Monthly Archives: February 2020

My pal Jim Brochu has been mentioned many a time on this blog. He's mainly an actor and playwright these days but in his lifetime, he's done just about every job in show business apart from playing Mama Rose and topless dancing. Knowing Jim, he's probably at this very moment trying to figure out how to blend those two things before the next time I get to New York.

In the meantime, he sent me this which I quote with his permission…

I've enjoyed your featuring Lou Christie the last couple of days. In 1980, I produced a show at the Tropicana in Las Vegas which was a rock-and-roll show called "Let The Good Times Roll." The two headliners were Anthony and the Imperials, and Lou Christie.

We did fourteen shows a week and every night, Lou gave it his all. His voice was amazing. And to hear it up close was far more impressive than the records.  I am also happy to report that he was one of the nicest guys I ever worked with. Very accessible, very friendly and always 100% professional. He always had time for the fans afterwards and he and I spent early morning hours in the coffee shop together having a good laugh.

I'm very happy that he's still working and so happy that you're giving him these tributes.

Nice to hear he's a nice man — and I know Jim well enough to know he wouldn't say that if it wasn't true. I'm glad to send some attention to a guy who recorded some of my favorite songs of the sixties.

Mr. Christie's website doesn't say where he's appearing these days but if anyone hears of him appearing in Southern California — or I'd go as far as Vegas — please let me know. Here's my second-favorite hit of his…

Bernie Sanders may indeed wind up the nominee of the Democratic Party but despite what some corners of the Internet are saying, that ain't happened yet.  And I say that as someone who's about 88% decided on marking my ballot for the guy in the California Primary.  But we're living in the era when everything in the news is clickbait.  All news is Breaking News.  All disputes are someone "eviscerating" someone else.  All election developments are so significant you dare not look away.  And all contests have to be decisive proof of a Bigger Victory…until the next contest.

Many backers of that guy I'm not mentioning this weekend have come to regard all news as bogus.  I tend to regard most of it as exaggerated.  The big victories probably aren't that big.  The crushing defeats probably aren't that crushing.  Just because I'm already sick of this primary ballot doesn't mean I'm ready to believe it's over before it really is.

It's the same thing with the pending verdict in the Harvey Weinstein trial in New York.  No one outside the jury room knows how the jury's leaning but as the late journalist Jack Germond said of his profession, "The trouble is we aren't paid to say 'I don't know' even when we don't know."  A lot of experts — some of whom are only experts because we're told they are — have predictions based on the jury's questions to the judge. Some of these predictions may turn out to be right but the only certainty is that some of them will certainly turn out to be wrong. I can wait for the real answer.

We're getting an earlier start this year on the Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing…

Each year at Comic-Con International in San Diego, we hand out two of them — one to someone we hope will be with us to accept it and one, posthumously, to someone who left us but is worthy of recognition. The award was founded by the late Jerry Robinson and it recognizes a writer of comics who produced a splendid body of work but who did not receive proper recognition and/or financial reward. At the time Jerry proposed this award, that was all too true of his late friend, Bill Finger.

Mr. Finger's name now does appear on his great co-creation Batman but since others do not receive their due recognition, the awards continue. This is the annual announcement that as its Administrator, I am now open to receive nominations and suggestions for the 2020 presentation. Here's what you need to know…

1. This is an award for a body of work as a comic book writer. Every year, a couple of folks doggedly nominate their favorite artist. One guy steadfastly refuses to understand how we haven't given it to Curt Swan already. It might have something to do with the fact that Mr. Swan, though a brilliant artist. never wrote a comic book in his life. Here, once again in boldface and italics: It's for a body of work as a comic book writer.
2. "A body of work" is not one or two comics you liked written by someone relatively new to the field. Our judges do not take seriously nominations for someone who's been in comics less than twenty years.
3. This award is for a writer who has received insufficient reward for his or her splendid body of work. "Reward" can mean insufficient recognition or insufficient financial compensation or it can be, and often is, for both.
4. And it's for writing comic books, not comic strips or pulps or letters to your grandmother or anything else. We stretch that definition far enough to include MAD but that's about as far as we'll stretch it.
5. To date, this award has gone to Jerry Siegel, Arnold Drake, Harvey Kurtzman, Alvin Schwartz, Gardner Fox, George Gladir, Archie Goodwin, Larry Lieber, John Broome, Frank Jacobs, Otto Binder, Gary Friedrich, Bob Haney, Del Connell, Frank Doyle, Steve Skeates, Steve Gerber, Don Rosa, Robert Kanigher, Bill Mantlo, Jack Mendelsohn, Don McGregor, John Stanley, Elliot S! Maggin, Richard E. Hughes, William Messner-Loebs, Jack Kirby, Joye Hummel Murchison Kelly, Dorothy Roubicek Woolfolk, Mike Friedrich and E. Nelson Bridwell. Those folks, having already won, cannot win again.
6. If you have already nominated someone in years past, you need not nominate them again. You can if you want but either way, they will be considered for this year's awards.
7. If you nominate someone for the posthumous award, it would really help if you also suggest an appropriate person to accept on the honoree's behalf. Ideally, it would be a relative, preferably a spouse, child or grandchild. It could also be a person who worked with the nominee or — last resort — a friend or historian who can speak about them and their work. And if it's not a relative, we would also welcome suggestions as to an appropriate place for the plaque to reside — say, a museum or with someone who was close to the person we would honor.

Here's the address for nominations. They will be accepted until March 15 at which time all reasonable suggestions will be placed before our Blue Ribbon Judging Committee. Their selections will be announced soon after and the presentations will be made at the Eisner Awards ceremony, which is, as it always is, Friday evening at Comic-Con. Thank you…and please stop nominating your favorite artists.

Hey, for a change let's enjoy Lou Christie performing his 1965 hit "Lightnin' Strikes"…

The comic book community (which now includes the animation community and a certain amount of the live-action movie community) was jolted yesterday by the news that Dan DiDio was "out" as co-publisher of DC Comics.

The phrasing of the announcement suggested it was not a resignation without saying it was an involuntary departure.  My own contacts with Dan were always pleasant and professional and I'm sure he will thrive and succeed wherever he lands.  You have to be a smart person to have been at a company like that as long as he's been at that company like that.

I received a few calls and a number of e-mails asking me why he's out, what it means, what's going to change and so on.  I will give you a firm, almost-certainly-correct answer: Nobody knows.  And one of the things that makes me confident in that answer is that some of those questions to me came from people at DC who, if I cared more about this than I do, are the folks I would have called to ask them why he's out, what it means, what's going to change and so on.

My life and career occasionally touch some portion of the vast WarnerMedia LLC and like many big companies these days, if you work there at a desk in an office on the fifth floor, you breathe a tiny sigh of relief each workday morning to find that your desk is still there, your office is still there and that the building still has a fifth floor.  And then you sit and work, wondering if all that will still be true when you return from lunch.

We live in a time when corporations get bought and acquired the way my friends and I traded baseball cards when I was ten. In fact, right now if you had a 1955 Topps Sandy Koufax rookie card in mint, you could probably swap it for the entire Pier 1 Imports company.

And when the top jobs at such firms command huge salaries, those comes with huge expectations and demands for results.  Back in 1983, the writer William Goldman wrote a non-fiction book about Hollywood called Adventures in the Screen Trade that is still actively read and quoted. Mostly, people quote a line he wrote that said — and I quote — "NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING."

That's said a lot since he said it. You'll notice I plagiarized the first two-thirds of it in my third paragraph above.

It was in reference to how unpredictable the business of making movies can be, and of course everyone applies it to programming television or producing Broadway shows or any corner of the entertainment industry. It certainly pertains to comic book companies that have bled into movie studios. The section of the book in which Goldman said that much-quoted line began like this…

Studio executives are intelligent, brutally overworked men and women who share one thing in common with baseball managers: They wake up every morning of the world with the knowledge that sooner or later they're going to get fired.

That is true and it would also have been true if Mr. Goldman had written "…sooner or later, the company is going to be purchased or acquired by some other company and everything will change."

When I was starting out in writing, which I did in 1969, a lot of folks I knew thought I was nuts to try and be a freelancer. They all wanted the security they thought would be theirs if they could just somehow hook up with a Big Company. If they did, they could spend the rest of their lives working for that Big Company. One told me he wanted a job at Hanna-Barbera because Hanna-Barbera would always be there. Hanna-Barbera, needless to say, is no longer there. Hanna is gone. Barbera is gone. And the hyphen was acquired by Bristol-Myers Squibb.

This kind of volatility exists everywhere in business these days. It's nerve-wracking for some people, probably most people, but it's not completely bad. When a screaming, incompetent maniac ascends to a position of power as screaming, incompetent morons often do, you can take some comfort in remembering what Goldman said about studio executives.

And hey, turnover can sometimes even be a good thing. About a dozen times in my career, someone at some outfit has told me, "You'll never work for this company again" and I usually think, though I do not say to this person, "You seem to be under the delusion that you'll be here forever." I have worked again for any number of those companies after the guy who told me that got canned.

But yeah, it isn't healthy to think of your permanent job as just less temporary than some others who are explicitly hired as temps. I'm still to this day a freelancer and I keep feeling like I have more and more in common with my friends and associates who report for work each Monday to their one job at one company. The ones at DC are now wondering what the departure of Dan DiDio will mean. It might mean very little to them. It might mean absolutely nothing. Or they might come in next week to find there's no more fifth floor in their building. That's how it works these days, people. Get used to it.

Here's Lou Christie singing his '65 hit "Lightnin' Strikes" at an appearance last year. I miss the back-up singers but isn't Lou in great voice? Wikipedia says he was born in 1943 so he was 76 when he did this performance and I think that's him singing live, still hitting those high notes. I worked once with a singer from his era who was unable to replicate the high notes on some of his big hits so they had to do electronic trickery when he performed in concert. Lou's still got it…

The obit earlier today for Nick Cuti prompted a friend of mine to say to me, mostly tongue-in-cheek I hope, "Gee, Evanier…maybe you're a jinx. It seems like every time I go to your blog, I find out that someone else you know has died." Well, that's one way to look at it. Another is that I know an awful lot of people. If I knew half as many people, then you'd read about half as many people I know dying.

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Back in this message, I recommended a little Italian cafeteria out in Canoga Park, CA called Grandi Italiani. I just deleted a more recent message that said the place was closing due to lack of business. That was true enough when I posted it but the owner changed his mind and it's still open. If you get out that way, give it a try. Here's its website.

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Fans of Stan Freberg should be alerted that Heritage Auctions is about to offer some items from his past including script and photos. Take a look. It never hurts to own something from a genuine comedy genius…and for my money, there aren't that many of them around these days.

Cancer has taken another great creative talent (and great human being) from us in the comic book and animation community. Nicola Cuti — known to his many friends as "Nick" — had been battling the disease for some time and the battle ended this morning. A person unknown to me posted on Nick's Facebook page, a much better summary of his career than I could assemble…

Cuti was born October 29, 1944. He served in the United States Air Force for four years. It was during this time that his first works were published.

An artist and comic and science-fiction writer and editor, he is best known as a co-creator of Moonchild the Starbabe and the superhero E-Man, a series he worked on with his dear friend, Joe Staton. Other creations of his included Captain Cosmos, Brightstar and Starflake the Cosmic Sprite. During his career, he worked alongside legends such as Wally Wood, Stan Lee, and Bill Black, founder of AC Comics. His works were featured in Charlton Comics, Warren Publishing, DC Comics, and Marvel Comics. He contributed to famous franchises such as Vampirella, Popeye and Creepy Magazine.

In addition to his work in the comic industry, Cuti also worked in many productions for Disney, Universal Studios, and Sony Pictures as an animation background designer. Some of the shows he worked on included Gargoyles, 101 Dalmatians and The Critic.

I knew Nick as the pleasantest of people — funny, friendly, disliked by no one. His writing was fresh and filled with passion. If the E-Man comic is not currently in print in some collection, it should be. It read like no super-hero comic before or after and walked that difficult bridge between humor and serious. And I just plain liked the guy. So sorry we lost him.

The new Blu Ray of Tex Avery cartoons is out. It features nineteen of the funniest, wildest cartoons ever made, all of them directed by the late, loony Tex Avery during his golden period making shorts for MGM. Tex Avery Screwball Classics Volume 1 is a must-have for anyone who appreciates a good cartoon, let alone nineteen of them. We highly recommend you get one…which you can do by clicking right about here.

Here's Lou Christie — from 1974, I think — singing his 1965 hit "Lightnin' Strikes" on Burt Sugarman's Midnight Special. Notice how this number would have been nothing without the violin player…

Who Said It: Mike Bloomberg or Donald Trump?

I watched most of the Democratic Debate last night via TiVo Delay. I wasn't really impressed by anyone and this morning, surfing the ol' web, I see a pretty wide range of reactions to it. F'rinstance, Matt Yglesias thought Mike Bloomberg did himself a lot of damage but Kevin Drum thought Mayor Mike did OK.

A check of the fact-checking sites (like this one) shows that every single candidate up there — including yours, no matter who he or she is — said something utterly untrue about one or more of their opponents. A few of them got pretty big applause from their supporters with false charges…and one of the things those supporters hate about Trump is that he says false things to get applause.

Wrestling as I am with the challenge of marking my ballot, I was kinda hoping my opinion of one of them would soar and that didn't happen. I love Elizabeth Warren when she bests her opponents by being smarter and better-informed than they are. Last night, I thought, she was scoring her points by being more strident and outraged…and, if all the fact-checkers I've read this morning are right and I think they are, accusing Bloomberg of some things he didn't do.

And Bloomberg did not impress me with the way he dealt with the many attacks made on him. I thought one point in his favor would be that if he got the nomination and if Trump was willing to debate, he'd mop the floor with him. Based on last night, I think my cleaning lady is doing better mopping with our Swiffer WetJet®.

Did anyone remind these people that an important part of all their platforms is that Trump is such a dangerous, horrible president that Goal Numero Uno is that he must be defeated and they all think anyone — including their opponents for the nomination — would be a huge improvement? I don't think Bloomberg can get the nomination but if he did, how could Warren or even Sanders now pivot and say he'd be that much better than what we have now? They didn't need to damage the man that much. The press is doing that for them.

So who would I vote for if I had to vote right this minute? Probably Bernie but I'm still not sure.

Here's a Golden Oldie — Lou Christie with his hit, "Lighting Strikes," as performed on some "oldies" show, maybe even in this century. The original came out in 1965 and I liked it even though I couldn't make out half the lyrics. I just found them online and did a lot of "Oh, so that's what that line was!"

I don't recall seeing Mr. Christie perform it or anything else back then and I think I assumed he was black. He doesn't sound that way in this video but he sounded kinda/sorta like that in the original record which, by the way, I didn't buy back then.

We hear a lot about people bootlegging music in The Era of the Internet. I did it — legally, I'm prepared to argue — back in the sixties and so did a lot of my friends, thanks to these big reel-to-reel tape recorders we all had.

Since I was spending all my money on comic books, I didn't have much to spend on records so I did the following: I would tape hours and hours off of some local radio station that played the hits of the day — usually KHJ, sometimes KRLA. When they played a record I liked, I cut it from the tape and splice it onto a reel I maintained of my favorite tunes. That reel got to be about two hours long and I played it over and over and over and over…

It was great because it was only songs I liked. I had to put up with little snippets of disc jockeys talking over the beginnings and/or ends of some songs but that seemed like a small price to pay for music with no price to pay. One lingering aspect of that reel is that to this day, whenever I hear a song that was on that reel — "Lighting Strikes" by Lou Christie, say — I expect it to be followed by the song that followed it on my reel…in this case, "I Know a Place" by Petula Clark.

I stopped playing the "hits" reel in the seventies because I could afford records. I bought most of the same songs, in some cases on collections of hits from the sixties. Now, of course, I have them on MP3. And I also stopped playing the tape because my reel-to-reel machine died and I didn't really have a reason to replace it. Around 1985, I came across my old reel-to-reel tapes and had a few rarities on them transferred to CDs. The "hits" reel didn't make the conversion though because too many of the splices in it had come undone.

One time a few years back, I was in a casino in Vegas where they played a lot of songs from that time period and I heard "Lightning Strikes" and for a second thought, "After this comes 'I Know a Place.'" And in that one instance, it did. Anyway, here's Lou Christie singing "Lightnin' Strikes."

And I just decided, "Hey, why not?"

I've received about thirty messages about this so forgive me if I don't acknowledge all of you, but the other day on this blog, I said that if it ever came to Donald Trump debating Pete Buttigieg, I imagined this…

…the two men are debating and Donald makes some crack about his opponent not being a real man or a moral man or someone whose lifestyle God would approves of. And when it's Mayor Pete's turn to talk, assuming Trump lets him have one, he says, "I know you don't understand this, Mr. President, but I am devoted to my mate in every way. For instance, if he were to take ill, I would be at his side to take care of him instead of…oh, say, going out and banging a porn star!"

As ~30 of you wrote to tell me, Mayor Pete used a version of that line in a town hall meeting yesterday…

Buttigieg — who came out as gay in 2015 and married his husband, Chasten, in 2018 — was asked during his CNN town hall about conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh telling his listeners that American voters are "still not ready to elect a gay guy kissing his husband on the debate stage president." Trump, who initially responded to the comments by saying he was not uncomfortable with a gay president, told Limbaugh to "never apologize" for his comments about Buttigieg, the radio host said Tuesday.

"The idea of the likes of Rush Limbaugh or Donald Trump lecturing anybody on family values," Buttigieg said before pausing for applause. Then the Democratic candidate went after the President directly: "I mean, I'm sorry but one thing about my marriage is it's never involved me having to send hush money to a porn star after cheating on my spouse, with him or her."

He added: "So, if they want to debate family values, let's debate family values, I'm ready."

I guess if you're a politician trying to be more civilized than the opposition, you say "send hush money to a porn star" instead of "banging a porn star" but it's the same line. And yes, I'm sure Buttigieg got it directly from this blog because he surely has nothing else to do these days other than surf the 'net looking for quips and rejoinders, and no one else could have possibly thought of that line, and yes, I'm being sarcastic.

I still haven't decided which candidate I'm going to vote for on this ballot to my left which I need to mark and send back. But I was impressed with Mayor Pete's Town Hall performance. He's delivering exactly what is desired by people who say they yearn for the days of pre-Trump civility. I did not find myself seriously disagreeing with anything he said…but judge for yourself. The section where the above lines were spoken starts with a question at 24:40 and this link should take you right to it or you can watch the whole thing (it's 47 minutes) below…

A few weeks ago somewhere on the Internet, I saw someone say that the folks on Fox & Friends had referred to Fred Rogers (AKA Mr. Rogers of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood) as an "evil, evil man." Swear to God, I thought it was a joke…like the people on that show are so screwed-up, they'd say something that ridiculous. Then I saw it somewhere else and thought the same thing…and you can guess where this is going.

Earlier today, I saw a mention of it on yet another page, clearly from someone who didn't get that it was a joke and they hadn't really said that on Fox & Friends. Then, just to satisfy myself it was from some parody site or somewhere, I went over to Snopes and did a search and…yeah, they said that. I plum forget we're living in an age where Satire can't always get ahead of Reality.