Monthly Archives: February 2020

• The "In Memoriam" montage at the Oscars would be a lot more fun if they included a few people who didn't die in the past year but should have.

• Thank goodness I didn't go to the Oscars this year. Billy Porter's wearing the same thing I was going to wear!

So here's what you might want to know about Randy Rainbow's show last night at the Wiltern Theater here in Los Angeles…

It was packed. The place seats 1,850 and I'd guess there were 5 empty seats and 1,845 filled with someone who really, really doesn't like that person I hoped not to mention this weekend. I was kinda expecting the crowd to be mostly young and mostly gay but it seemed like a nice cross-section of humanity — plenty of folks over forty who arrived with someone of the opposite gender. And they all laughed an awful lot.

Mr. Rainbow turns out to be quite the all-around entertainer — funny, crowd-pleasing and charming even when being a little bitchy. He kept apologizing for his voice and saying he had a bug of some kind but he sang for most of two hours (no intermission) and I didn't hear any wrong notes.

His show is a well-crafted mingling of his videos and him singing live, often replacing his singing voice in a video with a live performance. The audience cheered the videos they'd played umpteen-zillion times on YouTube and cheered a lot of stuff they'd never heard before. And the show struck me as just the right length: Not so short you felt cheated, not so long he didn't leave us wanting just a little more.

He has a four-piece live band that backs him and augments pre-recorded music. Even sitting in the third row, I couldn't tell where the live musicians left off and the recorded ones began. The whole multimedia experience was pretty impressive…speaking of which, Randy Rainbow owns quite an array of different-colored sequined jackets. And interesting hats and costumes.

He did a segment taking questions from the audience and his replies were spontaneous, witty and even informative. No, he has not been asked to host Saturday Night Live and would love to. Yes, he's sometimes in the middle of prepping a new video when something happens in the news and he has to dump it or rewrite.

In his closing speech, he said that he's heard from Sondheim, Stephen Schwartz, Sir Andrew and other composers whose songs he's parodied and they've been 100% supportive. He expressed a bit of annoyance at the occasional fan who doesn't recognize he's doing parodies of famous show tunes and, as he put it, "thinks I wrote the score to South Pacific."

Here is his current touring schedule, though he said from the stage that more dates were being added, including Las Vegas. You'll note his itinerary includes some red states and I'll bet he sells out in them, too. My date and I had a good enough time to want to see him again next time he comes our way, and I'm pretty sure Randy Rainbow's going to be around when the current president is gone…and probably the one after that and the one after that and the one after that. Note that I am still optimistic there will be future presidents.

We now return you to our previously-scheduled Trump-Free Weekend, already in progress…

I'd planned to make this a Trump-Free Weekend both in my head and on my blog but things happen. One thing which happened is that Randy Rainbow is doing a one-night-only show at the Wiltern Theater here in Los Angeles tonight. Another one thing which happened is that a friend of the blog who bought third-row-center tickets for tonight can't use them and offered them to me.

And a third thing that happened is that I accepted. So I'm just going to go and hope that Mr. Rainbow doesn't mention Donald. With all the other things to talk and sing about in the world, why would he?

And now we must note the passing of Victor Gorelick who probably held the comic book industry record for working in the same place on the same characters. He joined the Archie company in 1958 and really never left, working his way up to editor-in-chief. He was 78.

He was seventeen years old when he started there in the production company where his first job was to take stories where fashion model Katy Keene showed a tad more leg or cleavage than the Comics Code liked and to correct the art. In addition to doing art fixes, Victor colored and lettered and eventually became more involved with the editorial end of things. On the side, he occasionally did some work for other companies, such as lettering and coloring for Tower Comics, but 99% of his career was with Archie and he deserves great credit for the enduring popularity of those characters.

I was pleased to know Victor and to occasionally have him on panels at Comic-Con. He was one of the good guys and there's good reason for sadness in Riverdale tonight. Archie and his pals, like all of us who got to know Victor, will miss him.

Orson Bean was an actor, a stand-up comedian, an author, a talk show guest, a game show panelist, an educator and about a half-dozen other things. If you can find a copy of his autobiography, Too Much is Not Enough, you might enjoy it a lot. Especially interesting is his account of being sorta-blacklisted in the fifties and being kicked off TV because he was an officer in an actors' group that opposed the blacklist.

And this may interest readers of this site. In the early days of MAD magazine, they attracted attention on the newsstand by buying material from well-known comedians like Bob & Ray, Henry Morgan, Wally Cox, Danny Kaye…and Orson Bean. When Ed Sullivan refused to have this sorta-blacklisted funnyman on his show, Bean picked up a few bucks for allowing MAD to adapt his stand-up material to use in the magazine and to slap his name on its cover. He was also a founding member of the Laurel and Hardy fan society, The Sons of the Desert.

He was a great humorist and personality and he sure worked a lot. For a few years, he was one of Johnny Carson's favorite guests but that ended when Bean began to explore, write about and talk about sexual liberation and group sex. The topics he wanted to discuss from Johnny's guest chair simply made Carson uncomfortable.

But he was a witty man and someone who deserved a lot better than his tragic end last night in Venice, California. He was walking when he was struck by one car and then another and killed. He was 91. How very, very sad.

I haven't linked to a Soundie for a while so I'd better explain what a Soundie is…or was. Soundies were the 1940's equivalent of music videos except they were black-and-white and shot on 16mm, and in many cases, the songs were written and filmed just for a soundie and not released on records. You had to go to a bar or restaurant to see and hear them. And I think I'll just crib the next paragraph from Wikipedia…

The films were shown in a coin-operated "movie jukebox" called the Panoram, manufactured by the Mills Novelty Company of Chicago. Each Panoram housed a 16mm RCA film projector, with eight Soundies films threaded in an endless-loop arrangement. A system of mirrors flashed the image from the lower half of the cabinet onto a front-facing screen in the top half. Each film cost 10 cents to play, and there was no choice of song; the patron saw whatever film was next in the queue. Panorams could be found in public amusement centers, nightclubs, taverns, restaurants, and factory lounges, and the films were changed weekly. The completed Soundies were generally made available within a few weeks of their filming, by the Soundies Distributing Corporation of America.

This particular Soundie was shot in 1942 and it stars Harry Langdon, who was briefly one of the great silent comedians. His career took a big nosedive around the time he took creative control of his films and many see a clear cause/effect situation there. But his career did crash and he spent the rest of his life appearing in cheaply-made comedies and sometimes writing for Laurel and Hardy or other folks who were having the kind of career he'd once had. He died two years after this film was shot. This is not him at his best but it's kind of a neat little short…

Sorry I haven't been here today for you, dear newsfromme readers. I've been so busy that I didn't even have time to watch Bill Maher's show when it was telecast two hours ago. I can't imagine what he had to talk about.

I'm going to make this a Trump-Free Weekend on this blog mainly because I don't want to waste my time thinking about him. I still think we're a loooonnnggg way from knowing how things are going to turn out in the Democratic Primary, let alone the November election. (By the way: I got my by-mail primary ballot the other day. It says "The ballot must be received by the elections office no later than 3 days after Election Day." Don't they know that we're California, the big primary? Assuming the rest of the ballots are actually counted on the evening of March 3, someone's going to declare victory. No one's going to presume that ballots that come in three days later can change anything.)

Here's something that I think I understand but I'm not sure. I subscribe to a number of online newspapers…mostly ones that I link to a lot on this site. For a long time, I didn't subscribe to the Los Angeles Times. When I looked up what Digital Access would cost, the price was as follows: $1 a week for the first four weeks, then $4 per week thereafter. That works out to $196 per year. No thank you.

They keep mailing me offers and I really didn't look at them. Right into the trash they'd go because I figured that even if they give me half-off, that's still too steep. Well, the other day, I paused to read one of those offers. These all involve entering a promo code included in the mailer I received.

It offered me Complete Digital Access for 99 cents a week. That's a little under $52 a year, down from $196 for the first year, over $200 a year thereafter. Sounds like quite a bargain, right?

It is but it gets better. They're really, really eager to send me a physical newspaper also. I assume this has something to do with ad rates keyed-in with print circulation. There are all sorts of different packages — daily delivery, Sunday only, Saturday and Sunday…all including Digital Access.

I picked Sunday only. And I just signed up for Sunday delivery plus Digital Access…for $9.88. That's per year.

That's how it works, people. I can get Digital Access for $196.00 a year or they'll discount it to $52 a year. But if I let them dump a copy of the Sunday paper on my front lawn each week, I get the paper plus Digital Access for an entire year for $9.88. This may not be in every zip code but it's in mine. Like I said, I think I understand it. But I'm not sure.

Ali Velshi, who you see a lot if you watch MSNBC, interviews John Oliver, who you see a lot if you watch what I think is the best show on TV — or it will be when it returns with new episodes on February 16…

As we all know, Utah senator (and 2012 Republican presidential nominee) Mitt Romney cast the only G.O.P. vote to convict Donald Trump in his impeachment trial. He's now being hailed as a man of conscience and a hero and a leader by a lot of folks who not so long ago were aghast at the notion of him becoming president. Conversely, many who supported him back then are now using descriptors like "traitor" and "disloyal." Donald Junior is insisting that Romney be kicked out of the Grand Old Party while others wonder how someone gets kicked out of a political party.

Here's my take on it. I believe that at some low level in our government — maybe some folks who sit on a city council somewhere — men and women act out of conscience and put the needs of The People ahead of their own careers and certainly their own parties. But it doesn't happen much higher than that. Probably at the state level and certainly above it, there is only one consideration: "How will this benefit me?"

They may put personal wealth ahead of personal power or vice-versa. They may care about fame more than money. They may even convince themselves that's what good for them is good for their constituents and for the nation. (That's kind of the Alan Dershowitz defense of, I suppose, all wrongdoing.) No matter why they want to serve, when it comes time to vote Yes or No, they vote based on what's better for themselves. That may or may not match up with what's better for the majority.

I do not mean almost everyone thinks like that. I do not mean everyone except the candidate I support. I mean absolutely everyone and I don't think I'm being overly cynical to say that. It includes Trump, Obama, Biden, either Clinton, Sanders, anyone named Kennedy or Bush…and of course, Mitt Romney.

Look: There's no place for this guy in a Republican party that asks "How high?" when Donald tells them to jump. We just saw his control of it. Men and women who thought he was guilty voted to acquit and they're now lambasting Mitt because he only voted that way once instead of both times. He wrapped his decision in Faith and Sacred Oaths Before God and following one's conscience and made it sound almost like a voice from the Heavens told him to vote as he did…and even folks who identity as Evangelicals are calling him a Judas.

Which I'll bet is fine because he's positioning himself as the candidate of Republicans who think Trump is destroying their party and might take the world along for the cataclysm. I dunno how many there are right now but it does not seem unlikely that their number could grow. If Trump really does shoot someone on Fifth Avenue or just babbles on at an increasingly incoherent rate, there could be a lot more Republicans who want an alternative to D.J.T. Romney hasn't yet said that's where he's setting up shop because people are mad enough at him for just the one vote.

But I think it's a nice trial balloon to see if there's a movement out there he can lead. And in the meantime, it's exposing all the marionettes in the G.O.P. who do not have it in them to say, "I disagree with my colleague over what the evidence shows but I respect him for putting conscience over party." What they're all saying is that if he does that, he has his priorities backwards. Me, I think his priority is another run at the White House.

An auction house is now taking bids on bound volumes of DC Comics that were once part of the library in the DC offices. There seems to be some mystery as to how these went from being company property to being on the auction block but I am not suggesting wrongdoing; just that some people who worked for the firm are puzzled.

A discussion about this on one of the comic book history forums of Facebook prompted me to tell the following story, which I don't think I ever typed out before. I've expanded it a bit here so it makes more sense to the kind of person who wouldn't be caught dead in a comic book history forum on Facebook…

When my then-partner Steve Sherman and I first visited the DC, Marvel and MAD offices in July of 1970, we spent a couple of days meeting people who'd done comic books we'd loved for years. We also spent a day and a half with Steve Ditko.

Up at DC, we were visiting with longtime editor Julius Schwartz when artist Irv Novick arrived. Julie apologized to us and said he needed fifteen minutes with Irv, then our talk with him could resume. So he took us over to the DC library, which was filled with bound volumes of (allegedly) everything the firm had ever published and he told us to browse and read whatever we liked until he came back for us.

So we were browsing and I don't think we'd even opened a book before a burly gent marched in and told us that whoever we were, we weren't allowed to be in there. Some volumes had been stolen recently and it was now off-limits to anyone but bonafide staff members. He was kinda brusque about it and didn't even ask who were were or who'd told us we could be in there.

He waited until we exited the room and closed the door and then walked off. I remember thinking that if it was so wrong for anyone like us to be in there, why wasn't the door locked?

Later in the day, Nelson Bridwell, who was an assistant editor there, introduced us to the man who'd thrown us out of there and he apologized for being so officious. It was Joe Kubert.

I believe the missing volumes were replaced when the company purchased copies of the issues in question from Mark Hanerfeld, who at one point claimed to have a triple set of everything DC had published, accumulated back when you could buy a Superman #1 for like $50.

Before anyone guesses that the bound volumes now being sold are the ones that were stolen before our visit, they should know that a lot of what's being sold is comics done well after 1970. Also, only two or three bound books had been stolen then and the auction house is offering 99 of 'em. I can imagine someone sneaking three bound volumes out in a briefcase or something but not 99. If I hear a solid answer to this mystery, I'll post it here.

[UPDATE: And now we're hearing the auction has been suspended. Curiouser and curiouser…]

Donald Trump just gave his third State of the Union address — or as some call them, his State of His Own Greatness address. That's pretty much what all three have been about.

In his 2019 speech, he called on all Americans to "reject the politics of revenge, resistance, and retribution, and embrace the boundless potential of cooperation, compromise, and the common good." That's an actual quote.

The speeches he's giving this week seem to be all about embracing the politics of revenge, resistance and retribution, and rejecting the boundless potential of cooperation, compromise, and the common good. Not that he ever followed the 2019 version, but now he seems to have quit pretending.

It's hard to mourn a guy who had such a fabulous career, lived to the age of 103 and saw his son become almost as big a movie star — or, arguably bigger. I sure hope the Motion Picture Academy is moving mountains to get a tribute to Kirk Douglas into the Oscar telecast this Sunday. Maybe, just maybe someone there had the foresight to already have something at least partially assembled, just in case. I mean, it's not like it was impossible for a man that age to leave us any day now…

I have no story about meeting Mr. Douglas because I never did…but I sure saw a lot of great performances by him in a lot of real good movies. My fave was easily Ace in the Hole (aka The Big Carnival) which was done by Billy Wilder. It's a film that still hasn't received its proper attention and it's more relevant today than when it was made in 1951. Douglas played a truly horrible human being and there isn't one second in the film where he did a little gesture or wink to the audience to indicate he really wasn't that bad a guy or that he was just an actor playing a role. Just a fabulous performance.

If you're never seen it or you yearn to see it again, it's out on home video and isn't hard to get streamed to your computer for a few bucks. But it might be even easier than that. You just know Turner Classic Movies will schedule a Kirk Douglas Tribute shortly and show a bunch of his best films. That one should certainly be in it…and there are plenty of other classics to keep it company. Here's the trailer…

• I'm embarrassed to admit that I worked on a couple of TV series that were on television for a shorter time than this year's Iowa Caucus.

Marvel just issued a book called Captain America: The End written and drawn by Erik Larsen. I haven't read it yet but Erik always does fine work and that's not why I'm writing about it and it's not (yet) why folks on the 'net are talking about it. The discussion is all about how on the title page, it says "Captain America created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby."

For the enlightenment of anyone reading this who doesn't know what's wrong with that: Captain America was created by the team of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. Stan Lee didn't even write anything for the company until the third issue of the Captain America comic book.

A credit like this is a very sensitive issue. There have been times when creators were denied such credits…and I don't mean because there was any dispute as to who had created a given comic book or character. There were publishers who flatly refused to identify anyone as the creator(s) of one of their books. Sometimes, since the company usually claimed ownership of the property, they didn't want to give the actual creator any help should he decide to get a lawyer and contest that ownership.

Sometimes, it was more a matter of not wanting to admit a debt to the creator or to admit that the company had not created the comic. And there were publishers and editors who wanted to claim that prestigious (and perhaps valuable) creator credit for themselves, even though they had minimal — perhaps zero — input into the birth of the idea.

For a time when Joe Simon was suing Marvel for the ownership of Captain America, he ceased to exist. When they reprinted a story that said "by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby" on it, they removed both names and it was forbidden to mention Joe anywhere. During that time, the science-fiction writer Ted White was engaged to write a Captain America prose novel and the dedication in it read, "To Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, without whom there would be no Captain America."

This kind of thing happened a lot in comics. Kirby probably would not have left Marvel in 1970 if they'd been willing to put "Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby" on books like Fantastic Four and Hulk, as they do now. But they refused back then and I witnessed first hand how nasty they could be about it. Jack in his lifetime endured a lot of such nastiness…and of seeing Stan credited so often as sole creator of all the properties they launched together and even, on occasion, Captain America.

But before anyone gets outraged about this latest miscredit — well, it's too late for that but before it gets to be too widespread — let's remember a very useful aphorism: Never attribute to deviousness that which can be explained by incompetence. I usually change it a bit to "Don't automatically attribute to deviousness…" but the point is basically the same. There is such a thing as an accident. There are things done that shouldn't be done but are because someone screwed-up or just didn't know any better.

Some of the wronging of creators in the past was, it's clear to me, in the "accident" category or at least the "didn't know any better" one. Some, but certainly not all. A lot of folks who worked in comics had such limited experience in other forms of publishing or creative fields that they just assumed that was the way things were done. There were also creative folks who, due to ego or because they felt undercompensated for what they were doing, grabbed credits they didn't deserve from their colleagues. That's another topic for another time.

For now, it's pretty clear to me that crediting Stan instead of Joe in this new Captain America book is an accident. And in the current world of comics where many are trying to right a lot of past wrongs, including credit denials, it's a pretty embarrassing accident. Joe gets his proper credit almost everywhere else now. There's no reason to intentionally do him wrong in this one publication.

If you went to work for a comic book company today, you would find yourself paying for a great many sins of past owners and employees. I have worked in comics for half-a-century and met more people in the field than you can imagine. Leaving aside a few holdovers from the old days who are dead and buried, I don't think I've met anyone at DC or Marvel who defended all past dealings. They all condemn — in private if not in public — some of the shitty things that their predecessors did to the men and women who created the material and worked so hard on it, often for parsimonious fees. Many of the newer people have heroically done and continue to do whatever they could or can to make up for bad pay of the past and other mistreatment.

I am not suggesting the scales are properly balanced or ever can be. But some effort to undo past sins is a whole lot better than no effort. And the bad motives of the past should not instantly be ascribed to those who now work for a company of the same name. Most of them these days are at least trying to do the right thing.