Monthly Archives: February 2018

Eighteen thousand dominoes. If you don't believe me, count 'em!

I got a lot of mail concerning the long, long post about The Amazing Owen. First up is this from Disney Legend Floyd Norman…

Absolutely loved the Owen Fitzgerald story. He saved my ass more than once during my seven year stint at Hanna-Barbera.

Finally, Mr. Fitzgerald has to be the most amazing artist I've worked with in my career, and I've worked with a lot including the "Disney greats." Owen was beyond amazing, and naturally he was one of the most gentle and humble individuals I've ever met.

A story well told. Thanks.

There you have it: Independent verification of what I said. And I should have mentioned something else about Owen, which was that he couldn't draw with a model sheet in front of him. Animation artists, as we all know, are always being handed pages with front, side and back views of characters that they have to draw. Owen would study the model sheet, put it away and then draw the characters in every possible position from memory.

That was the way he had to work. The Laff-a-Lympics comics he drew for me featured about 35 different characters and Owen, who had worked earlier on the TV series, didn't need any reference on them. He remembered exactly what they all looked like.

The next topic for discussion is whether he really and truly, as I believed, never got credit on a comic book job until his last few jobs which he did for me. Steven Rowe writes…

Back when I wrote an article on Owen Fitzgerald, I mentioned that most of his work was unsigned and unaccredited — except for his first and his last. If his last three were credited, then that makes my comment less funny, if it was funny at all. However, three early works were signed, so thus his early and his last work…Check Coo Coo Comics #24-25, and 29 (and ignore 23) to see "Fitz"'s very early signed work.

Well, there's a nice symmetry: Credits on his first three comic book jobs in 1946 and credits on his last three in 1978…but nothing (apparently) in-between. The thing that was interesting was that Owen did not expect or particularly want a credit line on what he considered someone else's strip. When he did the Dennis the Menace comic books, it was like, "Why should my name be on them? That was Hank Ketcham's comic!" I kinda talked him into letting me put his name on the jobs he did for me and he was pleased…but he wouldn't have cared one bit if I hadn't done that. Hanna-Barbera occasionally left him off the end credits of shows he worked on and it didn't bother him a bit.

Lastly, Brian Stanley wants to know…

Regarding your post on Owen Fitzgerald, I assume you won't name names but I think we'd be interested to hear if the artist who only produced two pages kept his reputation as "someone just as fast and just as reliable" or thereafter had difficulty getting hired.

Good question and I should have covered this. The artist in question later apologized profusely to me, admitting he'd erred by accepting too much from different editors at the same time. He was otherwise so reliable and good that I not only forgave him, I gave him other work…which he delivered precisely on time. If he had screwed up that way often, he would soon have had trouble getting hired…but since this one incident seemed atypical, it didn't hurt him.

A panda eating a carrot. Thank you, Peter Cunningham…

The days we go without a Trump Dump on this site are generally days when I stay off political and news sites.  Something needs to be written that day for what I jokingly call my writing career and I decide that thinking too much about Donald Trump will distract me and maybe put a dent in my sense of humor…so I avert my eyes.  Today is not one of those days…

• As we all expected, Trump is congratulating himself on the fabulous, record-setting ratings for his State of the Union address.  He was going to do that no matter what the numbers were and, of course, they weren't that great.  You get the feeling that after Trump eats a bowl of Froot Loops, he tells everyone, "No one has ever eaten a bowl of Froot Loops better than I just did"?
• There are certain lines of political hyperbole that I never believe…like when someone vows to pass a Constitutional Amendment to right what they see as some egregious wrong.  That almost certainly means they are not going to raise a finger to do anything about passing a Constitutional Amendment.  By the same token, saying something is "Worse than Watergate" pretty much guarantees that it isn't.  But Lucian K. Truscott IV (not to be confused with all the other Lucian K. Truscotts out there) says that's what's going on with Trump and Obstruction of Justice is "Worse than Watergate" and he makes a good case that it is.
• Sean Illing on why the effort to discredit the F.B.I. is so unprecedented and dangerous.  It makes you think that Trump and his mob are terrified of what may come out about their self-dealing and double-dealing.
• Matt Yglesias explains what we know of Trump's proposals on Infrastructure. We don't know much because apparently Trump doesn't know much except that it sounds good in a speech to say he has some.  And he must figure there's some way to shovel a lot of government money to him and the people with whom he does business.
• Jonathan Chait on the empty promises and fibs that filled Trump's State o' the Union speech.  Note what Trump says about "clean coal."  Contrary to what some people think, there actually is something called "clean coal" and it's very expensive and difficult to produce.  When Trump talks about "clean coal," he's not talking about that stuff.  To him, all coal is "clean coal."
• Daniel Larison explains why it would not be a good idea to launch a military strike against North Korea.  And isn't it horrifying that such a piece even needs to be written these days?
• And finally, you can find a lot of fact-checks of the State of the Union speech online.  Here's Politifact's.

I thought Stephen Colbert's post-speech live broadcast was pretty good…and kudos to his writers for assembling that monologue on a tight deadline.  Once upon a time, major speeches were followed by much better "instant analysis" than we now get from our newspeople.  Maybe the networks should turn than job over to their late night comedians.