Monthly Archives: February 2010

Craig Ferguson did something unusual on his show last night. He departed from his usual format and instead did a one-on-one discussion, at times quite serious, with British writer-actor-director Stephen Fry. Taped without a live audience, it was an hour of smart conversation between two smart men…and I'm curious as to how it will be received. Actually, I'm more curious as to why they did it. I can understand Ferguson thinking that this kind of chat would be a welcome novelty. The man already does a better job of talking with guests (as opposed to setting them up for pre-interviewed responses) than anyone else in or around the talk show world with the possible exception of Jon Stewart.

What I don't get is why Stephen Fry. I'm imagining a conversation where someone at the network says to Ferguson, "Craig baby, we're not wild about you abandoning a format that seems to be working well…but if you're serious about doing these one-on-ones, how about kicking them off with a guest most of America has heard of? Fry's a brilliant, fascinating fellow but there must be some 'name' who's worthy of an hour. How about booking one of them and then saving Fry for the second or third time you do one of these?" And then I'm imagining Ferguson saying, "I want to launch this idea with the smartest person I know. That's Steve Fry."

But that's all speculation on my part. All I know is I enjoyed it. I would hate for the ratings to be so low than Craig won't try it again. It's so nice to hear people on TV actually talking to each other.

Our pal Todd Klein — you know, the guy who always wins the Best Letterer award at the Eisners — posts these great logo studies in which he discusses the fine art of designing logos for comic book covers. He's recently completed a six-part analysis of the logos on DC romance books which among other things, convinces me that one of the things that killed off that genre was that most of the logos were expertly rendered but unsightly. Not that that was the main reason love comics went away. There were at least three other more salient factors, I think

1. At a time when other comics were evolving towards longer stories about recurring characters with more personality, romance comics were resisting. Most stories remained short. Most protagonists remained cardboard. And if some character did stand out, he or she was married or moving out of town within about eight pages, never to be seen again.
2. At a time when mores and sexual attitudes in the nation were becoming more liberated and open, love comics — perhaps of necessity — clung to not even 1950's sensibilities but often to something from the forties. They felt to young readers like what your parents wanted you to think sex was like, which is to say there wasn't any involved in the mating process.
3. Not all the time but too often, the company used lower-paid, less dynamic talent on the books. It was that old, suicidal attitude of "Hey, sales are down, let's cheapen the product." It got especially lethal when they started saving money by intermingling reprints of older stories, thereby exacerbating Salient Factor #2 above. They'd have the clothes and hair styles redrawn by rather mediocre artists…and I oughta know because I was briefly one of them. And sometimes, they'd really hip things up by replacing a reference in the dialogue to Elvis Presley with one about The Beatles. But it just made square books seem even squarer.

The logos were a problem, too. You can almost sense the indecision in them, sense that the editors weren't sure if they were aiming for the crowd that bought other kinds of comics or for the romance magazine buyers. Ultimately, they snagged neither…and romance comics went away. Todd gives us a good look at their cover identities. Here's Part One. Here's Part Two. Here's Part Three. Here's Part Four. Here's Part Five. And here's Part Six. And you might enjoy Todd's entire blog which as you might expect, does not have a fancy, personalized logo. Todd is much too popular to work for someone like Todd.

Jerry and Amid over at Cartoon Brew have done the artistic community (and not just the one in and around animation) a service with their stance against "contests" that attempt to pry oodles of spec work out of young animators. There are times in any business, especially when one is starting out, when it makes sense to work for free or for bus tokens…but in most instances, it's foolish and even injurious. I've written about this in the past here and when I have time, I'll write more. But right now, I want to direct you to Cartoon Brew's open letter to the Sesame Street folks who are working their variation on this exploitive practice. I totally agree with this letter.

President Obama's proposal for a House-Senate compromise on health care reform has been released. Jonathan Cohn has a quick summary, a link to a more detailed summary and a link to the whole PDF that you and most folks will never read. It's almost possible to believe this thing is actually going to happen.

I keep getting e-mails from people who…well, I'm not sure if they actually oppose Health Care Reform or they simply believe in opposing anything Barack Obama is for. But they keep sending me poll results that suggest most Americans are already satisfied with their health insurance. A couple of these seem to simply ignore that part of the crisis we have in this country is that so many people don't have health insurance. It's like saying, in a land where many are starving to death, "Well, the ones who are eating like what they're eating." Also, a lot of people are perfectly satisfied with their health insurance because they haven't gotten sick lately and so have never tested its value to their lives.

I'm generally satisfied with my health insurance. What I'm not satisfied with is how many friends of mine have none…and that's not just me being selfless to say that. It harms my life if my friends are ill or dying or need to borrow money for medical reasons. I am also harmed by what has happened to hospital emergency rooms, jammed as so many are with people who lack the financial resources for a simple doctor visit. Pollsters who ask, "Are you happy with your health coverage?" are really missing the point, in some cases deliberately.

We have a new wave of rumors that Comic-Con International may move out of San Diego, particularly to Anaheim. I still don't think this will happen…or won't happen any time soon. But I don't think it's a bad thing for the city and its convention center to be afraid of losing it. As you can see from this article, there are more hotel rooms available to the con this year in S.D. because of the threat. That threat is valuable to the con so I hope they keep it alive…and then stay right where they are.

You know, if you look like the guy in those new Old Spice commercials and you can make diamonds appear and teleport yourself onto the back of a horse…you really don't need Old Spice to impress the babes.

And I'm working too late again…

Need a receipt for the I.R.S. to back up that business meal you really didn't have? Wanna get reimbursed by your employer for nothing? Then you need to visit Maloney & Porcelli's Expense-a-Steak Headquarters.

So I have discount/membership cards at four markets, four department stores, three drug store chains, one pet food shop, nine restaurants, three booksellers, three office supply companies, two clothing stores, one electronics firm…well, I can't count them all. It's about fifty cards — and I'm just talking about cards for businesses to which I physically go. This is not about signing up for Internet-only merchants. It isn't even about airline frequent flyer cards or hotel chain gold cards. It's about cards that clerks expect me to have on my person when I buy something and want the "real" price.

I keep the three I most often patronize in my wallet. I keep the rest in a little case in my car. It is fast becoming a big case.

Now, I use some of those membership numbers when I order things online and that's not a problem. I've copied all the numbers down and I have them in a little file on my computer, ready to be entered in the appropriate space.

But I like to walk places and within walking distance of my home, there's the potential to need twelve of those cards. When I leave my home, I might not plan to wind up at the Barnes & Noble shop but once in a while, I do…and I don't have that card with me. There are also times when someone else drives or when I fly somewhere and I find myself in a location where I might need one of those cards and don't have it. Because it's back home in that case in my car. In theory, I could plan this better and take the necessary cards but it never works like that. I can't be the only person who's annoyed at being expected to carry all these different cards…far too many to fit in my wallet. And don't tell me about the little keytag versions they sometimes give you. I don't need fifty little tags on my keyring, either.

I used to think someone was going to invent a little device where you could swipe your discount card or scan the barcode…and then it would print out one card with all your discount card data on it, kind of like a universal remote. Or maybe all these companies would sign up for some sort of special iPhone app that consolidated the info in some way that I can still barely fathom. But then I realized the solution was simple. I shouldn't be getting all those numbers from different companies. They should get one number from me.

Some company, maybe the Visa people or someone who's already tied in to all the major merchants, needs to invent something called, let's say, the National Consumer Number card. This would be utterly voluntary. You sign up and they assign you a big, multi-digit number, long enough to allow for everyone to have one but not so long that you couldn't memorize yours. They verify that you're that number and vice-versa, and you give them the kind of info that you always give out when you sign up for something like your Petco Member card or your Best Buy Reward Zone card — address, phone number, e-mail address, etc. It would not be linked to any credit card.

Then, instead of signing up for the Olive Garden's Frequent Pasta Eater club card (or whatever they have or will have), you swipe your N.C.N. card or give them the number and it's the same as if you signed up for their card, except it's your card. There's no reason they can't treat that number the same way they treat the one they now assign you…but you only have to carry the one card. And you could easily go to the N.C.N. website and cancel out any membership…or if you changed your address, you'd only have to change it there the one time and the 93 "clubs" to which you belong would get that information immediately.

I don't see the downside of this to me or to any company. I mean, the Staples people aren't dumb enough to think that just because I have a Staples Reward card, I'm not going to also get an Office Depot Rewards card if I might ever shop there. Can anyone come up with a reason why this is a bad idea for the businesses? I know it sure wouldn't be a bad idea for me.

The seller who put up that non-existent Groo book on Amazon for $999 assured me it was a "software error" and that they would take it down. They haven't yet. But many of you have written me to note a lot of Amazon offerings with the same problem. They all seem to be books that were announced but delayed…and though they've yet to be printed, some seller is offering used copies in "acceptable" condition for $999 each.

A couple of folks have written me with varying degrees of insight. All suggest that it was a software error; that many Amazon sellers use a program that uploads and prices their listings, and that said software has a problem with some items that missed their scheduled release dates. It sometimes doesn't recognize that they didn't come out.

So, uh, why is it so sure that the seller in question has X number of copies in a certain, specified condition? I am told the weird pricing is because the software looks at other sellers who list the same book and it bases its prices on theirs. If no one else has the book, it somehow can't handle that possibility and so defaults…to $999. No one has yet explained why it thinks that the seller's copies (which the seller doesn't have) are in "acceptable" condition but I guess that's a way of hedging one's bet or something.

Lynn Walker writes…

I haven't read the current Captain America story either, but I have read all of the ones written and/or drawn by Jack Kirby. One is, of course, on very shaky ground when attempting to assign opinions to somebody that isn't around anymore, and we've seen this happen with relatives of all kinds of famous people. However, I don't think it's entirely out of line to look at somebody's body of work, identify patterns, and then see how the patterns compare with the current situation. In the case of Jack's Captain America, if one looks at his 70s work (where he wasn't collaborating with anyone else who would have had story input), I find what he did in "Mad Bomb" and "Bicentennial Battles" to be patriotic and political, but also completely non-partisan. I can easily see a reader who leans to the right feeling that his opinions were vindicated by Jack in these stories, and one leaning to the left to feel the same way. I think it's part of what makes Jack's work so universal and timeless. I didn't know Jack personally, but I think he would be more impressed by Captain America stories (assuming he read them) that inspired every reader to stand by their convictions and strive to do what they believe is heroic than those which would divide the readership and distract them from the actual stories and messages in the comic.

Well, first of all, Jack had zero interest in reading others' stories of his characters. He almost never recognized someone else's interpretation as quite the same characters, often hated what he read, and felt that manners and professionalism required that he not say what he really thought.

But the larger issue you discuss is one that I've wrestled with a lot, since people often come to me and ask, "Do you think Jack would have approved of this?" Whatever it is. There are areas where I feel confident speaking for him…for example, he was militant in believing that an individual creator had the right to credit for his or her work and to not have the integrity of that work compromised. I see no reason to even consider that he might have backed off on those beliefs.

However, in things like politics, I try to make damn sure I don't use Jack the way a lot of folks use revered entities that cannot now (or do not) speak for themselves. I can't stand it when people whose views are questioned try to make it sound like they're speaking for our troops overseas…so to disagree with them is to disrespect our brave soldiers. Or worse, when they wrap their prejudice in some Bible quote and try to pretend that to disagree with them is to disagree with God Almighty. Jack's not quite in that category but in the comic book world, I have seen people try to use him to try to win debates that way.

It's intriguing that you say that folks on both sides of the aisle (as it were) could read his Captain America stories and think he was on their side. That's probably true but it's one of those "glass-is-half-full/empty" deals because everyone could also think he was disagreeing with them. We get that a lot with Groo, every time we do anything that even vaguely sounds like we're referencing current events. And what's intriguing about that is how incredibly wrong some people are, accusing us of advocating positions we don't hold. Where Groo is a little different is that Sergio and I are often not of the same mind on a topic we address, so a story often reflects conflicting views, whereas the stories Jack wrote and drew on his own speak with one determined but reasoned voice.

I do think Jack did not want to use Captain America as a mouthpiece for his own political views, even though if anyone had the moral right to do that, it was Jack…or, I guess, Joe Simon. I remember that when Oliver North testified before Congress, Kirby thought that by wearing his uniform as he justified all sorts of illegal and immoral deeds, North had disgraced that uniform. He should have shown enough respect for the uniform not to exploit it as he did. The analogy isn't exact but I always felt that Jack thought writers should respect Captain America enough not to exploit him for partisan purpose.

This article in the L.A. Times reminds us of how bad the health insurance situation is in this country and how it will just get worse and worse if nothing is done. And it's helpful to remember that "worse and worse" means more people dying or losing their homes and/or life savings. As near as I can tell, no one disputes that this is a huge problem. Some people just stubbornly insist it can be solved without a huge solution.

Quentin Tarantino has gone and become the landlord for a movie theater. It's the New Beverly Cinema on Beverly Boulevard, just west of La Brea. I drive by there all the time and am often impressed by what I see on the marquee…but I haven't been inside the place for at least twenty years.

What's kept me away is that, first of all, it was a shabby concern that only seemed to roll out bad, splice-ridden prints. I am told this has changed; that the theater has been completely refurbished more than once in that time. Also, folks tell me, current management has done a better, though not flawless, job of securing good copies of the films they show. (That's always the problem with repertory theaters. They have to advertise what they're showing weeks before they get the prints. And when the prints do arrive and are old, scratchy and incomplete, the distributor says, "Sorry…that's all we have!" So what's the theater to do?)

Also, parking for the New Beverly was always a pain. I assume that hasn't changed…but that shouldn't be enough to keep me away from movies I want to see.

Ultimately, the big impediment to me is that most movies I want to see are over on my DVD shelves. That also shouldn't matter but it does. The ones I own on DVD are handy. They're complete and restored. I can start them when I want and pause them when I want and I don't have to pay or park, plus I have better snacking options here. My purism as a movie fan tells me none of that is as good as seeing them the way they were meant to be seen — in 35mm on a big screen with a lot of others around. But somehow, I never get around to listening to that purism. DVDs and Turner Classic Movies have nuked my going-to-the-movies the same way Amazon has caused me to rarely go to a bookstore. I used to do a lot of both.

I hope Mr. Tarantino's investment pays off for him because I hate the idea of places like the New Beverly closing. I haven't hated it enough in the past to actually go there from time to time and buy a ticket…but maybe his commitment will change that. At the very least, I'll feel a tad guiltier about not going there…