Go See It!

People who attend my panels at comic conventions sometimes say that I'm a good interviewer. They're wrong. My buddy Paul Harris, whose radio programs are heard in different cities around this country, is a good interviewer. A lot of what I know about the art/craft, I learned from listening to him and occasionally being interviewed by the guy. It has a lot to do with understanding where the interviewee needs to go and getting him or her there.

Over on his weblog, Paul has a short but interesting essay up on why he doesn't like to socialize with an interviewee before or even during an interview. This segues into a clip from a recent Jimmy Fallon taping…actually, a clip of what went on back in the studios while commercials were rolling. If Mr. Fallon's show was always this entertaining, I might watch it.

Post Scripts

howardpostcomics

Tom Spurgeon does the kind of obit on Howard Post that I didn't have time to do yesterday. And Jerry Beck offers a little more about Howie's animation work. The AP obit says he died last Friday and had recently been hospitalized for kidney failure. So the cause of death may not have been Alzheimer's, but his close friend (and former studio-mate) Jack Mendelsohn told me that had been plaguing Howie the last year or so.

Let me throw into the record, two more thoughts about Post's career. A lot of fans probably know him best for Anthro, a book he did for DC in 1968-1969 which lasted only a half-dozen issues. During that period, a lot of great comics were introduced at DC that lasted about that long and I always thought it was a shame. At the time, Independent News — the division of the company that distributed their comics as well as other periodicals — was generally down on comic books. There was an unfortunate dynamic in play: If something new was introduced — invariably as a bi-monthly — and it didn't draw decent sales within two or three issues, it was declared a flop and hastily cancelled.

I'm not entirely certain whose pronouncement that was but I think it became self-fulfilling. It takes time for something genuinely new to become well-enough known that it attracts new readers to the point of purchase. If you put out one issue and then two months later, you put out another…and then two months later, you put out another one, that's just not enough of a test; not for anything that's truly different.

Maybe at one point in comic history, it was enough time…but by the late sixties, we had a generation that had been raised on TV and on entertainment that was always readily accessible. They didn't have the patience to follow long continuities in newspaper comic strips, which is why those died off. I don't think they had the patience to wait two months between issues of a comic book. One of the appeals of the Marvel line at that time was that the books were all monthly and they were all interconnected…so if you loved that world, you could go the newsstand every week and get a couple of fresh doses. If you were starting to fall for the world of Anthro, you had to wait way too long for the next visit.

And you weren't even sure there'd be one. This is all based on anecdotal evidence from my old Comic Book Club but I think that when DC got to cancelling so many good comics so quickly (Bat Lash, Creeper, Hawk & Dove, Secret Six and so on), they created a big problem for themselves. Readers learned not to get too interested in something new under the DC banner because that comic would probably not be around for long. Marvel was on the march. DC was in a state of perpetual retreat from its own advances.

No one can ever prove me wrong but I believe that if DC had kept a couple of those comics running for, say, two years on a monthly basis, they would have caught on big. The potential loss until that happened would not have been great. It's what in some businesses they call an "investment." You make them when you think the potential reward is great enough and likely enough. Anthro is a book on which I would have wagered. In fact, I would not have published it in the first place if I wasn't prepared to give it that kind of backing. It was a fun idea with an appealing premise and the characters and stories were strong…but it was something new, and people sometimes take a while to find or warm up to "new."

Admittedly, this is an arguable point. So is what happened with its last issue. Up until then, Howie had written and drawn it, and he drew in a kind of rough style that was perfectly apropos for a strip set in the Stone Age, when things were kinda rough. When DC got its first, disappointing sales returns, they thought they might be able to save the project by making the art slicker…so they had the last issue inked by the great Wally Wood.

This greatly changed the look and feel of the comic. It lost its rough feel and the female characters became awfully cute and sexy. Ordinarily, you might think this was a shrewd commercial move — and it might have been but for two things. One was that the comic was already dead by then. Last issues almost never turned things around. In fact, under the distribution system back then, you sometimes didn't even get accurate sales figures on a last issue…so if sales did shoot up, you'd never know for certain. And the other problem was that Howie Post, who was the heart and soul of Anthro, hated it. He looked at his comic, he told me, and his comic didn't look like his comic any longer, his characters weren't his characters. He said that once he realized what Wood was doing to it, he lost his enthusiasm for the project and it also took him much longer to pencil the comic than it previously had to both pencil and ink it.

This is an aspect of creation that the audience often doesn't think about, nor are they usually in any position to assess it. The environment in which a work is created — the mental attitude of the creators — that all has a lot to do with what emerges. Give me the best writer and artist in comics and if I treat them badly enough…or just cause them to be disoriented or dispirited…I can get lousy work out of them. Sometimes, that is the reason your favorite writer produced great, memorable writing in one venue and less-than-stellar material in another. Or why things were great for an extended period and then got lousy. Someone busted someone's chops.

So when I think about Howie Post, I think about Anthro and about the huge missed opportunity that, I think, it represented. That's one thing I wanted to say.

The other thing was about his newspaper strip, The Dropouts. As you probably know, syndicates sell strips to newspapers and the fee is based on the newspaper's circulation. So the goal is to sell to the largest paper in each city…or at least it was, back when most cities had more than one newspaper. These days, the goal seems to be to just sell the strip, period. The Dropouts was purchased by the L.A. Times at a time when it was, I believe, the third-largest newspaper in the country…and since The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal didn't carry comics, that was the best sale you could make.

But what frustrated Howie was that though the L.A. Times paid for his strip, they often didn't run it. The Dropouts was their "drop-in" strip. They'd run it for three months, then omit it for six, then run it for eight more, then drop it for a year, then bring it back for a week. It was a space filler when some other strip was unavailable. When Doonesbury started, before it established its clout and popularity, there were occasional instances when the Times didn't want to run some sequence. Into its place for one week only would go The Dropouts.

dropouts01

Howie's strip was also the "control" in the occasional experiment. For several years, the Times comic strip editors attempted to improve their page via the following strategy: They'd drop some strip that they thought didn't have much of a following and see how many letters and calls of complaint they received. And what would they put in its place while they ran this little test? The Dropouts, of course.

But The Dropouts was never in serious contention for a permanent slot, Howie told me. If enough protests came in from lovers of the departed strip, it would come back and they'd drop The Dropouts. If they didn't get a significant number of complaints, they'd bring in something else and drop The Dropouts. Either way, Howie's strip was forever reverting to Student Stand-by status. He was happy with the ongoing checks — at one point, I think he was paid for a whole year without ever once seeing print in the Times — but bothered that he was being treated as a placeholder.

The first time I met him was in New York in 1970. When he heard I was from Los Angeles, his eyes lit up and he made me an offer that he apparently made then to anyone who lived in the Times' circulation area: If I'd write a letter to the Times and ask to have The Dropouts appear every day — including the Sunday page, which I don't think the paper ever ran — he'd send me an original strip. l wrote but it didn't do any good. (Years later when I met someone who worked in that division at the Times, I asked why they didn't just run it in the classified ad section or somewhere else when there was no place for it on the funnies page. The answer had something to do with the bureaucracy in the company. Other sections had other editors and no one could infringe on their turfs.)

The strip ended in '82. The AP obit (linked above) says it was in "more than 100 newspapers." That's not a lot unless one of them is paying what the L.A. Times pays. I have no inside info on this but I'm wondering if that's when the Times stopped paying for it. That drop in income would probably have made it no longer worth his time to draw or the syndicate's to syndicate. Anyway, Howie's timing was pretty good because it was around then that he was tapped to write for the Richie Rich cartoon show…and about the time that gig ended, Marvel launched his kids' line and he was hired, probably by former Harvey editor Sid Jacobsen, to draw many of them. Howie Post was never without work for very long…a testimony to his talent and versatility.

Today's Video Link

You know what I'd like to see? I'd like to see "Springtime for Hitler" performed in a high school production. Wouldn't you? Of course you would…but where would we find such a thing?

Oh, wait. Thanks to Ardsely High School in Hudson Valley, New York, I think we can see it if we click below…

Recommended Reading

My friend Kevin Drum is absolutely right about this. Identity theft in this country would be a lot less of a problem if the entity which extends credit to the thief using someone else's name were on the hook for 100% of any losses that resulted.

Broadway Beat

As you may recall, actor Sean Hayes has been at the center of a controversy lately. He's starring on Broadway in the revival of Promises, Promises and an openly-gay writer for Newsweek began writing inane (I thought) articles about how Hayes, who is also gay, is therefore unconvincing in a straight role. Or something like that. It's one of those arguments where if there is any legitimate point in there, it's gotten well-buried under the stupid part.

Anyway, I wanted to note here that Mr. Hayes has just been announced as the host of this year's Tony Awards, which air June 13. So that may help Promises, Promises, which did not get swell reviews. The currently-reported box office grosses of the show are good but every bit helps.

Also good are the numbers for The Addams Family, which got even worse notices. Most shows on Broadway are down lately but those two are selling most of their seats. Perhaps we are reaching the stage where reviews, at least through the established channels, are becoming of less importance in the theater. (Grosses for Promises, Promises will probably be down this week because Kristin Chenoweth has been missing performances due to vocal problems. And it's also a sign of evolving times that I only know this because I signed up for her Twitter feed and she's been mentioning it there.)

So, uh, not that Hayes isn't a good choice but why isn't Nathan Lane hosting? He's in a show that could profit from the attention. He's funny. If they want someone who's well-known and gay, he's well-known and gay. He did it before and he was very good at it. Three weeks before the telecast is kinda late to be announcing your host…so I'm just wondering if they dickered with Lane for a while, things didn't work out and they finally went to Hayes. Or maybe they were waiting to see if Promises, Promises would run because they didn't want a host whose show had just closed.

Sad Story

Several websites are reporting the apparent murder of comic book and animation writer Steve Perry down in Florida. Local news sources there report there has been a grisly homicide, Perry is missing and his roommates have been arrested. I don't believe authorities have officially said that the body, which is being found a piece at a time, is that of Perry, but folks who knew the writer and who are in touch with the police seem to be taking it as fact.

One of them is his friend Steve Bissette, who has posted what he can post at this time. Most of it's a lovely tribute to the presumably-deceased…and of great importance is that Bissette helps to untangle the mystery of the many Steve Perrys. There's a prominent musician by that name, as well as another Steve Perry who has worked in comics. I think there may even be yet another Steve Perry who dabbled in comics or animation back in the eighties. I had two separate encounters-by-phone, neither of them pleasant, with one or more writers named Steve Perry back then. I'm not certain which Steve Perry was on the other end of the line or even if it was the same Steve Perry both times. I suppose by now it doesn't matter but the potential here for confusion should be noted.

I have almost nothing to add about Steve Perry, the writer of Thundercats and the apparent murder victim but I have much to say about the roller-coaster-ride lives of those who freelance. The sadness of this Perry's story in the last week or so is obvious, but so is what preceded it. This Steve Perry had been a prolific and successful writer for some time…but his career took a downturn and he was in dire financial trouble in recent years. There is, sadly, a lot of that going around these days…

It can occur in any employment/business situation. The commerce is good. It looks like it will go on indefinitely…and then it doesn't. What has happened with our nationwide economy the last few years should make everyone painfully aware of that. Those who freelance should always be braced for the possibility, though in times when the work is flowing and you're even turning things down, it can be hard to believe, hard to remember. I have at least a dozen recent anecdotes I could toss up here — tales of one acquaintance after another who had a gig that looked like it would go on forever and so they were emotionally and financially unprepared to find out otherwise.

Writers and artists are often extremely vulnerable and prone to forget, or to perhaps shove into a corner, the concept that long-term financial security is necessary in this world. We often have an emotional response to opportunities, grabbing at bad (or non-existent) deals because some project looks like it would be fun to do, looks like it will allow us to produce what we think will be our best work. This lust on our part is often exploited — sometimes deliberately but sometimes innocently — by those who control the money end of our business. The unintentional exploitation can be the most damaging because that's the kind you really don't see coming.

Often, too often, we encourage our own exploitation by allowing ourselves to get desperate. There's a vicious cycle in the marketplace: When you're desperate, or at least when you look that way, you get fewer jobs and the ones you do get do not pay as well. And that, of course, only serves to keep you desperate…and we all know where that leads.

I am not suggesting that you need to make every possible nickel on every job while it lasts. That can be destructive in other, more immediate ways. But there is such a thing as undervaluing what you do and not making what you should or could, and there's also such a thing as having a Plan B in life. Over the years, I've encountered a lot of writers and artists who created something that was wonderful and successful…though not all that lucrative for them. The checks they got at the time seemed like windfalls, and perhaps they were in a way but they were also finite. And at some point ever after, they were like those gamblers in Vegas who build up a big wad of dough, lose it all and then think, "Well, I won it before. I can win it all back again." It's not always like Rocky the Flying Squirrel says — "That trick never works!" — but it sure doesn't work most of the time.

I'm rambling here and I apologize…and in truth, I know very little of what brought Steve Perry to the point where he had to rely on public charity and the often-elusive kindness of strangers. He may well have done everything humanly possible to not get to that point. But at some stage, something went very wrong with his career and everyone oughta keep that in mind. When you touch bottom, it's a lot easier to go down than it is to go up.

Testing, Testing…

Several folks sent me a link to this, which is another one of those "Where are you on the political spectrum?" tests. I always find that the choices I'm given — in this case, Agree, Strongly Agree, Disagree or Strongly Disagree — are insufficient for some questions. For this one, I could have used Really Don't Care as an option and maybe Haven't Given It Much Thought. But really, the truest answer for some would be Need More Information.

Like, they ask you to agree or disagree with the statement, "Charity is better than social security as a means of helping the genuinely disadvantaged." I'm not sure what they mean by "social security" in this context and suspect they mean something like welfare or government aid. Assuming that's what they mean: Well, yes, I kinda concur if the charity is fairly and adequately distributed…but I think you need the "safety net" of government-furnished help for when the charity isn't there for people. So am I agreeing with their statement? Disagreeing? What?

Or they ask, "Abstract art that doesn't represent anything shouldn't be considered art at all." Agree or disagree? Well, this is kind of about defining art of any kind, forget about the abstract part of it. Or if we presume that a painting must represent something in order to be art, what if it represents a mood or a splash of purple or the artist's bad acid trip? Or if it represents something to others and not to me? I'm not asking anyone to answer these questions; just pointing out that the question could go in a lot of different trajectories.

Here's one: "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." I assume to most people, that's like asking if they think revenge is justifiable. But what it really means — and if you read it this way, you might give a different answer — is that punishment should fit the crime and not be excessive.

All that said, I took the test and it put me in pretty much the same place as the Libertarian one to which I linked yesterday: In the Liberal quadrant but darn close to the Libertarian border. Of course, the problem with both tests is that you wind up with an average which oversimplifies your views. I am more Liberal on some issues than others; even rather Conservative on many. I may hold zero positions that would individually place me where I fall on the graph. In fact, I would hope I am all over that graph. If you come down at the exact same place on every issue, you probably aren't doing a whole lot of open-minded thinking on any of them.

Zero Gravity

zerohour02

I have not done nearly enough plugging here of my pal Jim Brochu's remarkable play, Zero Hour, which can currently be seen not far from Broadway in the city of New York. Quick plot synopsis: You spend time (more than an hour, less than two) with the outrageous and outraged Zero Mostel, as portrayed by Jim. Mostel talks about his family, his plays, his blacklisting, his movie roles, his painting, his life, his philosophy and his world. Jim knew Zero so this is not fantasy or extrapolation from afar, as so many biographies are. It's a fascinating way to spend an evening.

And what reminded me that I haven't mentioned it here lately is that last night, they gave out the 55th Annual Drama Desk Awards back there — awards that some say are a lot more meaningful than the Tonys. The Drama Desk Award for the Outstanding Solo Performance went to…may I have the envelope, please? Jim Brochu for Zero Hour. So, you see? It's just not me being impressed with what my friend did. Other people, folks who don't even know Jim think it's terrific.

If you get anywhere near New York in the next few weeks, go…and don't put it off because it won't be there forever. Zero Hour is at the DR2 Theatre on E. 15th Street. Order your tickets at this site. We recommend this highly.

Today's Video Link

You know what I'd like to hear? I'd like to hear "Springtime for Hitler" played on a really old, classic Wurlitzer organ. Wouldn't you? Of course you would…but where would we find such a thing?

Oh, wait. Thanks to a tip from Scott Marinoff, I think we can hear it if we click below…

Recommended Reading

Tom Scocca expains exactly what happened last week with Dr. Rand Paul: He was asked a direct question about a belief he has long held. He realized that to express that belief would cost him votes. So he dodged the question and then later came back and said the opposite of what he obviously believes. This probably occurs more often in politics than we think…and we think it happens a lot.

Game Not Over

What? You say you got hooked on Google Pac Man during the two days it was the logo on the main Google page and now you're going through withdrawal? Fear not. The Google folks have made it available as a permanent page.

Howie Post, R.I.P.

Howard "Howie" Post, a mainstay of animation, comic books and strips since the mid-forties, passed away some time in the last week, reportedly due to Alzheimer's. Howie was born November 2, 1926 and while no one has ever pinned down exactly when he got into comics, his work was turning up in books from most of the major New York publishers by 1945. He mostly did funny animal comics, such as for DC's More Fun Comics, where he sometimes wrote for other artists but often drew his own wacky, energetic tales. He also worked in animation, at first as an in-betweener and animator for Famous Studios…later as a storyman and, still later, as the creative head of Paramount's cartoon studio in the early sixties.

His best known comic book work? Hard to say. He was a prolific writer (and sometimes writer-artist) for Harvey Comics, where he is often credited with creating Spooky, Little Hot Stuff and many other recurring characters. He wrote and sometimes drew hundreds of stories for Richie Rich, Casper the Friendly Ghost and other Harvey superstars.

Over at DC, he handled Doodles Duck, J. Rufus Lion, Bob Hope, Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis, Jerry Lewis without Dean Martin and many others, including occasional forays into romance and adventure titles. His most famous DC endeavor was probably Anthro, a short-lived light adventure comic that he wrote and drew in the late sixties.

He worked for Marvel in two bursts, the first being a gaggle of (mostly) funny animal comics like The Monkey and the Bear from around 1953 to 1955, along with occasional contributions to their horror comics. In the eighties, he drew Strawberry Shortcake, Madballs, Wally the Wizard, Heathcliff and other features for their kids' line.

He worked for at least a dozen other publishers and also dabbled in syndication. His newspaper strip, The Dropouts, appeared in many newspapers from 1968 until 1982.

And this is really only the briefest summary of this prolific and wickedly-funny man. I had the pleasure of working with him briefly on the Richie Rich cartoon show for Hanna-Barbera and interviewing him on a couple of panels at comic conventions. He was very nice and very creative, and his work sure made a lot of folks happy.

Short Cited

Last night, I posted a message here from Barry Short, candidate of the Libertarian Party for a seat in the Utah House of Representatives. I accidentally typoed and gave his name as Barry Pearl, who's another fellow I know. I've corrected that and I thought by way of apology to Barry S., I'd link you to the website for his candidacy, in case you want to know more about him or are inclined to donate.

Short's site contains a link to this brief quiz…one of those "where do you fall on the political spectrum?" deals. This one was crafted by a Libertarian group so it's perhaps skewed to try and convince you that whatever else you think you may be, you're a Libertarian. It gave me a "personal" issues score of 90% and an "economic" issues score of 40% and placed me on the graph within the area marked Liberal but darn close to the dividing line into Libertarian. That feels about right to me but I don't particularly vouch for this test. I probably did not score high on their "economic" measure because I think "privatizing" Social Security is largely a scheme for Goldman Sachs to get their mitts on folks' retirement money. I also would not say (and would think it irresponsible to say) that government spending should be cut by 50% without knowing which 50% would get cut.

On the "personal" side, I guess I lost 10% because I answered "Maybe" to the question about not having a National I.D. card. In raw theory, I suppose I'm afraid that such a thing would abuse rights…but I'm more afraid of the labyrinth we now have of identifying everyone by their Drivers License, credit card numbers, date of birth and/or the last four digits of their Social Security number. Seems to me that carries all the risks of a National I.D. card and is a sloppier way to go about it. What I think I'd like to see is a voluntary National I.D. card — something you could sign up for if you wanted it. I assume Libertarians would have no problem with that. And if it turned out that businesses would insist on it or they wouldn't take your checks or make certain services available to you…well, that's the Free Market at work, right?

Recommended Reading

Bob Marshall on what caused that big (and getting bigger) oil spill. It all goes back to Ronald Reagan's idea that government should never stop private enterprise from maximizing profits, no matter what kind of damage results.

Today's Video Link

This is another one of those video links that's really an audio link. It's a nine-minute interview of Stan Laurel conducted in January of 1959…

VIDEO MISSING