Monthly Archives: June 2011

Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark opened the other night on Broadway to reviews that would probably close any other show…but this isn't any other show so who knows? There might be enough interest out there to keep it going a while. This notice by Ben Brantley was pretty typical of about a dozen I read.

If you have the slightest interest in MAD magazine, enjoy this slide show about the publication from the files of Life magazine.

And it's time once again to avoid the way-too-obvious joke about giving someone the finger and make this year's announcement…

SAN DIEGO — Bob Haney and Del Connell have been selected to receive the 2011 Bill Finger Award for Achievement in Comic Book Writing. The choices, made by a blue-ribbon committee chaired by writer/historian Mark Evanier, was unanimous.

The Bill Finger Award was instituted in 2005 at the instigation of comic book legend Jerry Robinson. Each year since then a committee has selected one living and one deceased writer for the award, which is given out during the Eisner Awards ceremony at Comic-Con International: San Diego.

"This award is a corrective of sorts," says Evanier. "Bill Finger never received the recognition or rewards he deserved, so Jerry Robinson proposed an award in his name. It's to recognize and honor other writers who have contributed an impressive body of work but who haven't received the laurels they deserve. Del Connell, for example, wrote and/or edited thousands of comic book stories, and I'm not sure he ever got his name on a single one. Millions of readers enjoyed the work without a clue as to who had created it."

Bob Haney began writing comic books in 1948, freelancing for a wide array of publishers, including Fawcett, Standard, Hillman, Harvey, and St. John. In 1955 he began a long association with DC Comics, where he wrote hundreds of scripts in the genres of war, western, mystery, romance, and of course, superheroes. He is best remembered for his work on The Brave and the Bold, The Unknown Soldier, Teen Titans, Aquaman, World's Finest Comics, and especially Metamorpho, which he co-created with artist Ramona Fradon, and The Doom Patrol, which he co-created with writer Arnold Drake and artist Bruno Premiani. Haney retired from comics in the late 1980s and passed away in 2004.

Del Connell began working as an artist at Disney Studios in 1939 and soon segued into the story department. He contributed to many shorts and features, including The Three Caballeros and Alice in Wonderland. He began writing Dell Comics for Western Publishing Company as a freelancer in 1950 and joined its editorial staff in 1954, though he continued to be the firm's most prolific writer. Among the many comics he originated were Super Goof, Wacky Witch, The Close Shaves of Pauline Peril, and Space Family Robinson, which was adapted into the popular TV series Lost in Space. He eventually became editor-in-chief of the West Coast office of Western Publishing's comic book division until it ceased activity in 1987. For over twenty years, he also wrote both the daily and Sunday editions of the Mickey Mouse newspaper strip. Del, at age 94, will be on hand to accept his award.

The Bill Finger Award honors the memory of William Finger (1914–1974), who was the first and, some say, most important writer of Batman. Many have called him the "unsung hero" of the character and have hailed his work not only on that iconic figure but on dozens of others, primarily for DC Comics.

In addition to Evanier, the selection committee consists of Charles Kochman (executive editor at Harry N. Abrams, book publisher), cartoonist/historian Scott Shaw!, writer Kurt Busiek, and writer/editor Marv Wolfman.

The awards will be presented on the evening of July 22 during the Eisner Awards ceremony at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront Hotel. The 2011 awards are underwritten by Comic-Con International. DC Comics is the major sponsor; supporting sponsors are Heritage Auctions and maggiethompson.com.

Here I am. More after I unpack.

Hello from McCarran Airport and where was I? Oh, right: I'll post more about the Licensing Show when I'm home and can upload some of the photos I took.

Vegas in 108° heat has its drawbacks. It's not like 108 in a humid climate but it's still uncomfy and it really hits you when you briefly travel between one sealed air-conditioned environment and another. You can feel the oddest parts of your body dilate and contract. There are times when I want to yell at the locals in my best Sam Kinison impression, "YOU'RE LIVING IN A DESERT!!!" Perhaps most of them know that.

Some people like to roam The Strip with these long drinks in glasses that look like you could use them to pole vault…and I swear, every time I come to this town, it's like they've decided to release an even taller glass. Yesterday, Mickey and I had breakfast at an outlet of Dick's Last Resort, which is a great place to eat if you like bad food and being waited on by assholes. Anyway, there was a lady customer there getting a drink — something blue — and I'm not exaggerating when I report that her drink was taller than she was. The Margarita Girls could have done body slams in it. I don't drink that much water in a week.

Time to get on the plane. I'll continue this from another state…

And we're coming to you live via iPad from the More Buffet at the Luxor Hotel in the glittery, glamoury city of Las Vegas, Nevada. I have several hours to kill/fill before it'll be time to cab it to the airport. How better to spend them but writing, eating and blogging in a tomb that serves good all-u-can eat roast turkey?

Of the three, I'll surely be doing the least in the eating department. Not ten yards from me, one can grab unlimited desserts but I gave up desserts a few years ago. There's also a self-serve beverage bar with six (I counted) kinds of cola, six other carbonated offerings, two flavors of iced tea and a wide array of juices, plus there's hot tea, coffee, hot chocolate, beer and wine. I, of course, drink none of these. I won't even be gobbling down a lot of the roast turkey. Buffets in Vegas are now making back a lot of what they lost on me before I had Gastric Bypass Surgery.

Last night, my friend Mickey Paraskevas and I went to see Penn & Teller at the Rio Hotel. Mickey loved it and I suppose I would have too, had I not seen so many of those routines so many times. I admire the stars' ingenuity, their willingness to offend and their superhuman work ethics. I just wish they had more tricks I haven't seen twelve times on TV. I think they know this is a problem. Penn opened the proceedings by explaining they'd be offering a mix of material from their Broadway run, their off-Broadway run, TV appearances, etc. He even said he'd be identifying the new bits for us…and sure enough, there were two or three I hadn't seen before. It reminded me of the last (ever) time I paid money to see Dennis Miller and he opened by saying he'd be doing some of his "most requested" monologues…and then proceeded to recite, without a lot of enthusiasm, the same rants that had comprised a Showtime or HBO special that was recent enough to still be running several times a week. Translation: "I have no new material."

I still like you, Penn & Teller…but you're kind of forfeiting the moral right to fault other magicians who rely on the same old tricks. You know the bit you did last night where Teller demonstrates the seven basic techniques of magic? I have that on a tape of your first special for PBS and it's on Beta.

What brought me to Las Vegas was the Licensing Show where a lot of folks unveil and/or promote properties that are available for licensing and exploitation. All the classics from The Mouse to The Wabbit are represented but the new ones are the most intriguing. Some will doubtlessly be biggies but a lot will not be, as their presenters insist, "The next [Teenage Mutant Ninja] Turtles!". There are several that have loads of promotional moola behind them but I haven't seen them anywhere besides the last few Licensing Shows.

The oddest booth this year (and for obvious reasons, one of the most crowded) promoted a concept called The Margarita Girls. This is a team of young women aged approximately 18-25 who wear string bikinis and who stage wrestling exhibitions in a large wading pool filled with Margarita mix. I understand the appeal of seeing wet, nearly-naked young women putting choke holds on one another. What I don't get is the Margarita part. As a lifelong non-drinker, I admit to no familiarity with the liquid in question…but is there something about it that makes wrassling in it more exciting than going hand-to-hand in, say, water?

And by the way, I checked and they did not put salt around the rim of the pool. That at least would have been kinda funny.

Okay, I'd better get outta here before they clear me away along with the dirty dishes. I'll continue this later…maybe from the airport depending on how much time I have and what kind of Internet connection I can leech onto there.

…but this should be the last time for a while. We're coming to you today from the fabulous city of Las Vegas, Nevada where everything is fast except the Internet connections in this hotel. Last night, I could have gone downstairs and lost everything I owned in the time it took to update iTunes. But my schedule should get a whole lot better Thursday and therefore I'll have more time to neglect paying work and pursue my first love which, of course, is putting stuff up here.

No interesting Vegas anecdotes so far but an observation: This place is really getting into social networking. Everywhere I go, I'm bombarded with ads not to go in somewhere and gamble the rent money but to "friend" businesses on Facebook, give them my e-mail address, follow someone or something on Twitter, etc. Last night in one of those cheesy souvenir shops, I saw a t-shirt for sale that said "What happens in Vegas stays on Facebook." I'm not even sure there's a joke there; just that some guy sensed combining the Vegas slogan with a Facebook reference might compel the purchasing of shirts. I'm not sure he's wrong.

I also couldn't help noticing how incredibly complicated slot machines are getting. I wonder if their makers are presuming that your average consumer is getting more and more tech-savvy…

Gotta run to a business-type meeting but I'll be back if anything interesting happens. And I should be back in full force around Thursday…

Finally had time to watch the Tony Awards. What a good show…and my sense is it's just gotten better and better since CBS dropped that silly two-hour time limit and let it go three-plus. The ratings were up a bit…amazing since there were few Big Stars nominated. And as I scan the web, I see generally rave reviews, especially if you discount the homophobic ones.

Neil Patrick Harris may well be the best award-show host in the business…not that there's a whole lot of competition for the title. He's funny. He can sing and dance and he seems to have the knack of getting first-rate Special Music Material. He also doesn't act like it's The Neil Patrick Harris Show. The Oscars tend to be all about the host for about the first fifteen minutes…then he or she largely disappears and the show is low on cohesion. Mr. Harris was nicely present throughout the proceedings without dragging your attention away from what the evening was all about.

What it's about, or course, is selling tickets to Broadway shows. The awards are nice and it doesn't hurt any show's ads to be able to say "Tony-Winning." But you don't tune in for that because you haven't seen all or probably any of the shows and don't know who half the nominees are. The Tony telecast is basically about what's currently playing and why you want to go see it. I thought the numbers from Sister Act, Anything Goes, The Book of Mormon and especially Catch Me If You Can did the job there. The number from Spider-Man looked pretty uninteresting…and I guess that's a problem they have promoting it. The special effects and flying can't just be done in any old theater.

My favorite parts? The opening number, singing about how Broadway's not just for gays anymore — like something's changed — was terrific. It got me to wondering to what extent a show like this helps the part of America that's uncomfortable with homosexuality get a little more comfy. Granted, a lot of those who need to stop agonizing over the fact that there are gay people on this planet are not going to be tuning in the Tonys…but some are and tolerance can be viral, spreading (albeit slowly) from one bigoted soul to another. A friend once told me that his father had been prejudiced against gay people until he figured out that Paul Lynde was gay. Yeah, you had to be pretty slow not to figure that out the first time you saw him but some folks are maddeningly slow. The father had to stop hating homosexuals because he couldn't bring himself to hate Paul Lynde.

I also liked the number from Catch Me If You Can, the latest disconnected Mark Rylance acceptance speech, the performance from Company and the fact that some of the presenters actually said things that haven't been said by dozens of other presenters at other awards shows. A nice show. If only they all could be that good.

If you're waiting for my usual commentary on the Tony Awards, know this: I didn't see them. I'm still working on a script that records tomorrow — in less than ten hours, in fact. But the telecast sits comfortably on my TiVo and I'll let you know when I get around to watching it. Did anyone notice any jokes about the Spider-Man musical or someone who had to be bleeped or gay people on the show?

And here's a link to Part Three (the final part) of the three-part podcast in which my friends Paul Dini and Misty Lee interviewed me a few weeks ago. If you missed Part One or Part Two, you can go listen to 'em but it doesn't make a whole lot of difference what order you hear them in. You will perhaps figure out that we taped 'em all one evening over darn good pizza and then lied like rugs and pretended it was over three weeks. (Forgive me, Misty, for exposing the trick.) We all had such a good time, I think we're going to do it again soon…and I thank them and Rashy for inviting me over.

This last week, I think I've seen more of Anthony Weiner's genitalia than I have of my own. There is, alas, a powerful argument out there that he oughta go away because we all can't stop talking about this. It's like his big sin is giving us an issue that's dominating the press and news-like programming and he has to fall on his sword (no penile reference intended) so we can get on to other matters. I don't think that's a good argument but it's powerful.

A much better one is this: He represents New York's 9th congressional district. They hired him. They oughta be the ones to decide if they want him out of the job. Right now, polls say that by a wide margin, they'd like him to stay on…but of course, that's a poll, not a real vote and it's conducted with no alternative. Supposing the choice was "You can have Weiner or you can have this other guy who is identical on the issues but doesn't have this scandal eroding his effectiveness and causing you to question his judgment." Offered that, a lot of Weiner backers would probably throw him overboard. Or what if the likely replacement was like Michele Bachmann but without that strong tether to reality? They might keep him even if he started robbing convenience stores.

Keith Olbermann had an interesting idea: Weiner ought to resign, then run for his seat in the special election that would be called. The trouble with that of course is that it wouldn't be an election about anything of substance. It would be Weiner running on a platform of "I'm sorry…I'll never photograph my crotch again" competing with a slate of candidates whose platform would be "Well, I've never photographed my crotch."

I suspect this "seeking therapy on how to become a better husband" routine won't change anything and that he'll quit, disappear for a while and then come back as some sort of broadcaster. I tweeted that Current TV oughta grab him for the slot after Olbermann's, not that I expect that to happen but I'll bet he'd be good at it. My sense is that Weiner was a lot more effective at arguing on newstalk shows than he ever was at getting things done in Congress. Maybe TV is a better venue for him. It certainly is for most people who like to expose themselves, one way or the other. Eventually, down the line, he might well get back into public service, possibly running for Mayor of New York. The worst interpretation of his transgressions doesn't fare too poorly when weighed against some who've held that position.

I think the moralizing bothers me more than anything he's said to have done, especially when it comes from folks who had no problem with David Vitter or John Ensign. It also bothers me that so many folks seem to feel we have a right to see all the photos and read all the correspondence in a private consensual exchange between adults. Years ago, Larry Flynt was offering to write some pretty large checks to anyone who could come up with dirt on Senators and Congressfolks, especially Republicans. It didn't matter how you got it. You could have hidden a camera in their bathrooms or broken into their homes and stolen their diaries. If it embarrassed some public official, Larry had money for you. Andrew Breitbart is just Larry Flynt without the budget.

The main reason I'm thinking Anthony Weiner should go away is because he was foolish. After all the politicans who've been caught doing this kind of stuff, he did this kind of stuff. He must have realized what his political foes would do if they ever got their mitts on it. He did it anyway. I still think his constituents oughta decide if he remains in office but if I were one of them and I felt his seat would be filled by someone good, I'd kick him outta there…but it would not be for moral transgressions. It would be for being stupid.

My friend Marc Wielage sent me this and I had to pull myself away from my deadline to share it with you. It's an app for the iPhone called IntoNow and it's one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. I kinda/sorta understand how it works from the technical side. I'm curious as to how its inventors are going to make money off it since it's free. They're apparently going to build a new social network and like Facebook, mine their members for marketing profiles and targeted advertising. I don't care. It's still worth having.

Just be careful. Don't use it when you're watching any movie or TV show you don't want the whole world to know you're watching.

You would not believe how much work I have to get done the next few days. This board will not be barren but things will not be appearing here at my usual pace. I will also probably be worse at returning e-mails than I usually am. Do not feel neglected. I will be thinking about every last one of you.