was just plain too much work for some other folks.

Matthew Head sent me this letter that I thought warranted discussion…

I recently learned from this article that Doug Manchester, the owner of San Diego's Manchester Grand Hyatt — a hotel I assume is often used by San Diego Comicon attendees — actively opposes gay marriage in California. I think that some San Diego attendees might want to know whether or not their dollars are going to this man (although I know it's supposed to be ridiculously difficult to get a hotel in San Diego around the con). I would love it if every hotel in San Diego were full for the con except for the Manchester Grand Hyatt, but I also know that's very unlikely. Still, this might be information that some of your blog readers would find useful.

Useful? I don't know. I'm a strong believer that anyone should be able to marry the consenting adult of their choice, and I also often stay at that hotel when I attend Comic-Con International. Still, I don't see the point of boycotting that hotel. There is zero chance that it won't be booked to capacity during the con…and if convention attendees don't take the rooms available to them at the convention rate, they'll just be full of people paying the higher, normal rate. Mr. Manchester would probably love that.

I actually don't see the point of most boycotts unless it's to make the boycotter feel like they're doing something. Very few boycotts have any economic impact on the target…and often when they do, they penalize the wrong people. If you could somehow cause the Manchester Grand Hyatt to be empty those days, they'd probably lay off bellmen and cleaning ladies, and those people would suffer a lot more than Mr. Manchester. More likely, as I say, the place will be full and if there's any public awareness at all, it would appear under a headline that said something like, "Hyatt Boycott Fails." It would come across as a lack of support for your cause.

The article says that Mr. Manchester has donated cash to try and get something called "The California Marriage Protection Act" on the November ballot. My suspicion is that its proponents are less interested in defining wedlock as between a man and a woman than they are in driving right-wing voters to the polls that month. John McCain isn't likely to be competitive in this state and that could lead to a lot of Republicans staying home and not voting in Congressional or state races. The infamous Rove Playbook seems to suggest that a "red meat" initiative of this kind could get out more of the G.O.P. race. I don't think it can possibly pass but it might get a few more Republicans elected. (It also may not qualify for the ballot. The deadline for signatures is Monday.)

If you're interested in Monty Python — and I'll bet at least 94% of those who come to this site would qualify — then you oughta be reading the articles that Kim "Howard" Johnson is writing over at the Python website. He's currently telling behind-the-scenes stories from the filming of Life of Brian.

For a year or three after Jay Leno replaced Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show, there were industry pundits going around calling that move the greatest programming error in the history of television. They were speaking in terms of lost or foregone revenue…and I always thought the criticism was ridiculous. For one thing, even at his lowest ratings ebb, Mr. Leno made a lot of money for NBC. The biggest mistake ever would probably involve something that lost money, don'tcha think?

Secondly, if you know the history of the changeover, there was never a real moment when it would have made sense to stick Dave Letterman in that job. It was not a question of Johnny announcing his retirement and the NBC execs then being able to sit down and debate, "Should we give it to Jay or Dave?" The way Carson operated, keeping the network off-balance as to how long he'd stay, prevented that from happening. The folks then running the network might well have made the same selection but the point is that they didn't have that luxury. Somewhere else on this site, I know I've explained why that was.

In any case, after a while in second place behind Dave, Leno took over the lead and has never looked back. I know there are folks out there who can't stand him as a performer (I am not among them) but this isn't about that. It's about delivering audience shares and that, he's done to great success. Over the years, there have been a lot of predictions that Leno would fold, that Leno's audience would desert him, that his ratings would plunge, etc. They've all been dead wrong. The man's track record is a smashing success, defying all underestimations.

A few years ago, the folks upstairs at NBC made another "Leno's going to falter" prediction that they probably now regret. When it looked like Conan O'Brien might decamp for an earlier time slot elsewhere, they engineered a deal to give him Leno's, forcing Jay into a retirement in May of '09. If Jay was now wearing out his welcome, that would have a brilliant bit of strategy but it hasn't worked out that way. If anything, it's O'Brien's show that's fading. I'm a big fan of Conan but even I think his show's been weaker in the last year or so, and the ratings suggest I'm not alone in my opinion. Jay, meanwhile, is finding himself in the position that every baseball player probably dreams about: He's at the top of his game and the peak of his popularity…and he's a free agent.

No one seems to know what Leno will do. It will involve staggering sums of cash but beyond that, it's all speculation. There are rumors of huge mega-deals to headline regularly in Vegas for sums that would make him one of the highest-paid performers in the history of show business…and those are the fallback offers. Those are the deals he might make in addition to whatever he decides to do in television. NBC is firm that they will not renege on the realignment of late night but there are reports they may make some deal with Jay that would kick in if O'Brien's ratings dip below a specified number. There's talk of Jay on ABC displacing Nightline; of an 11 PM show on Fox or in syndication; of other time slots on NBC.

My guess? The guy will take his time, waiting for The Right Offer to come along. He can go play Vegas for huge sums of cash until it does. Why rush into something?

So Conan will move to L.A. and do The Tonight Show and, it's just been announced, custody of the 12:30 show will pass to Jimmy Fallon of Saturday Night Live fame. He doesn't strike me as a good fit for that slot: Too low key, too lacking in the kind of authority that a host needs. Actually, I think the whole late night format of a guy chatting with folks who have a movie out next week has gotten somewhat stale, accounting for an across-the-board audience pullback from all such programs. Seems to me that what they need there now is someone who's going to shake up the franchise and do something radical. I could be wrong but Fallon suggests to me an amiable, likable presence…not someone you expect to take the talk show franchise to the next level. Then again, Lorne Michaels has a pretty good track record so we may all be surprised.

Still, if I were in the business of TV programming at the moment — say, if I were a Big Time Syndicator — I think I'd be smelling an opportunity. I'd be hustling to produce some alternatives to debut at the same time or (even better) a little before the O'Brien/Fallon parlay makes its debut. I'm wondering when that will be.

My recollection is that when the Leno/O'Brien displacement was announced, it was said that Conan would leave Late Night some time before he took over Tonight so he could have several months of prep time. Is that still the plan? The leaked stories about Fallon taking over make it sound like on some Friday next May, Leno will do his last Tonight and Conan will do his last Late Night…and then the following Monday, Conan will host Tonight and Fallon will debut in the slot following him. I don't think it's going to work like that.

More likely, Conan will leave Late Night early in '09, maybe with a big send-off during the February sweeps period, whereupon Fallon will step in. Then during the May sweeps — or they could even postpone it a bit, say until the following ratings period — we'd have the big "Farewell to Jay" shows and then Conan would assume command at 11:30. Something like that.

As soon as that timetable is firmed up, expect a flurry of activity among competitors. Everyone in broadcasting except maybe CBS is going to look for the chance to break NBC's dominance of late night. Even if Jimmy Fallon turns out to be the best thing to happen to that daypart since the invention of the airhead starlet, this is the time to make a move…before he develops any sort of following. And if he flops, you want to be there with the show people will turn to instead.

Like I said, I don't think the decision to give The Tonight Show to Jay Leno was anywhere near the dumbest move ever in network programming. It may have been one of the smartest. But right now, all throughout the industry, a lot of people are wondering if taking it away from him is going to turn out to be the dumbest. Certainly, the potential is there.

Here's a startling bit of news relating to comic book history. An anonymous donor (anonymous to us, that is) has donated the original artwork to Amazing Fantasy #15 to the the Library of Congress' Prints and Photographs division. This was the comic book that featured the first Spider-Man story, which was produced by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. This article will tell you all about it, including the fact that whoever donated it could have made an awful lot of cash in an auction.

This chart of the Gallup Poll is making the rounds and it's quite amazing. By a margin of 63 to 36 — not far from two-to-one — Americans think our country made a mistake sending troops to Iraq in the first place. It started out with a three-to-one ratio in the other direction. No "current" war has ever been so unpopular in this country.

The question it all raises for me is about how many people think it was not a mistake to send those troops initially but believe the war effort has been so badly bungled that we need to cut our losses and get out. And how many of those people are in the 63%?

I don't understand it. My car isn't running any better with the $4.00 gas in it than it did with the $3.00 gas in it.

Maybe I'll have better luck in June with the $5.00 gas.

A 9.0 grade copy of Action Comics #1. Minimum bid: $1,100,000.

Pat Ford makes a good point…

I can't agree with you that the abstinence only groups are interested in pretending their children are not having sex and that is why they promote these kind of programs. What it really is about is funneling government money to church groups. Presumably these church groups would be preaching abstinence only anyhow, but it's really great to have the government give them lots of money.

Yeah, that's right. And of course, they like it because it's a problem that will never go away. Teens will always be having sex and if those groups can get cash this way, it's an endless payoff.

I'm always amazed that "this doesn't work" is so rarely deemed a valid reason for not spending government money on something. Years ago on some news show, I saw a gentleman testify before Congress that we had to keep spending skillions on some particular model of jet fighter that had a terrible track record for reliability. That was, he argued, a minor consideration. It was more important that we keep the program "going forward" as it demonstrated the kind of resolve and strong attitude about defense that was essential in this world. Apparently, you're weak on defense if you insist that the planes actually be able to fly.

There's a new round of debates over whether the government should hurl more money into "abstinence-only" sex counselling. I don't know why. These programs do not work, have never worked, will never work…and the proponents seem to always be saying, "Yeah, well, apart from that, maybe they're a good idea." The only genuine controversy I see is whether they do a lot of damage or A LOT of damage.

I usually cringe at the phrase "reality-based community," but those who plump for abstinence indoctrination are clearly in the opposing world. I think they're more interested in coming up with some campaign that will allow them to make believe their kids aren't having sex. A lot of proposals to curtail gay rights strike me as being in the same category: Regardless of what you're actually going to do, let us pretend we've solved what is, for us, a problem.

At the New York Comic Con, we had a nice (but too short) memorial panel for Steve Gerber. I mentioned it here earlier but thought you might like to read some other reports on it…like this one or this one or even this one.

The speakers were myself, Michael Gerber (Steve's brother), Gail Simone, DC head honcho Paul Levitz, Hildy Mesnik (who worked with Steve at Sunbow Productions on G.I. Joe, Transformers and other cartoon shows), Buzz Dixon, Marty Pasko, Steve's daughter Samantha, and Mary Skrenes. Ignore the odd spellings of some of those names in the reports.

Contrary to what I said on the panel, Steve's ashes were not flung in the faces of various publishers. They were scattered around some of his favorite New York haunts. A nicer thought even if it wasn't as funny as what I suggested.