Monthly Archives: July 2009

The great comic book illustrator Gene Colan has found it necessary to cancel his appearance at the Comic-Con International this year. As I understand it, it's for medical reasons but not necessarily serious ones. Gene merely needs some tests which have to be performed next week and his doctors have advised him not to subject himself to the strenuous trip at this time. We'll miss seeing him and his lovely mate Adrienne at the convention and will assume he'll be fine for it next year.

This means that the Spotlight on Gene Colan, which was scheduled for Friday at Noon, will not take place. Drat. Gene was also to appear on the Golden Age Panel on Thursday but that will go on without him. Matter of fact, I shrewdly scheduled seven panelists instead of the usual six because I sensed this might happen. So we'll proceed with Ramona Fradon, Jerry Robinson, Russ Heath, Jack Katz, Leonard Starr and Murphy Anderson, and though we'll miss Gene, we'll have a fine time.

An old op-ed piece by Walter Cronkite on why he turned down Bobby Kennedy's suggestion that he [Cronkite] run for the Senate.

I braved the warmth of Burbank today and went out to the Hollywood Collectors Show, a crowded autograph event loaded with famous folks. Let me see if I can quickly run through a list of those I talked with…

In no particular order: Billy West, Marty Krofft, Maurice LaMarche, Jack Riley, Bill Daily, Pat Harrington, Greg Evigan, Jerry Maren, Bob Bergen, Billie Hayes, Anson Williams, Donny Most, Phil LaMarr, Rob Paulsen, Tom Bosley, Edie McClurg, Henry Winkler and I know I'm leaving a couple folks out. Those are just celebs who were there to sell and sign. In the aisles, also wandering around, I talked with Jason Marsden, Chuck McCann, Wally Wingert, Stephen Cox, Dave Shelton, Chad Frye and again, I'm leaving people out. Most (not all) of those in the first group will be there tomorrow if you want to swing by and get a signed photo or some other piece of memorabilia.

The two big themes this show were Happy Days (much of the cast was present) and James Bond. George Lazenby was there, and I guess he qualifies even though he's only done one more film as 007 than I have. Richard Kiel, who was the villain in several, was present. And they had a whole bevy of Bond Girls, some of whom still looked like Bond Girls, even though they last Bonded with Mr. Connery. There was much excitement by some to see Davy Jones of The Monkees…and a lot of folks were stopping by to tell the Futurama cast that someone would have to be brain-dead to think they could do that show with new actors.

A note to the promoters: At one point, I came across a group of your guests and they were discussing how much it might cost to pay Lou Ferrigno (another guest) to go over and deck the guy on the P.A. system. Other than that, everyone seemed to be having a very good time.

While you're at the Comic-Con International in San Diego, you're going to swing by the booth (#501) of the Van Eaton Galleries and pick up a signed copy of June Foray's autobiography. Remember that she's only going to be there late Friday afternoon and intermittently on Saturday and Sunday.

And while you're there, I highly recommend grabbing a copy of Mark Arnold's new book, Created and Produced by Total Television. Total is the company responsible for King Leonardo and His Short Subjects, Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales, Underdog and a few other shows of the sixties, and Mark has written a must-have book for anyone who recalls those programs. Based on extensive research and interviews, it tracks the history of this little-known studio and also offers up generous amounts of scripts, storyboards, merchandise and other visual material to tell its story.

They'll have copies at the Van Eaton booth. If you don't make it to the con, do yourself a favor and order one on Amazon via this link. You can also order June's book from Amazon with this one but if you can wait a week or so, I'll direct you to a site that will allow you to order hers autographed. That's worth waiting for, right?

I have so much to do that I've decided to call up the folks who run the Comic-Con and ask them if they'd mind postponing it for a couple of weeks. I'll get around to this on Monday and I'm pretty sure they'll do it for me. I mean, why wouldn't they?

But just in case there's some odd reason why they can't, here's the schedule again of events with which I'll be involved…

A brief history of the hamburger.

You might enjoy this 2001 audio interview with Walter Cronkite, conducted by radio whiz Paul Harris.

One wonders what Walter Cronkite would think of a newsroom that's reporting on the death of a legend and can't spell the legend's name right. They fixed it a few minutes later but I had to roll the TiVo back to make sure I'd seen what I thought I'd seen. And then I had to do a frame grab so you could see it.