Monthly Archives: June 2013

Tomorrow could be a very good day or a very bad day for members of racial minorities who want to marry someone of the same sex.

Glen Cadigan writes…

In Tales of My Father #3, you say that Mort Weisinger was fired from DC. Everything that I've ever read on the topic (including that written by Weisinger himself) says that he retired. So I guess my question is, is this one of those, "He quit before he could get fired," stories or are you just misremembering?

No, I was just oversimplifying a rather complicated matter because it wasn't relevant to the story I was telling. There are several different accounts of why Mort Weisinger left DC, and all of them had to do with the fact that he'd sold a novel called The Contest that he had allegedly written. (Bob Haney claimed to have ghost-written at least half of it and Bob said that other writers at and around DC, including David Vern, did what he didn't.)

At the time, there were a lot of authors around New York cobbling up books intended to replicate the success of Jacqueline Susann's best-sellers like Valley of the Dolls. Weisinger had been a judge at the Miss America pageant — this was back when anyone cared about the Miss America pageant — and on the strength of that and his connections in the publishing world, he got this deal to "write" his book about a mythical pageant and all the sex 'n' drugs that went on behind the scenes. He made a ton o' money off it and I believe it even got optioned for a movie before publication and he made another ton o' money off that.

In the meantime, things were changing at DC as the company was sold to the firm that would eventually come to be known as Time-Warner. Weisinger had for a long time been jockeying to be named Publisher or Editor-in-Chief or something more than just the editor of the Superman titles. There were folks in the firm who didn't even want him doing that, let alone running the whole outfit. Irwin Donenfeld, who'd been Editorial Director, was to be ousted in the corporate takeover and at some point, Weisinger seemed to believe he was the logical, perhaps only choice to take over that job. He was therefore quite unhappy when Carmine Infantino got it. The higher Infantino rose in the company, the more he began to tamper with the Superman titles…and he even took one of them, Superboy, away from Weisinger.

As you may remember, Weisinger had asked me to write a Krypto story for the rear of that comic. I submitted one which, in hindsight, I'm kinda glad wasn't published. I found a copy of it a few years ago, gave it a read and made that face that Edvard Munch depicted in "The Scream." Really awful. The best thing I can say about it was that it was (a) neatly typed and (b) better than a Jimmy Olsen script of mine Weisinger had rejected. Why he liked the Krypto story, I have no idea…but he wrote one day to say he was buying it and that was the last I heard from Mort Weisinger. And before long, I saw that Murray Boltinoff was editing Superboy.

A few years later, I asked Nelson Bridwell, who'd been Weisinger's assistant, wha' happened. He said Superboy had been wrested from Weisinger as one of many "eviction notices" that had been served on him, the biggie being Infantino being installed in the top job. Oddly enough, Jack Kirby had used the same term — "Weisinger's eviction notice" — to describe his own hiring at DC over, reportedly, Weisinger's objections. Weisinger didn't like the Marvel style (i.e., Jack's) and didn't like Jack personally due to encounters during Jack's previous tours of duty at DC. He also didn't like Jack's old partner, Joe Simon, and it was reportedly because of Weisinger's insistence that DC canceled Simon's 1968 Brother Power the Geek comic before receiving any sales figures on it.

This doesn't make Mr. Weisinger sound all that wonderful so I should point out that he was a very successful editor of comic books who had a lot to do with Superman being successful from the mid-forties 'til around 1970. As editor of those books, he was a target for anyone who wanted to move up in that company. The person who controlled Superman was, almost by definition, the most important person at the firm…and he was in many ways more qualified for the CEO job at DC than the guy who got it.

At some point, Weisinger totalled up all those eviction notices, looked at the money he'd made off The Contest and an advance on his next book (which I'm not sure was ever written) and decided to get out before he was forcibly removed. True, he officially retired but everyone I talked to back then who knew him, including Bridwell and Weisinger's old partner Julius Schwartz, said he felt squeezed out. I met him briefly at the DC offices on what I think was his last day. I don't think it's that much of a stretch to say he was fired.

Jon Stewart appears on Egypt's version of The Daily Show. Don't worry. They speak in English after a while…

I don't particularly care about Paula Deen, a woman I'd barely heard about before it got out that she uses the "n" word. I do kinda care about racism and I hope someone somewhere will remind people that there's a lot more to not being a racist than to not say the "n" word.

I worked once (briefly) for a guy I thought was a racist. He did not use the "n" word. He even hired black people occasionally but it worked like this: If a black person walked in and applied for employment, it was more or less presumed that he was stupid and criminal until he proved otherwise. When a white person walked in, it was the opposite.

There were a few black employees…folks who'd made the cut. The boss talked about them like they were cocker spaniels who'd learned somehow to talk. Once he said of one, "You see? He proves that if a negro applies himself and cuts out that 'black power' crap, he can compete with the white man." I would say that's the language of a racist but the boss didn't think he talked like one because he didn't use the "n" word. And of course, he pointed to the black employees as proof he wasn't bigoted.

Actually, these days, I'm more inclined to think that using the "n" word is as much a sign of stupidity as racism. You'd think even a person who had a deep, abiding repulsion or contempt for other races would at least have enough smarts to not let it out in such a gratuitous manner. Then again, you'd think that male Republican members of Congress would have figured out that they can't talk about rape without looking like insensitive, sexist idiots. And still they do.

I had three of these calls yesterday…

CALLER: Hello, may I speak to Mr. Evanier? [mispronounces "Evanier"]

ME: You're speaking to Mr. Evanier. [corrects pronunciation]

CALLER: Good afternoon, Mr. Evanier. [same mispronunciation] How are you today?

ME: I'm waiting for surgery.

CALLER: Great. This is [alleged name of caller] from [name of construction company]. You were very nice when we talked last August and you said to give you a call around this time to discuss the work you wanted to do on your home.

ME: You're lying to me. We never talked about that.

[CLICK!]

I wonder how many of the calls they make end like that. And I wonder how many people "remember" their previous conversation which never happened.

Late in the day, I got a call from an extremely stupid person who introduced themselves with some sort of impressive-sounding title with DirecTV. Ever since I cancelled my multi-decade contract with that satellite TV firm and switched to Time-Warner Cable, I've been half-hoping that someone from DirecTV would call with a great offer to go back with them. I've received a few mailed offers for rates and services they never offered me when I was a loyal, trusted customer but they're not to the point where I'm ready to leap back.

The gent who called me was assigned to try and get me back…and what struck me is that he didn't know anything about the system he was trying to talk me out of. I told him I now have the top-of-the-line TiVo and it doesn't work with DirecTV. He went into a sales pitch extolling their DVR, which is called the Genie, and told me that TiVo was dying out, everyone's getting rid of them and getting DVRs instead. I told him a TiVo is a DVR. He told me that unlike a TiVo, a Genie has a 1 terabyte drive. I told him my TiVo has a 2 terabyte drive.

Finally after a few more of these, I asked him if any DirecTV channels were copy-protected. I know they weren't when I got rid of the service a few weeks ago but I don't like that, for example, HBO and Comedy Central are copy-protected on Time-Warner Cable. This means I can't copy their shows over to my PC to store and even edit out clips like I can with my TiVo. He asked, "What do you mean?" I explained what I meant and he said, "Oh, no. You can't copy any of our shows to your computer. That's against the law."

No, it isn't. In fact, DirecTV sells an add-on to the Genie called the GenieGO that copies shows to your computer. But when I started to tell him this, I guess he realized he wasn't going to make a sale here. He suddenly blurted out, "Have a nice day" and hung up on me.

The thing that struck me about the call was how it wasn't like these endless unwanted solicitations I get from contractors. They're not going to get my business no matter what they say…but to DirecTV, I am gettable. Give me the right deal and you get me back. He didn't do that. In fact, he didn't offer any numbers at all…just the promise that I'd "save thousands."

The DirecTV telemarketing department is said to be ruthless. I've heard it's easier to quit The Mob than it is to quit DirecTV once and for all. I'm going to guess I'll get another call in just a few days…and one the following week and then the week after. Let's see how long they go before they try the ol' desperation tactic by assigning someone who knows what he's talking about.

Last September after Marvin Hamlisch passed away, the Pasadena Pops — an orchestra he'd often conducted — staged a free tribute concert on the steps of the Pasadena City Hall. I wanted to go and couldn't…so here's a moment I missed, the singing of "What I Did For Love." The first solo singer you hear is the wonderful Valerie Perri and if you want to find out how much I like her, enter her name in the search box here. The other two singers are Lisa Vroman and Jason Alexander and they're pretty darn wonderful, too. So was Marvin…

They tell me I'll be having my knee surgery on Monday so that's good. I'm not able to walk for more than about two minutes (or thirty seconds going up or down stairs) without it feeling like someone has taken a backhoe to it. I'm getting along okay but that's largely because I'm not trying to do much more than sit here and write, go in and sleep, hobble to the bathroom and occasionally get up the nerve to go downstairs to feed cats or me. I'm fretting not so much about the surgery but about whether I'll heal sufficiently in the 24 days I'll have before Comic-Con International, which convenes 27 days from today. If I don't, I'm thinking of arranging for one of those royal sedan chairs to transport me around the convention. Paula Deen has offered the services of some Nubians to carry it and me.

The con, of course, starts the evening of July 17 with Preview Night, the night when we all get to preview how mobbed the thing will be. On the four days that follow, I will be moderating thirteen panels, including Spotlights on Leonard Maltin and Tony Isabella, our traditional two Cartoon Voice Panels, the usual Sergio-Mark panel, Cover Story, The Business of Cartoon Voices (that's the one where we tell wanna-bes how to maybe get into the business), a tribute panel about Joe Kubert, the annual Jack Kirby Tribute Panel (with special guest Neil Gaiman), Quick Draw! (with special guest cartoonist Neal Adams) and several others I'll plug here well in advance.

The passing of Kim Thompson has hit the industry pretty hard. I suppose there was someone out there who didn't like the guy. You can't be in a position of power, with the ability to say, "No, we won't publish your book" without somebody not liking you. But if someone felt that way about Kim, I sure never heard it. One of the highest compliments you can pay someone in that position was utterly applicable to Kim. When he said he'd do something, he did it. I wish everyone in publishing was like that. Heck, I wish everyone in the world was like that. I expect there will be a panel at the con to remember Kim and folks will tell stories that underscore that.

Thanks to all who've written me to encourage more Tales of My Father. There will be more. You may also get stuck with a couple of Tales of Various Uncles.

And thanks to all of you who backed Carol Lay's Kickstarter.  One of the things that has made me happiest in my hour of agonizing knee pain is to see her total go over the top as it did last night.  You will all be rewarded with a great comic book and whatever rewards apply to your pledge level.  If you didn't pledge, there's still a few hours left to pile on and get your copy and bonuses.  This blog may not have the most readers but it has the best readers.

Here's another one of those great photos taken on the set of The Dick Van Dyke Show. [WARNING: Do not click if you do not want to see Mary Tyler Moore with her hair in curlers…very disillusioning to those of us who thought she just looked that good naturally…] Thanks again to Bill Lentz for letting me know about this.

Okay, so I lied. I'm going to hector you one more time about pledging for Carol Lay's Kickstarter. This will make it possible for one of the comic field's most innovative cartoonists to bring forth her newest creation, Murderville. I want to see this thing and you may not know it yet but you do, too. She's real good.

As I write this, she's a little over $2500 from her goal and it's got 38 hours to go. Boy, would it break my heart to see this one fall short…so please go over there and pledge. She has some great deals where you can get a piece of Carol Lay artwork…like an original from her syndicated strip Story Minute for a $175 pledge. That's a steal.

Please go pledge. And if you're afraid to get involved with Kickstarter, this is a great time to learn and join up.

I'll watch just about anything with Buster Keaton in it. This only runs a minute…

Michele Bachmann says that if you're unemployed, you deserve to starve. Isn't this woman about to be unemployed?

Ezra Klein notes that the popularity of Obamacare has a lot to do with whether pollsters are referring to it as "Obamacare." I'd like to see them ask people how they'd feel if Congress repealed Obamacare and replaced it with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. I have the feeling a lot of people would say, "Great! Anything is better than Obamacare!"

This is a Tale of My Father but it's also the story of how I broke into the profession which I've now been in for…well, it's 44 years, almost to the day.

I got out of high school in June of '69 and said to mine old self, "Okay, if you're going to become a professional writer, now's the time." I was 17 and I'd actually submitted a few things to comic book editors before then…but only because they'd asked me.

Previously, I'd written a lot of letters to comic book letter pages. This was back when comic books actually had letter pages and I've given up on my long-ago pledge that all of mine always would. But most of them had them then and I think about 90% of the letters I sent in were published…some rewritten a lot by the editors not because I hadn't said what I'd said well but because I hadn't said what they wanted the letters they published to say. Like, I wrote a letter in to Wonder Woman saying I hadn't liked the latest issue and someone — perhaps the book's editor, Robert Kanigher — had omitted a "not" here and there and completely rewritten one or two sentences so suddenly, I liked that issue. Heckuva thing to do to a 14-year-old kid who isn't being paid.

Still, I was proud to have so many of my letters published and my father, when I showed him the issues, acted like I'd just sold my first novels to Random House for a huge advance. You could see the faintest glimmer of hope in his eyes: Hey, maybe my son isn't destined for a life of poverty and heartbreak if he tries to become a professional writer. That kind of glimmer.

Little did either of us know. Getting into a comic book letter page back then wasn't as great a feat as it seemed. All you had to do was construct sentences with nouns and verbs in them and get the punctuation vaguely right. As I would learn when I got into the industry, very few letters were received and most of them weren't far removed from a Crayola® scrawling of "I LIKE YOUR COMIC" with the "E" backwards. Still, I felt a little closer to my beloved comic books since I was in them, albeit by a technicality…and my father had that glimmer. And my letters led to three separate editors — Mort Weisinger and Jack Miller at DC, Dick Giordano at Charlton — encouraging me to write and submit scripts for their books. That sure made all that letter-writing worthwhile…or looked like it might.

Weisinger had me write some Jimmy Olsen stories, rejected them all, then suggested I do a Krypto story for the back of Superboy. Miller had taken over Metal Men and wanted me to take a crack at that book. Not only would that have been a nice credit but I might have displaced Robert Kanigher as writer, thereby exacting some revenge for him rewriting my letters. Giordano needed ghost stories.

I had more or less written-off comic book writing as a job. Today, thanks to the Internet and Federal Express, folks who write comic books can and do live anywhere. Back then in every interview I read in fanzines, editors insisted you had to live in New York or reasonably near their offices. Born 'n' bred in Los Angeles, I had no intention of migrating, especially after I was accepted by U.C.L.A. So I just thought, "Okay, so comic books, as much as I love 'em, aren't something I'm destined to write." I could live with that but as it turned out, I didn't have to. The industry in its odd way came looking for me starting with those invites from editors.

They led to a lot of scripts being rejected but then in rapid succession, each of those three editors did the same two things in this order…

1. He accepted a script I'd submitted and congratulated me on making my first sale and then…
2. Before he processed the paperwork to pay me for that script, he got fired.

Well, to be technically accurate, Mr. Giordano wasn't fired. It's just funnier to say all three got fired. After telling me he wanted to buy a script I'd submitted for The Many Ghosts of Dr. Graves, Mr. Giordano quit Charlton to accept a position at DC where one of the editors he replaced was Jack Miller, who had just told me he was going to buy a script I'd written for Metal Men. But Giordano didn't get Metal Men and that writing assignment was filled, not by me.

I was not disappointed or discouraged at all. I'd written-off comic books, remember. This was all bonus stuff to the career I expected to have. It was like someone had told me, "You may have won the lottery" and then called back to say, "No, you didn't." I was back where I'd started and since I regarded the scripts as batting practice, I'd suffered no real loss, especially since I'd been wise enough to not tell my father what I was doing.

(I was not, however, wise enough to not tell my friends at the Comic Book Club. For months thereafter, every time a new issue of Metal Men, Superboy or Dr. Graves came out, a couple of members would heckle me, "Hey, when are these alleged scripts of yours coming out, liar boy?" If you are an aspiring writer and you learn no other lesson from me, learn to keep your mouth shut until you actually have the check. Even when it seems 99% certain, wait until you have the check…and to be real safe, wait until it clears.)

All of that happened before I'd graduated from University High (rah!). Once I did, I had to figure out what would be my next…really, my first step. I didn't like submitting to editors in far away cities. I decided that at least to start, I wanted to try and sell an editor in the L.A. area so I could go in, talk to the guy and learn more about what I'd done right or, more likely, wrong. I scanned the newsstands and discovered that Laugh-In magazine, based on the then-popular TV show, was published in Los Angeles. In fact, its offices were right up there on Highland Avenue in Hollywood, not far from the comic book shops I visited via bus about once a week. So I bought the current issue, went to the comic shops and found a few back issues to buy, and studied them that evening. Then I sat down and wrote six articles in the style of the magazine, which resembled a low-budget MAD more than it resembled the TV series.

The next day, I took the bus up to Hollywood and Highland with my six articles and walked a few blocks to the building that housed Laufer Publishing Company. I stood outside for a few minutes, steeling up my unsteeled courage to go in and try to sell my writing cold to a total stranger. That was the first time I'd ever done that and it was darn near the last.

Finally, I went up, found the receptionist, cleared a hot tub of phlegm from my throat and said, "Could you tell the editor there's a struggling young comedy writer here who'd like to see him?"

Without missing a beat, she picked up the phone, pressed a button and said, "George, there's a struggling young comedy writer out here who'd like to see you."

I could hear most of what he said through the receiver and then she repeated it for me: "He said if you come back in an hour, he'll give you all the time you need." I thanked her, went out and got a slice of pizza, then came back and sold the editor three of the six articles I'd written the night before. He said, "If you don't mind waiting about twenty minutes, I can have them cut you a check right now." I said I didn't mind waiting twenty minutes for that and I wondered to myself how he'd manage to get fired before those twenty minutes were up. Somehow, he did not…and I walked out with his urging to submit more and an impressively large check.

It was way more than my father was making per week and he didn't understand. He thought I was selling drugs or something. Was the check even real?

As it turned out, it was but it was the last money I'd make from Laugh-In magazine. The editor wasn't let go twenty minutes after deciding to buy something I'd written but he was, two weeks later. In fact, they not only fired him, they fired the whole magazine, shutting down production. It was so unexpected that the editor hadn't even gotten around to reading the second batch of material I handed in…so none of it was purchased and the material I'd sold him that first day never saw print.

Still, it was a definite step up in my career. This time, at least, I'd gotten a check before my editor was fired…and I did wind up writing other things for Laufer's ongoing publications which were mostly in the area of teenage fan stuff and movie star gossip.

My father couldn't understand my "salary" — and he kept using that term, which was part of the problem. I'd made a lot my first week working for this company. I made nothing the next week. I made something in-between the week after. He understood the concept of a freelance writer but he had a little trouble with the concept of freelance pay. I wrote things every week but I didn't get paid every week…so weren't they cheating me those weeks? It all averaged out to a decent income, a notch higher than his…but what the hell was my salary? And how come I was home so much instead of going into an office every day like he did?

I mean, that's how jobs worked, right? You went into the office all day, worked from 9-to-5 or 8-to-4 or some set hours…and then on payday, they gave you a check for a fixed amount, less deductions. My checks also didn't have any deductions. What was that all about? (He worked for the Internal Revenue Service, remember…) And when he asked me when payday was, I had to say, "I don't know. I think they pay me whenever they get around to it."

I was actually doing rather well as a professional writer. My first six months, I made more than he was making…but it all seemed very suspicious and unKosher to him. And unsteady. He was right about the unsteady part…but as I began to sell to more and more markets, I got fairly confident that I could keep it up for a while, maybe even the rest of my life. Now, I just had to convince my father. One of these days when I write one of these, I'll tell you how I did that.

Kim Thompson, co-publisher at Fantagraphics Books, died this morning from the lung cancer he'd been battling since last February. He was 57 years old and he passed with his wife Lynn at his side. His other partner (and friend of 3.6 decades) Gary Groth has posted a much better obit than I could ever assemble — so I'll just tell you a little about Kim…

Kim was a man of great humor and industry.  He had a great laugh — a really great, from-the-gut laugh, the kind only found in people who love the world around them enough to find things funny.

The vast body of books of comic art he published, edited, nurtured and otherwise midwifed testify to how good he was at all he did.  The overflowing shelf of Eisner Awards also makes the point, though not as well. Check out the books themselves.

He had a passion for presenting the best material Fantagraphics could get its mitts on and presenting it in the best possible way. I knew this before Carolyn and I started working with him to bring forth the collections of Walt Kelly's Pogo…but I don't think I expected to like working with Kim as much as I did. He met every problem with grand spirit and you could hear the gears whirring as he tried to figure out, "Okay, how do we solve this and make the book better?"  That was always his first concern.  I'm not sure he even had a second concern but if he did, it was a distant second.  It's so sad to lose a guy like that.  So sad.

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy visit New York in 1932…