Monthly Archives: July 2015

I was, you may recall, a big fan of The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson…and since it went off, I miss it more than I thought I would. And one of the things I liked most about it was in its later years, Mr. Ferguson's sidekick — the Gay Robot Skeleton, Geoff Peterson. Ferguson is a great ad-libber and he was matched magnificently by his robotic pal. This was because of a gentleman named Josh Robert Thompson, who operated Geoff and supplied the voice, as well as the voices of anyone on the phone, the unseen bandleader, the rhino over the fireplace and several more. He was awesomely fast and funny.

Geoff Peterson, I am informed, is presently housed in a storage locker out in the Valley. He'll be back somewhere sometime but no one knows where or when. Josh Robert Thompson, meanwhile, is not in a storage locker. He's touring with his stand-up act and doing voices for cartoons…and he'll be on our Saturday Cartoon Voice panel at Comic-Con along with five other brilliantly-talented folks. We always turn away a few hundred folks (at least) who want seats for this and the Quick Draw! event that precedes it in Room 6BCF…so if you want to see either panel, get there early. The time and more info are here on this schedule of the panels I'm hosting at Comic-Con…

Thursday July 9, 2015 at 3:30pm – 4:30pm in Room 8
THE SERGIO AND MARK SHOW
The men who bring you Groo the Wanderer show their faces and explain just how and why it is they bring you Groo the Wanderer, as well as other silly comics. It's the award-winning duo of SERGIO ARAGONES and MARK EVANIER, accompanied by the equally heralded STAN SAKAI (creator of Usagi Yojimbo), and coloring whiz TOM LUTH (if he can get away) holding court, answering your questions, and doing what they do best, which obviously is not writing little blurbs like this for the Comic-Con Events Guide.

Saturday, July 11 at 11:45am – 1:00pm in Room 6BCF
QUICK DRAW!
Once again, three supercharged cartoonists duel to their dooms with Sharpies, each attempting to outdraw all opponents. It's one of the most popular Comic-Con events, and this year it's personal. Our returning champion SERGIO ARAGONES (MAD, Groo the Wanderer) goes mano a mano against SCOTT SHAW! (The Simpsons, The Flintstones) and Disney legend FLOYD NORMAN. Plus, you can expect a few other cartoonists to get their licks in. Presiding over it all is your Quick Draw! Quizmaster, MARK EVANIER. No wagering, please.

Saturday July 11, 2015 at 1:00pm – 2:30pm in Room 6BCF
CARTOON VOICES 1
The fine art of giving voice to animated characters is again demonstrated by a dais of the best. This year, join KEONE YOUNG (Star Wars Rebels, G.I. Joe), PAT MUSICK (Rugrats, Extreme Ghostbusters), ERIC BAUZA (Ben 10, The Adventures of Puss in Boots), JESSICA DiCICCO (Gravity Falls, Pound Puppies), PHIL MORRIS (Green Lantern: The Animated Series, Ultimate Spider-Man) and JOSH ROBERT THOMPSON (Family Guy, The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson). MARK EVANIER, as usual, gets these talented folks to demonstrate what they do so well.

Saturday July 11, 2015 at 4:30pm – 6:00pm in Room 5AB
THAT 70'S PANEL
Once again, this panel talks about what was so special about comic books in the 1970s, starting with all the new talent that entered the field and bonded with the old talent. Discussing those days will be CHRIS CLAREMONT (X-Men, Wolverine), BOB LAYTON (Iron Man) DON McGREGOR (Black Panther, Sabre), DEAN MULLANEY (Eclipse Comics), and others. MARK EVANIER, who was writing Yogi Bear and Scooby Doo, will officiate.

Sunday, July 12 at 10:00am – 11:15am in Room 5AB
THE ANNUAL JACK KIRBY TRIBUTE PANEL
It's been 21 years since we lost him and we still can't stop talking about the man some called The King of the Comics. Jack Kirby may have been the greatest creative talent the field has ever seen and once again, some of his friends and fans will be discussing why. This time, it's ROB LIEFELD (Youngblood), MARV WOLFMAN (Tomb of Dracula), J. DAVID SPURLOCK (Vanguard Productions) and PAUL S. LEVINE (attorney who represented Jack). Naturally, your moderator is Kirby assistant and biographer MARK EVANIER.

Sunday, July 12 at 11:30am – 12:45pm in Room 6A
CARTOON VOICES 2
Another panel of experts at voicing animated characters convenes for your edification. They'll tell you what they do, show you what they do and probably fracture a fairy tale in the process. This time, we have JULIE NATHANSON (Final Fantasy, Spider-Man), BOB BERGEN (Porky Pig, Star Wars), MISTY LEE (Ultimate Spider-Man, Hulk and the Agents of SMASH), WALLY WINGERT (Batman: Arkham Asylum, The Garfield Show) and CHRIS EDGERLY (The Simpsons, Dreamworks Dragons). Hosting and directing is MARK EVANIER (The Garfield Show).

Sunday, July 12 at 2:00pm – 3:00pm in Room 25ABC
COVER STORY: THE ART OF THE COVER
Forget about the insides! What makes for a great cover on a comic book? This topic will be discussed and debated by some artists who've been responsible for some of the best. With KEVIN WADA (She-Hulk, Adventure Time), DAVID AJA (Hawkeye, Immortal Iron Fist), LORA INNES (The Dreamer), STEVE LIEBER (Quantam & Woody, Road to Perdition), and CHIP KIDD (Peanuts: The Art of Charles M. Schulz, Batman: Death by Design). Your host is MARK EVANIER, and that about covers it.

Sunday, July 12 at 3:00pm – 4:30pm in Room 25ABC
THE BUSINESS OF CARTOON VOICES
How does one get into the business of doing cartoon voices? Well, careers have been launched by folks coming to this panel and listening to some serious free advice from people actively engaged in the process from all sides. Explaining the industry this year is PAUL DOHERTY (secretary-treasurer of the Cunningham-Escott-Slevin-Doherty Talent Agency), actors BOB BERGEN and MISTY LEE, and your moderator (and voice director/supervising producer of The Garfield Show), MARK EVANIER. Only serious students need show up.

As always, participants and times and everything is subject to change. I suggest that if you want to get into the Cartoon Voices panels or Quick Draw!, you get there well before their start times. The line may be forming at this very minute.

It's been a while since I posted a video of George Carl, one of the funniest human beings it was ever my pleasure to see perform. Carl spent decades perfecting his act and did it all over the world in many of the top cabarets and theaters. I wish he was still around so I could see him do it live again because it really was a thing of beauty — and very, very funny…

Here's a gallery of photos from past Comic-Cons in San Diego. I was at every one of these events. The one of Shel Dorf that's captioned as him with a drawing of the Fantastic Four is wrong. That's a drawing of a different Jack Kirby cast of characters, the Forever People.

Shel, by the way, liked to decorate the early cons with these posters he made up. He would project an image from some comic book or strip on a big piece of paper and then, using a brush and ink, he would trace the image onto the paper. Several of those tracings wound up in private hands and every so often, someone contacts me to ask if what they have is really a piece of Jack Kirby or Charles Schulz original artwork. I have to break it to them gently that no, it's not that.

Here's a two-for-one. In February of 2009, I was summoned to jury duty and I posted about my one day of service in two parts. This part ran here on 2/9/09 and the portion after the little dividing line below ran the following day…

I won't be posting this 'til I get home but right now, it's 11 AM and I'm in Room 302 on the 11th floor of the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in picturesque Downtown Los Angeles. That's right: Mark has jury duty.

The summons said I had to be here at 7:45 AM which for a night person like I am sounds like greater punishment than is likely to be handed out in any courtroom in this building today. Fortunately, I discovered that if one takes an online orientation course, one can report a little later. Last night, I watched the videos and answered questions…and as my reward, I got to be here at 9:30. So I drove down in a light rain, parked where they tell you to park and hiked several blocks to this imposing structure. The route between the lot and here is quite long and by some distortion of science that otherwise exists only in M.C. Escher prints, it's uphill in both directions.

I am here under the assumption that I will not get on a jury…not that I will try not to, but it's hereditary. My father had jury duty many times. Never got on. My mother was once an extra playing a juror on L.A. Law…and remind me to tell you that story some day. She had an interesting encounter with Jimmy Smits. But the folks who pick real jurors wouldn't cast her. The last time I had jury duty, I sat there all day talking comics with one of my best friends, Scott Shaw!, who by coincidence had jury duty the same day I did. I didn't even get called to go off to a courtroom and be considered for an actual jury.

I got here on time…and don't think that's easy. The hard part was fighting my way onto an elevator amidst a horde of people who didn't seem to understand that when a car full of people arrives, you have to wait until they get off before you can get on. I finally boarded a car thanks to a lawyer (I guess he was a lawyer) who was directing traffic while he negotiated a plea bargain for some client on his cell phone.

One disadvantage of reporting late was that all the good seats in the jury waiting room were taken before I arrived. This included the dozen-or-so seats where I could have had a little table on which to use the laptop I hauled here along with me. Some were occupied by folks who had not brought laptops or work to do and who didn't seem to notice (or maybe care) that some of us had. I was about to go over to one and propose a seat swap but before I could, someone else with a laptop did and got rebuffed. And rather rudely at that. So I had to wait until a number of folks were called away to courtrooms before I could pounce on my present workspace.

The way this works is that we sit here and every so often, they call out names picked at random and those folks report to other locales in the building where they will be interrogated on their suitability and availability to serve for the particular trial. If they don't get selected, they come back here and their names are put back in the pool. The first such pick was for a trial which we could refuse because it will last an estimated ninety days.

When the lady who calls the names said that, there was a loud "Whoa" from the room and it sounded like everyone would be declining. But a surprising, perhaps encouraging number of folks said yes, they'd be willing to serve on a jury that lasted that long. These people have either a stirring sense of civic duty or an employer who pays full wages when you're on a jury. I have neither so I'd have declined if they'd called my name which, of course, they didn't. Two more groups of prospective jurors have since been called and my name was not among those the lady mispronounced.

So what do I do instead? Well, now that I have a little desk space, I can sit here and work and write stuff for the blog. It's 11:16.

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A few minutes before Noon, we're dismissed for lunch and told to report back at 1:30. As we file out, a video extols the glories of many nearby eateries…and I'd been thinking of hiking down to the Grand Central Market, where wondrous foodsellers abound. But it's semi-rainy and it takes forever to get an elevator down, which means it'll take forever-and-a-half to get an elevator back up to the 11th floor. It also dawns on me that if I come back early, I can probably claim one of the few seats where I can work on my laptop. So I decide to just duck down to the in-house cafeteria, come back up and begin writing.

On the way out of the waiting room, I bend over to pick up something and hear the sound of trouser-fabric tearing. This is not a good sound to hear, especially out in public.

A hasty sprint to a Men's Room stall later, I check and discover that I have somehow — don't ask me how, I have no idea — engineered a seven-inch tear in the front of my jeans. It starts just to the left of the fly about halfway down and continues on into my inseam. I figure that if I hold my laptop case in the proper position, no one will notice it. Later, I discover that depending on how I sit in any chair, I am subject to some interesting breezes.

In the cafeteria, I eat a very good hot turkey sandwich and some very bad mashed potatoes. How is it, I wonder, that there are bad mashed potatoes in this world? It's not like this is a complicated recipe. I'm not sure if they're instant or not…but if they're not, they should be. The basic Betty Crocker mix yields a better result.

And now it's 1:15 and I'm back at the same little desk in Room 302, waiting to hear if I have to report somewhere. The place is packed — barely enough chairs for the number of bodies. The Van Nuys courthouse, where Scott and I had our little mini-con, offered a room that looked like a shabby bus terminal but it was a lot more comfy than this one.

The potential jurors seem like a nice mix of Angelenos, weighted a bit heavy on minorities, especially Hispanic and Asian. It's hard to guess what all these people do for a living but I'd guess more blue collar than white collar and not a lot in managerial positions. One gent — the one who was using this workspace before he was called to a courtroom and I commandeered the desk — was obviously a lawyer or the next best thing. He spent his whole time here on his laptop and cellphone, talking about depositions and filing paperwork with some judge. What are the odds another attorney will want this man on a jury he has to convince?

As I eye the others in the room, I ask myself, "If I were on trial for a murder I hadn't committed, would I worry if these people would be the ones passing judgment?" There are a few I'd insist my lawyers exclude but all in all, they look like a smart crowd. Then again, I think the first O.J. jury came out of this room.

We wait. And wait. And wait some more. Two more long trials are announced and on these, we have the option of opting out. This time, most people do, perhaps because the folks who could serve on a long case are still elsewhere in the building, being considered for that 90-day one. There are also two more trials where we can't demur, where we have to go to the courtroom and be considered for service…but as ever, my name is not called.

So I sit here, alternately working on this and on an article that's due, congratulating myself on the wisdom of bringing the laptop and getting back from lunch early enough to grab this little desk. Every so often, I shift in the chair and feel something that reminds me I'm now wearing split-crotch jeans. No one calls my name.

Around 4:15, they announce that there are no more trials so we'll be dismissed. Our names will be called and as they are, we're to yell "Here!" to prove we haven't snuck out prematurely, then we're to come up, turn in our badges and receive a certificate that we've completed our service. I wait and wait as perhaps 200 people are called…until my name is finally heard, about three from the end. I head up and out, keeping my laptop case strategically in front of me. The paper I receive will excuse me if I am summoned again for jury duty within the next year.

All done. There's a long uphill hike to where I parked, made more awkward by the need to walk with my computer held over my zipper, but that's all that stands between me and the resumption of life. I march with several of my fellow jurors, none of whom got anywhere near a jury box, either. A lady who lives out in Marina Del Rey tells me this is the fifth time she's served in eight years and her experience has been like mine. She never gets called, either.

She doesn't think it's Luck of the Draw. She thinks some higher power has just decided that folks like us will never be on a jury. I tell her I'm convinced that even if I was picked to be questioned, one attorney or the other would bump me. "That's what I mean," she says. "Some higher force has decided you'll never get seated on a jury so there's no point calling your name."

I ask, "Couldn't this higher force prevent me from getting picked for jury duty in the first place?"

She says, "Higher forces can't do everything. By the way, why are you walking like that?"

A couple of folks have sent me this photo which is making the rounds. They're asking me (a) if I can identify all the comedians in it, (b) how many of them are still alive, (c) how many of them I knew or worked with and (d) what it's from. Easy…

1. The guy at the top is the recently-deceased Jack Carter. The two guys in the front are, left to right, Dan Rowan and Bill Dana. The middle row is — again, left to right — Milton Berle, Wally Cox, Soupy Sales, Dick Martin, Bob Hope, Jimmy Durante and Dick Shawn.
2. The only one there who is still with us is Bill "My name, Jose Jiminez" Dana.
3. I only really worked with Hope (briefly) and Berle (even more briefly) but I did get to talk with both of them at some length and also with Dick Martin and Soupy Sales. I once got to throw a pie at Mr. Sales.
4. This was shot on the set of a Bob Hope Special from 1966. Oddly enough, the special also featured Johnny Carson, Bill Cosby, Jonathan Winters, Don Adams, Shecky Greene, Red Buttons and Don Rickles. So the picture could have been even more impressive.

John Adams may have been obnoxious and disliked but he was right there in the thick of the Declaration of Independence. According to this article, he thought we should have celebrated American independence on the Second of July.

I suppose it's too late to change now. For one thing, it would screw up some song lyrics and movie titles. But it is interesting to know. Thanks to James J. Troutman for letting me know so I could let you know.

Here's a simple explanation of the financial crisis going on with Greece. Or at least, this is as simple as you're likely to find.

Billy Porter is (still) the star of Kinky Boots, the long-running hit on Broadway. At the performance last Friday evening, he made a touching curtain speech…

It has been announced that Comic-Con International will remain in San Diego through 2018. The new contract has been signed, which will come as no great surprise to those of you who read this blog.

I never like to say "never" but I'd be very surprised to see it move anywhere else for a long, long time. The city really wants to keep it there. The convention organizers really want to keep it there. The only possible impediment has occasionally been when someone involved in the process momentarily tried to get greedy. This deal was delayed because several of the hotels that service the convention center were trying to get out of obligations to provide a certain number of rooms at discount prices. They figured if they could, they could charge astronomical fees for those rooms. They were apparently persuaded they were trying to kill the golden gander.

I also think that people who say the con should move to Los Angeles or Las Vegas or somewhere else are unaware how complicated those negotiations and contracts could be. I'm not saying it can never be done but it's not like deciding one year to stay at the Marriott instead of the Hyatt. It's a whole new business relationship with a different pricing structure and different players now operating without hard evidence of how many will attend, what impact the con will have on local businesses, how expensive it will be to configure the convention space properly, etc.

The convention and San Diego have learned how to work together and how to do the convention in that city in that facility. While there are always ways in which it can be improved, I think they have most of the bugs out and don't need to start over again elsewhere. I also don't want to deal with the traffic around the L.A. Convention Center or near Disneyland, nor do I want to be in Las Vegas when it's 107°. Which is what it's going to be there next week while we're all in 70° San Diego.

If you want to know what it meant to be a Catskills comedian, watch these few minutes of Gene Baylos on The Dean Martin Show. Mr. Baylos was much-admired by other comedians for this sheer relentlessness on-stage and they told tales of his relentlessness off-stage. I wrote about some of this in an obit on him back in 2005. Here he is in action and keep your eye on Dean, who's probably thinking, "If I wanted to do this for a living, I would have stayed with Jerry."

Here's a rundown on which religions prohibit Gay Marriage and which ones embrace it. A few of those who forbid it seem a bit confused. For instance, in Orthodox Judaism, only a man and a woman can marry but only two men or two women can dance together.

John Cassidy on Chris Christie's chances of becoming President, which are about the same as mine of becoming Ms. Teenage USA. I'm kinda curious as to whether Christie — who'd probably lose in a landslide if he ran again for his current job — actually thinks he can get the nomination or, if not, what he expects to get out of running. I can't even imagine Fox News hiring him.

I did a stupid thing. When I wrote up the description for this year's Jack Kirby Tribute Panel at Comic-Con, I had to list a credit for each of the panelists, one of whom is Rob Liefeld. My brain was apparently in Park when I typed, "Rob Liefeld (Spawn)."

Rob Liefeld, of course, did not do Spawn. Rob Liefeld did Youngblood and Bloodstrike and lots of other fine, popular comics. Todd McFarlane did Spawn. I knew that but the wrong name came out of my head and made its way down to my typing fingers. It's on the online Program Guide that way and I think I can get that changed. It's almost certainly in the printed Program Guide that way and I'm pretty sure it's too late to get that changed.

My apologies to both Rob and Todd, two very good guys who I assume will laugh this off. I'm still embarrassed to have done it.

Robert J. Smith thinks there might just now be five votes on the U.S. Supreme Court to declare the Death Penalty unconstitutional. I do not know if that's so but if you think the decisions last week made some people angry…

In response to Donald Trump's Mexican-bashing comments, some artisan has created Donald Trump piñatas so that outraged folks can hang him and hit him with a stick. If I were Trump, I'd be pissed that the hair on the piñata looks more realistic than the hair on my head.

A few friends of mine are worried that Trump, who's currently polling in second place, might get the Republican nomination. I don't know why they're fretting because, first of all, if he did get it, he might well be the easiest of all the contenders to defeat. He has no experience in governing and no real plans to fix any of the things he says he's going to fix. I think a certain part of the population finds Trump amusing and wants him in the race because he insults those they'd like to see insulted…but they're not about to entrust their country to him.

Second of all, I don't believe he's going to get the Republican nomination. Yeah, he's running second behind Jeb Bush but so what? There was a point in the last election when Herman Cain was in first place and then a week or so when Michele Bachmann was in the lead. Newt Gingrich even at one point announced in all seriousness that he had the nomination sewed-up. This far before the actual voting, the voters have plenty of time to tell pollsters anything off the tops of their heads. They're still deciding who they like…or dislike the least.

It matters not that The Donald is in second place. Second place is 10% of Republican voters and he also has, in a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, 74 percent of Republican primary voters saying they could not support him. How do you win the nomination with an unfavorable rating like that? I'm not even sure Barack Obama has a 74 percent unfavorable rating with Republicans.

Trump has the name recognition amidst a field of contenders who aren't too well known. Of course he's going to do well now but he'll fade. The idea that he could win the presidency just on his name with no experience in government is ridiculous. That would be like Arnold Schwarzenegger becoming governor of —

Oh, wait a minute…