Today's Video Link

Here's this guy who likes to sing with himself singing with himself. This is "Good Morning," which you may remember from Singin' in the Rain. Words by Arthur Freed, music by Nacio Herb Brown…

Recommended Reading

I can only take so many articles about how if John McCain had his way, this country would (a) be bombing every country we could conceivably bomb and (b) never worry in the slightest about civilian casualties. If you're in the mood for one, click on Daniel Larison's name.

TV Funnies – Part 2

I posted this here on March 27, 2004. Everybody knows that these, like the Gold Key comics of The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Odd Couple and Gilligan's Island are all jokes, right? That I made them up? Apparently not. I've had a complaint from one of the folks behind The Grand Comics Database (A most excellent use of the Internet) that they keep getting questions why they haven't listed all these comics which must exist because Mark Evanier says they exist. Come on, people.

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Here we go with two more looks at Gold Key Comics of the sixties and seventies based on then-popular TV shows. Don't spend a lot of time searching for these on eBay as they rarely turn up. Perhaps that's why they go largely unmentioned in most of the official comic book price guides.

The only issue of the WKRP in Cincinnati comic book received limited distribution due to the problems of Western Publishing, which by then had changed the name of its comic book line from Gold Key to Whitman. For a time, they published their comics under both imprints — that is, part of the press run would say "Gold Key" and part would have the "Whitman" insignia. The ones that had "Gold Key" in the upper left were for conventional newsstand distribution, whereas the "Whitman" titles were sold on a non-returnable basis to department and toy stores, the same way Western distributed its activity and coloring books. By 1980 when they did this one issue of WKRP, they had given up on newsstand outlets so no more Gold Key editions were being published, and many books that were written and drawn were not published at all, even under the Whitman logo. (A few, like the Disney titles, were printed overseas.) It's possible that subsequent issues of WKRP were drawn but never made it to press. The writer is unknown but the art was by J. Winslow Mortimer, who at one time was a main artist for Superman and Batman. He had done a long run for Gold Key on the Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids comic, and some others, and was then drawing Spidey Super Stories for Marvel. He did a nice job drawing "Blonde Ambition," in which Jennifer (the Loni Anderson character) goes on a TV show not unlike The Dating Game, little realizing that the unseen bachelors she must pick from are her co-workers, Johnny Fever, Les Nessman and Andy Travis. As she questions them, each fantasizes about marrying Jennifer and we see these daydreams acted out. The ending of the story is a bit of a cop-out as the unctuous game show host invokes a hitherto-unknown rule and claims the date with Jennifer for himself.

Somewhat better distribution was accorded the company's M*A*S*H comic book, which is not to say you'll be able to find a copy of it. The first issue (pictured above) was also produced out of the company's New York office and featured a script by Arnold Drake and art by Sal Trapani, though Trapani was apparently assisted on penciling by Charles Nicholas, whose work was usually seen in Charlton comics.  In it, the book-length story "Steckler the Stickler" tells of a young, by-the-book lieutenant who is transferred to the M*A*S*H unit and immediately begins causing trouble as he begins to parrot obscure regulations from army manuals and to report the tiniest infractions.  Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan and Frank Burns were both fierce about rules on the series but they were medical folks first and foremost, whereas Lt. Simon Steckler isn't a doctor nor is he particularly bothered when his demands that regulations be followed gets in the way of saving lives and treating patients.  For example, in one scene he insists that a vital shipment of supplies be returned to the issuing post because the forms accompanying it were filled out improperly.  Naturally, he butts heads constantly with Trapper and Hawkeye, especially because Hawkeye is working around the clock to save the life of an injured soldier who needs some of those supplies.  It gets so bad that Margaret and Frank join forces with Hawkeye and Trapper to entrap Steckler, tricking him into violating regulations and forcing him to report himself and demand his own transfer to another unit.

I have not been able to see a copy of the second and final issue which, insofar as I know, received limited distribution in the United States due to a contract dispute over rights between Twentieth-Century Fox and H. Richard Hornberger, the author of the original M*A*S*H novels (under the pen name of Richard Hooker) whose publisher argued that the contract for the movie and TV show did not extend to comic books.  Before Western's lawyers advised that the comic be suspended, several foreign editions were reportedly published as was a special English language press run that was distributed via military bases.  When I worked for Western, I did see a proof of the cover which advertised a story called "The King of Korea."  I don't know how or if the legal dispute was resolved but I was told that the first issue of the M*A*S*H comic book had sold poorly so it's likely Western just decided to drop the entire project.

More of these in a week or so.

Tales of My Childhood #15

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My Aunt Dot was a very sweet, loving woman.  As I've related in past installments of this series, she was sometimes a bit ditsy but she was at heart a very happy, loving lady.  And she thought everything I did was adorable.  Everything.

When I was under the age of around ten, everything I did was especially adorable but it was adorable the way everything a cocker spaniel puppy does is adorable.  Once when I was six or so, I did a Jimmy Durante impression in her living room and you can just imagine how much I looked and sounded like that great entertainer.  Aunt Dot thought it was the single greatest moment in the history of show business.   For her, the top three were Judy Garland singing "Over the Rainbow," Harold Lloyd dangling from that clock face and her nephew doing Durante.  Not necessarily in that order.

Whenever I visited her home if there was anyone present who'd seen it fewer than five times, I had to perform it.  To her dying day, I think she felt I'd missed my true calling and should be touring in Durantemania.

Jimmy Durante

As I got older, I grew weary of striding through my aunt's living room singing "Inka Dinka Doo" in the raspiest version of a voice which had yet to change.  Mostly, I was tired of being cute.  When you hit a certain age, you'd like to be treated as a person of that certain age.  I especially wanted her to stop laughing and telling everyone about The Watermelon.

As much as Aunt Dot loved my Durante, what she really thought was wonderful was me doing chores like a grown-up.  When my parents and I took her and Uncle Aaron to the airport, which we did a lot, she was in ecstasy if eight-year-old me carried her suitcase.  It was as cute as…well, as if a cocker spaniel puppy had carried her suitcase.  She kept laughing and saying, "Smash your baggage, sir?", which I guess was a line she'd heard someone say on TV once.

Then one day, I went to the market with her and it was somehow up to me to carry in The Watermelon —

— which I dropped right in the middle of her living room.

I can still hear the sound of it exploding.  If this were a Don Martin cartoon, it would go KA-PLOOOP!!  With two exclamation points and three Os.

A watermelon

Aunt Dot shrieked and moaned and threw herself to the floor with a sponge and some sort of cleaner she grabbed from the kitchen, making a desperate attempt to save her beloved wall-to-wall carpeting.  No luck.  The rug had a huge discoloration for the rest of its life — and it was right in the center so you couldn't walk into the apartment without noticing it.

I felt terrible…so awful that I momentarily wondered if the proper thing to do would have been to give up buying comic books until I'd saved enough money to get all new carpeting for Aunt Dot's apartment.  This was around 1960 and if I'd made that supreme sacrifice, I might have been able to resume my funnybook collecting in time to buy the first issue I wrote of Woody Woodpecker in 1971.

It also occurred to me that maybe most of the damage was actually done by Aunt Dot and her cleaning fluid — a suspicion partially confirmed on my next trip to the public library where I researched the staining capabilities of watermelon.  I never brought this up with Aunt Dot because she suddenly saw the entire blemish in a whole new light…

She decided it was adorable.  In fact, it was in some ways better than my Durante.  And you know by now how awesome my Durante was.

Thereafter when I went to Aunt Dot's and she had anyone else there (and she always had someone else there), we had a double feature: I had to do my Durante and stand there and listen to the hilarious story of how clumsy me had ruined her living room rug by dropping The Watermelon.

One night I had a dream: I cure a dread disease or abolish war or achieve my lifelong goal of eradicating cole slaw in our lifetimes.  Whatever it is, it's big and very heroic and the world press rushes to Aunt Dot to ask her how she feels about her nephew winning the Nobel Prize.  Standing before every microphone on the planet, she says, "He was always such a bright boy…but let me tell you about the time he dropped The Watermelon.  Oh, and make sure he does Jimmy Durante for you.  Now, that's impressive!"