Monthly Archives: April 2011

For those of you interested in Broadway history: My pal Bob Elisberg has a terrific column, complete with video embeds, about Man of La Mancha and the great French singer-songwriter, Jacques Brel. Wish I could have seen what he writes about.

How long has Sheldon Moldoff been in comics? Well, he drew a page in the first issue of Action Comics — the issue that featured the debut of Superman — and that was cover-dated June of 1938. It wasn't a page with Superman on it…but the mere fact he was in that landmark book gives you some idea of his longevity.

He quickly became one of the star artists at DC Comics. He drew the cover to the first issue of Flash Comics. He drew the cover to the first comic book that had Green Lantern in it. He was the main artist on the original Hawkman for many years.

Then he was the main artist on Batman from 1953 to 1967. Oh, it said "Bob Kane" drew those stories but it said that on a lot of comics that Mr. Kane didn't draw. Bob liked to hire someone else to do his work for him and for a long period, it was Shelly. An awful lot of comic fans grew up on his version of the Caped Crusader and recall it fondly.

These days, you can sometimes find Shelly Moldoff on the convention circuit, especially in and around Florida. If you do, you're in for a treat because he's a delightful man who loves to share comic book history with inquiring minds. He's sure been a part of a lot of it. If you can't get to meet him, you can go to his new website. That's what this item is mainly to announce: That Shelly Moldoff is on the web. Visit his page and while you're there, take a look at a great new print he has available. It is, like the guy who drew it, very impressive.

Recently at his site, Michael Barrier has been discussing Walter Lantz, the prolific animation producer who gave us Woody Woodpecker, Andy Panda, Chilly Willy and others. A reader of this site, Alan Willson, wrote to ask me, "Did you ever cross paths with Lantz? Any personal anecdotes?" Not many, I'm afraid. I met Mr. Lantz but once and I'll tell you about it in a second. But first let me tell you the way in which he was important to me.

As a kid, I was a fan of his cartoons. Of course, as a kid, I was a fan of most cartoons. As one gets older, one's interests and tastes evolve. At the same time I was avidly watching The Woody Woodpecker Show on Channel 11, I was also watching (and loving even more) the early Hanna-Barbera cartoons on Channel 11 and the early Jay Ward cartoons on Channel 7 and later 4. I still like and enjoy Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear and other H-B programs of that era. I still love and admire Rocky and His Friends and other Wardian concoctions. Whatever positive feelings I have for Woody and Company are not unlike my emotions re: Bosco chocolate syrup and Circus Animal cookies. I can't and don't eat them today but I do remember how much joy they gave me at age 10. Somewhere downstairs here, I have a VHS tape of Woody Woodpecker cartoons that I picked up for a couple of bucks once in a KMart. It literally contains every Walter Lantz cartoon that I can recall ever really liking as an adult.

Some of the cartoons he produced have expertly-done musical numbers and I suppose most were as well-animated as the budgets of the time allowed…but I feel scant connection to the characters or the jokes or the storylines. And to the extent that I even like the characters, that's mainly because of their appearances in the Dell comic books that were created and printed by Western Publishing Company. I liked a lot of those comics…which Mr. Lantz and his immediate staff didn't write or draw. In fact — and this is a visceral feeling, not a logical one — as a kid, I felt the cartoons were wrong and the comics were right. The Road Runner in the Dell comic books didn't match the Road Runner of the cartoons and there, it was clear to me that the comic book version was the aberration. With Woody Woodpecker, Andy Panda and other Lantz properties, it felt like the cartoons were wrong…and also wildly inconsistent, whereas the comics had one generally clear vision.

But what I really did like about Walter Lantz was that he taught me the basics of cartooning. He taught them in little film segments on the Woody Woodpecker TV show like this one…

I would sit there with my pad and pencil and follow along. Even though I never carried it to the point of real professional cartooning, doing that had a lot to do with the fact that I now work at all in the creative arts. I can interface with the best cartoonists in the business and understand what they do when we collaborate…but I also think that whatever flair I have for writing is connected to having filled many a pad with cartoons at an early age.

Where I really learned something ostensibly from Walter Lantz was when I acquired a book called Easy Way to Draw. I wrote about it back here and I still consider that volume to be as important to my life as any book I ever owned. An idea I've toyed with for some time is to grab friends like Sergio Aragonés and Scott Shaw! and to try and do a new book that will work the same magic on kids in that age bracket. I would start by resolving that the book was for ages 6-12 and that I really didn't care if one person older than that would buy or could even understand it.

So when I finally met Walter Lantz, it was a very special moment for me — one of those encounters when you feel the need to say to someone, "You have no idea what you did for me…but thank you for what you did for me." And that's pretty much what I said to him.

It was at the opening of an animation art gallery in West Hollywood around 1984 or '85. (Mr. Lantz passed in '94 at the age of 95.) I saw him there and got June Foray to introduce us, and the first two things I noticed were that he was very short — not a whole lot taller than I was when I was watching his drawing lessons — and that he talked exactly the same way in person that he'd talked in them. He really did sound like he was reading off-camera cue cards and that was somehow comforting.

He'd been standing for some time shaking hands at the gallery and was looking for a place to sit down for a spell. Recalling a bench a bit away from the mingling area, I suggested that and led him to it. So I got to sit with Walter Lantz for maybe a half-hour of Q-and-A. Unfortunately, it was mostly Q's from him and A's from me. June had introduced me glowingly as a great friend and important person in the cartoon business (half-right — the first half) and once I told Mr. Lantz that I'd gotten into cartoons because of him, he really just wanted to hear more about that. It was clearly a big deal to him that he'd been responsible for the "next generation" — or maybe I was a generation or two past his — but it felt odd to sit there and be peppered with questions about where I went to college and how he'd inspired me.

Most of what I did get him to talk about was the relationship between his operation and Western Publishing. He dearly loved Chase Craig, who'd been my editor when I wrote Woody Woodpecker comics and others, and he'd been delighted with Western's comics and activity books of his characters. He admitted to me that at some point, they were the creative force behind much of what he was doing in his own studio. The evolution of Woody's official design, for instance, was influenced as much by what the Western artists were doing as by anything done by folks on the Lantz payroll…and many talents went back and forth between the two employers. (In this article, I explain how a character created by folks at Western for the comic books became a semi-valuable Lantz property, much as Disney got Uncle Scrooge out of their relationship with Western.)

Mike Barrier says that when he interviewed Lantz in a more formal context, he also got little out of him. People in animation often develop what I call "talk show versions" of their history…little abbreviated anecdotes that are simplified down to be quick and comprehensible to folks outside the business and which come with built-in punchlines. They tell them so often to reporters that they often can't shift back to the real stories. This was often a problem if you spoke with Mel Blanc, as well. Asked about Porky Pig's stuttering, he'd launch into the same tale he told in Johnny Carson's guest chair and so many other places about going out and studying pigs until he decided a grunt was a stammer. Unless you reminded him that he was the second voice of Porky, replacing a guy who really did stutter, that was all you got out of Mel. At one point in our half hour and with zero inquiry from me, Mr. Lantz launched into the oft-heard-but-apocryphal saga of creating Woody Woodpecker when a real woodpecker kept interrupting his honeymoon.

But you know what? I loved it. It was like hearing Tony Bennett sing about leaving his heart in San Francisco…which probably also didn't happen.

So I didn't extract a lot of historical data or wisdom about animation from Walter Lantz but so what? I got to tell him that he was a good teacher and that he'd inspired one more kid to move towards his life's work. I'm sure there were a lot of us and that he only got to hear it from a very small percentage.

If you haven't read my earlier item about Peter David disguising himself as the Green Hornet at WonderCon, read it now. Then read the message Peter sent me earlier today…

"As I walked past him at one point, I almost said something like, "Nice to see you, Mr. Hornet" but I didn't."

Oh yes you did, in exactly those words. As I approached you right after the panel, you said exactly that, and at first I thought you were being tongue in cheek. And I dropped my voice, said what a huge fan I was, you said "thank you" very sincerely and then you kept going. At which point I thought, My God, he wasn't kidding around. He really didn't recognize me." That was the first real proof to me that I could pull it off, because you have no idea how sure I was that people were going to go, "Hey, Peter, what's with the mask?"

I don't recall either of us saying anything but I'll take your word for it. Of course, the thing you had going for you, Peter, was that no one ever thinks a lot about the folks in those costumes. If someone had said to me, "The guy in the Hornet suit is someone you know," I could probably have figured it out. Which is not to take anything away from your clever bit of masquerading. It was a funny idea and you pulled it off. In fact, some of us prefer you with a mask, nyuk nyuk.

What this makes me think of is that at the annual Licensing Show, which is usually held in Vegas these days, you have this big hall full of powerful folks in the fields of entertainment and merchandising. They're all hanging around and talking strategy. You also have all these full-body, can't-see-the-person-inside-at-all walkaround costumes of characters that are being promoted at the show. I used to wonder if someone involved in the business end of things ever put on one of those suits and wandered about in it to eavesdrop on the competition. I stopped wondering when I mentioned this once to a fellow at one of the major toy companies and he said yes, it had happened. A vice-president at one of their rivals had gotten into a costume as — I'm not sure if he said it was Hello Kitty or something like Hello Kitty — and had spied on private business conversations involving his company. The fellow who told me this said, "One of the actors we hired to wear one of our walkaround suits was in the area where they get dressed and undressed and he saw this guy taking off the costume and recognized him."

People at his company are now a lot more careful what they say when a six-foot kitten is lurking nearby.

By the by: Someone got a photo of Peter D. dressed up as the Green Hornet. Would you have recognized him?

A small but noticeable thought rumbled through WonderCon on Sunday. It wasn't loud but I heard it at one end of the hall, then later heard it at the other. I think it had rippled through the Moscone Center like football fans doing The Wave. To some, the thought was a fear. To others, it was a shrug and a nod to the inevitable and it went roughly like this: "In five years [some said "three"] this convention is going to be the kind of behemoth they have down in San Diego…maybe not quite as big but big enough to be in that same category." The place was packed all three days and the Moscone Center has loads of room for expansion.

Just a thought. Nothing to panic about…yet.

Dealers seemed to be doing a great business, folks seemed to be having a grand time. There were a lot of great costumes around, if that matters to you.

One costumed gent was kind of intriguing. I saw him sitting in the audience for our Animation Writers Panel on Friday, then I saw him here and there around the con. He was a quiet guy dressed like the Green Hornet and sitting by himself. As I walked past him at one point, I almost said something like, "Nice to see you, Mr. Hornet" but I didn't. Little did I suspect that lurking behind that mask was my friend Peter David.

Peter had not been billed as a guest at the convention but a company had brought him out to appear on a presentation for a videogame he worked on. I'm not sure if it was the videogame company or Peter who had this thought but someone didn't want him seen all over the con before the panel late Saturday afternoon. The idea was to make his appearance there be more surprising, more special. The trouble (for Peter) was that he arrived on Friday and didn't want to sit around his hotel room for a day and a half.

The solution? Dress up as the Green Hornet and mingle freely at the convention. No one knew it was Peter and I gather he enjoyed viewing the con from that perspective. After the panel, he unmasked and all of us — who've written so many stories about secret identities and folks hiding behind masks — thought it was a pretty nifty move.

Other than that, it was a fun but uneventful day. I did two panels, the first being our annual "Art of the Cover" discussion as to what makes for a good comic book cover. We showed examples of the work of, and chatted with Adam Hughes, Bill Sienkiewicz, Amy Reeder, Frank Quitely and Francis Manapul. Very interesting shop talk. Later, I did a panel interviewing my longtime friend (about four decades), Paul Levitz. As with Saturday's interrogation of Len Wein, who I've known even longer than I've known Paul, I learned much about someone I thought I knew all about.

I had a very good time at the con, just being around so many people I like. I hope you got to be there. You'd have enjoyed yourself, too.

I suppose by now you all know this but just in case…

If someone, be they friend or stranger, sends you an e-mail that merely contains a link to some website — or a link to some website with a generic subject or message like, "Here's something you'll enjoy," do not click on that link. Repeat: Do not click on that link. Many viruses or worms attack the address book on your computer and send out such messages. When folks click on the link, they expose themselves to the same virus or even one that's worse.

Another trick is to include in the subject line or the message itself something that causes your curiosity to prick up, like: "Someone is talking about you on this website." Again, don't click.

This morning, I'm getting a lot of such messages directing me to a variety of sites but more specifically a page on each named "vci.htm" or "vci.html." I don't know what's waiting there for me but I'll bet it's nasty and I'm not counting on my virus-checker program to protect me.

But you're smart. You already know this stuff.

I didn't hear an official announcement but word around the hall was that admissions had hit capacity and had to be capped off in some way. If you tried to make your way down the aisles of WonderCon yesterday, that was easy to believe. It seemed like everywhere I tried to walk, I was blocked by someone's photo-op as folks with digital cameras clogged foot traffic to take pictures of other folks in interesting costumes.

Outside the convention hall, by the way, the key word seems to be "milk." On Friday, there was a person dancing about dressed as the rabbit from Nestle's Quik while associates handed out free samples of chocolate milk. Yesterday, men with huge, refrigerated milk cartons strapped to their backs offered you little cups of soy milk. Today, I'm expecting to get there and see live cows.

The soy milk dispensers were very odd. The men filled little cups for you via a hose and spout that came around from the containers strapped to their backs. In most cases, the spouts were positioned almost between their legs so from certain angles, it looked like they were giving urine specimens. Like some of us needed yet another reason not to warm to the idea of soy milk.

Inside, most exhibitors looked to be doing brisk business…though one small press publisher who flagged me down seemed distraught that he'd been there a whole day-and-a-half and no one had come by to option his character for a major motion picture. If I had to single out trends in the category of New Stuff Being Promoted, I would say that zombies are still big, as is making your character easily mistakeable for Hello Kitty. Needless to add, there are a few entrepreneurs who are attempting to do both with the same property.

I did my four panels. The first was about the history of WonderCon…and I think some in the audience learned that running one of these shindigs ain't as easy as they thought. It was a good panel, plus there was cake.

This was followed by The Sergio and Mark Show. I refer you to this report, though I caution that a few of the remarks attributed to Sergio were uttered by me and vice-versa. Also, our collaborators are Tom Yeates and Tom Luth, despite how their names are spelled at this moment in that article.

Next up for me was a panel on Creators' Rights, which largely amounted to reminding creators that they have rights. A couple of folks in the audience seemed puzzled at the difference between placing your work on the Internet and releasing it into the public domain. These are not the same things even if some who then use your work without permission think so. The panel featured Marv Wolfman, Joe Field, Mike Friedrich and Michael Lovitz and some of us had to explain things like that. (A big question on these panels always seems to be "How do I prevent my work from ever being stolen?" That's a lot like asking how you can make sure that no one ever steals your car. You can park it in the safer places and you can put an alarm on it…but that doesn't mean someone can't steal it. It also doesn't mean that you never really owned the car to begin with or were wrong to try and protect it.)

And I rounded out my panel-hosting day by interviewing my friend of more than four decades, Len Wein. I found out that Len's favorite food is meat loaf. Or was that his favorite singer? No matter. It was a fun chat even if we never got as far as Wolverine.

Back I go for another day of this. I'm enjoying myself and from what I can tell, just about everyone else is, too.