Monthly Archives: March 2020

• Someone wrote and asked me, "How many years do you think Harvey Weinstein will get?" I wrote back, "More than he has."

So sorry to hear of the passing at the way-too-young age of 59 of actor Merwin Foard, who I only knew from (a) seeing him on the Broadway stage and (b) a short e-mail correspondence. For a while there, every time I went to New York and made my customary trips to shows I wanted to see, Merwin Foard would be in one of them, twice as a standby who happened to go on a night I was there. He was really terrific.

The first time (I think) I saw him filling in for another actor, he was Fred Graham (i.e., the male lead) in the 1999 revival of Kiss Me, Kate, filling in for the regular star, Brian Stokes Mitchell. I'd seen Mitchell on a previous visit and liked the show so much that a few months later when I went back with my lovely friend Carolyn, I took her because I knew she'd love it. too. I was stunned by how good Mr. Foard was in the part and when I said so in an Internet forum, I got a nice thank-you e-mail from him and we wrote back and forth for a few months.

Later, I saw him fill in for Michael Cerveris in the title role for a revival of Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. As with Kiss Me, Kate, he faced the problem that most of the folks out there who'd bought tickets bought them expecting to see the usual star and felt disappointed or baited-and-switched. All standbys and understudies for stars face that but, again, Merwin was so good that everyone forgot he wasn't the person they'd paid to see. And Sweeney is one of the most difficult parts an actor can tackle.

And I saw him in other shows but missed him in some. I didn't get to see him in Show Boat, Mame, Les Miserables, Beauty and the Beast, Jekyll & Hyde, Assassins, La Cage Aux Folles, The Little Mermaid, The Addams Family, Annie or his last role, Aladdin. That's what the still of him above right is from. He also did voices for Disney features including Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Mulan. Pretty impressive career there.

And the first show I saw him in might have been the 1997 revival of 1776, which was easily one of the five-or-so best Broadway productions I've ever seen. He wasn't a standby here. Night after night, he stopped the show with his performance as Richard Henry Lee. Here he is, along with David Huddleston and Michael McCormick performing his big number on (I think) Rosie O'Donnell's talk show. It was even better on the stage with the encore that got cut out for this appearance…

Lee K. Seitz writes about this post concerning the time Sergio Aragonés had a problem with the mails and didn't get any of his cartoons into an issue of MAD. That was in 1967 and it has never happened again to this day…

As often seems to happen because you write so darn fast, I get way behind on your blog. Then I binge a bit to catch up. This is why I'm just now writing about something you discussed way back on February 18.

Your post about Dick DeBartolo's streak ending was fascinating (and a touch sad). But the bit about Sergio's streak got me thinking, "So what did they do for the issue Sergio missed? Did they rerun some of his past marginals? There's been so many, who'd notice?"

So I googled the cover of #111. I was surprised to find that I have that issue! I "inherited" them from my mother's stash back when I was a lad in the late '70s. Many of the covers are no longer attached to their magazines, but I've got them and read them — or at least portions of them — many times back then.

So now, without having to resort to asking you, I know what they did instead of "Mad Marginals": "Songs That Didn't Make It." Now I have to wonder who came up with these titles. I'd guess it was a last minute effort by whatever staff happened to be around at the time.

You'd guess right, Lee, though I'd bet that most of 'em (if not all) came from Nick Meglin, who then had the title of Associate Editor. Nick not only associated with the editor but he wrote most of the funny stuff in MAD that was not credited to freelance writers like Frank Jacobs or Larry Siegel. The other Associate Editor, Jerry DeFuccio, may have come up with a few.

Some folks don't know this but MAD existed for a long time before my buen amigo Sergio began contributing to MAD. He first turned up in MAD #73 cover-dated January of 1963. They bought a bunch of cartoons he'd drawn about astronauts and ran them over two pages in that issue. When they handed him his check, they invited him to contribute more to the magazine. Little did they know how fast and prolific this new member of The Usual Gang of Idiots could be.

He was back with more submissions faster than you could say "Melvin Cowznofski," assuming you could say "Melvin Cowznofski," which not everyone can. Try it and see. They probably could have fired all their writers and artists and just filled each issue after than with Sergio cartoons but for some reason, they didn't want to do that. They took more of his material but gently broke the news to him that there was a limit as to how much work he could sell them. Sergio, even at that age, wasn't much for limits. He came up with a clever way to increase that limit.

MAD from its outset had always been a publication that gave you a lot for your money, cramming gags into backgrounds and attaining a certain density of comedy per page. I remember when I bought my first issue — number 70, which I bought off the rack not long before the day my partner-to-be walked into the MAD offices for the first time. I spent hours going over every inch of every page, constantly noticing funny little things I hadn't noticed before.

And I noticed the marginal gags…little texts stuck perpendicular or upside-down or even right-side-up in the margins throughout the magazine.

The gags in the margin first appeared in MAD #29, the first issue edited by Al Feldstein after Harvey Kurtzman left. Much of that issue consisted of material Kurtzman had been working on and I am at a loss to say whether the marginals were an innovation of the Feldstein era or if they were something Kurtzman had in the works. In #29, they were just gags sprinkled around the pages and went unmentioned in the Table of Contents. In #30, they were listed there as the "Nobody asked us but — Department" and credited to Arnie Rosen and Coleman Jacoby, two gents who became very important comedy writers in television.

Arnie was, in fact, a producer on my first TV writing job, The Nancy Walker Show in 1976 but he did a lot more than that. Among the shows that he and Jacoby worked on that you've heard of were The Phil Silvers Show (aka Sgt. Bilko), The Carol Burnett Show, Get Smart and The Garry Moore Show. Both men were already writing for television when they made this contribution to MAD and I don't think they did much (if anything) else for the magazine. All future marginal gags were uncredited.

On the Table of Contents page, they'd give the premise of the marginal gags in each issue. In #70, it was "If they had a brother, brother!" Here, freshly-scanned from the exact same copy of MAD #70 that I purchased in 1962 when I was ten years of age, is a sample gag from that issue…

Get it? Anyway, right after Sergio sold that first article and a few others, he came up with the idea to replace the text gags with tiny cartoons. He says this was because, with his then-limited English and this his equally-limited knowledge of American people, places and things, he just didn't understand the text gags. Me, I think he was just looking to make extra room for his cartoons in the magazine so they'd pay him more. Nick Meglin and the others who wrote the text gags loved the concept because it meant they didn't have to write all those text gags…except the one issue where the post office screwed up.

Editor Feldstein didn't buy the idea at first. To "sell" it, Sergio drew some real tiny gags and pasted them into a copy of MAD…and Feldstein didn't even notice them at first. Once he did, he decided the idea might be fun for an issue or two but, of course, no one could come up with 12-18 pantomime cartoons per issue. Sergio then came up with enough for more than fifty years. This is not humanly possible but then neither is he.

It's my favorite huge singing mob, The Ambassadors of Harmony, favoring us with a selection from the musical, Hairspray…

The Michigan primary is tomorrow and all the polls are not only showing Biden winning but winning by a pretty large margin.  I don't know if this will mean that Bernie is mathematically eliminated but he'll sure be a greater longshot than ever before.

I voted for Bernie…and Biden was not my second choice.  But this country could do a lot worse than elect Joe Biden…and it will if Trump gets another term.  No, Biden will not pass Senator Sanders' agenda but he'll pass some of it whereas Trump would push the exact opposite of everything Bernie ever stood for.

How much of it anyone — even Sanders — could pass will depend a lot on the partisan makeup of the House and Senate, plus whether Trump somehow gets one more Supreme Court pick before January. Which reminds me: Four more years of Trump-approved judges — and making it harder for minorities and Democrats to vote — will could make it impossible for the Chief Exec after Trump to do anything. The Trumpizing of America will be complete.

Assuming there's no Michigan Miracle, I really hope Sanders gets with the program and does so soon. I've long admired Bernie Sanders and I don't want it to stop now.

A few hours ago, I wrote here, "We would like to not have to write an obit for this lovely man any time soon." Well, sadly, here it is and I believe the cause was stomach cancer. He was 95 and until recently, he'd been having the time of his life attending comic conventions, making new friends, signing autographs, meeting fans and being delighted to find that people cared about the work he'd done in comics between 1942 and approximately 1953.

In '42, not long after Joe Simon and Jack Kirby had left Timely Comics and Captain America, 17-year-old Allen Bellman from Brooklyn answered a newspaper ad and was hired to join the team that carried on their work. Mostly at first, he inked Syd Shores but soon, they gave him his own work to pencil and/or ink. I believe I interviewed him three times at comic conventions and he told three different stories about why he left the field, all of which boiled down to "comics were not looking like a great place to make a living." He moved into graphic design and photography and put comics behind him.

But just when he was retiring from that, he was contacted by folks in the comic book community and invited to conventions. I hope this doesn't sound snide but for about the last ten years, if you were running a comic con and wanted to have someone there who dated back to the so-called Golden Age of Comics, you kinda had your choice of inviting Allen Bellman or not having anyone like that. There just aren't a whole lot of options and Allen was always eager to accept. He and his wife of more than five decades, Roslyn, had the time of their lives at cons, and countless fans will forever treasure the autographs and sketches and the mere fact that they got to meet him.

Since I posted the earlier message, I've been thinking about what I wanted to say in this piece I knew I'd be writing within a matter of days. And I think what I want to do is to thank everyone who was that thrilled to meet Allen because you made the last years of his life so very happy. Not everyone who's worked in comics lived long enough to enjoy the kind of love and respect he received…but he did and I'm so glad he did.

Tonight on the CW is the season finale of Black Lightning. My friend Amber loves this show and was excited when I told her who has a cameo role in this episode…none other than Black Lightning creator Tony Isabella. Tony is my friend of more than half a century and her friend since we all had lunch together about two years ago.

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Only good thoughts go out to Mr. Allen Bellman, the veteran comic book artist who was "found" a few years ago after too long away from the comic art community. Allen worked for Timely Comics and Atlas — earlier names for the company you now know as Marvel — from 1942 until the early fifties. The last decade or so, he became a treasured guest at comic conventions everywhere but now he's not well. We would like to not have to write an obit for this lovely man any time soon.

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Hey, folks who live in or near Hollywood! The afternoon of March 29, the American Cinematheque is running a 35mm print of one of my favorite movies at the Egyptian Theater up on Hollywood Boulevard.

It's the 1951 Ace in the Hole, directed by Billy Wilder and starring Kirk Douglas in what was, for me, his greatest performance. And no, he wasn't even nominated for an Oscar for it. (They gave it that year instead to someone named Humphrey Bogart for some movie called The African Queen.) I've seen it a dozen times but never on a movie screen and I intend to try and be there. If you want to be there, tickets are here.

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Since the Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle was canceled, people are writing me to ask if WonderCon (in Anaheim, Aoril 10-12) will be canceled or if, God forbid, Comic-Con International will not happen in San Diego this July. Given the panic about the coronavirus, some of it probably justified, and the way our putative president keeps projecting the concept that no one is steering the bus, I understand. But I seriously doubt those events will not take place on schedule. If there's the slightest chance of a change, you'll hear about it promptly from the folks who operate both gatherings. Truly.

My pal Tom Galloway was at the San Diego Comic Fest this past weekend and he reported that in lieu of shaking hands, he was exchanging Mr. Spock's "Live long and prosper" gesture from Star Trek. Upon reading my suggestion that we all cosplay as Spider-Man, Tom sent several suggestions for other super-heroes whose costumes might not only strike terror into the hearts of evildoers but also keep you safe from the coronavirus. If the threat got a lot worse and I had to pick one, I think I'd go with the Golden Age Sandman. And the gun would be a squirt pistol filled with hand sanitizer with at least a 60% alcohol content…

The Woody Allen matter is in the news once more, as it is occasionally and probably still will be, long after everyone is involved is dead, buried and reincarnated as a cocker spaniel. Nothing I have read has convinced me he is guilty of anything more than, quite arguably, having a tacky relationship at the outset with a woman to whom he has now been happily wed for 23 years. Maybe it was scandalous and wrong but it also seems to me irrelevant to the central charge, which is that a woman still insists he molested her in 1992 when she was seven years of age.

Also irrelevant to me is the charge — with which I certainly don't agree — that he made only lousy movies. I don't know what that proves with regard to the serious accusation but online commenters who believe that he's guilty of the molestation charge keep bringing it up as if it proves something.

One thing that helped convince me he just might be innocent is how filled with misinformation (and ignored facts) the attacks against him have been. The majority of them refer to his spouse Soon-Yi as his adopted daughter or stepdaughter, neither of which is true. Some say he groomed her as his bride while acting as a father figure to her but in one of the few cases where the claims of Woody and Soon-Yi match up with Mia Farrow's book, that is not so.

So you take the fact that two separate investigations around that time not only found that there was no evidence Allen had abused Dylan Farrow but that there was no evidence she had been physically abused at all. Then add in that there don't seem to be any other accusations against Allen of "improper sexual contact" with any female of any age anywhere. A man who has cast and directed more than 65 movies would have had ample opportunities.

This all may not add up to absolute proof of innocence but that's not how we do it in this country. We go by proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and I think there's more than a reasonable doubt there. Could he have done it? It's not impossible but the certainty some folks have of his guilt seems way out of proportion to the facts.

You might or might not know that one of Mia Farrow's other adopted kids, Moses, has stated quite explicitly that he is sure the accusation is bogus. He was in the house that day (and others) and much older than Dylan or her brother now known as Ronan, meaning he should have some real value as a witness. The reason you might not have heard this is that the anti-Woody accusers have largely responded to the testimony of Moses by pretending he never existed.

They insist we should believe her because she was there but ignore him even though he was right nearby. "Believe the woman" does not apparently extend to "At least listen to her older brother who says he was abused in other ways." Much of what Moses has said is quoted in this piece by Kyle Smith. Smith's is one of the few articles on the matter to even mention Moses at all.

All that said, I think it's within the rights of Hachette Book Group USA to decide they don't want to publish Woody Allen's memoirs. It's chickenshit, especially after proudly announcing they would, but that's a privately-owned business. Presumably, the folks who run Hatchette read the book and felt it worthy of publication but they allowed themselves to reverse course by the demands of people who hadn't read it and just believed Woody Allen should not be allowed to tell his side of that story or share all the other things that have happened in an amazing life and career.

If and when someone does publish it, we'll have another firestorm and given the way Hatchette folded on this one, Allen is probably better off being with some other publisher or maybe publishing it himself.

I posted this back in 2014 but that link no longer works, we have a better copy available and today (for the next three minutes) is the anniversary of its first airing.

It's "The Incredible Jewel Robbery," an episode of General Electric Theatre that was seen on March 8, 1959. It stars Harpo Marx and Chico Marx and since one of their brothers — no, not Zeppo — appears in a surprise cameo at the end, it's the last appearance of the Harpo, Chico and You-Know-Who together on a screen. The story is silent until You-Know-Who gets the last line…

I just read a number of articles on whether Bernie Sanders still has a chance of grabbing the Democratic nomination. It looks like he does but that chance also looks pretty slim. Nate Silver lays out how slim it is. It could be over on Tuesday if Biden wins big in Michigan.

Daniel Larison summarizes the problem with Trump's response to the coronavirus crisis. If you don't want to read the whole thing, just read this…

The president needs people to think that everything he does is perfect, so he is incapable of acknowledging his failures and prefers to vilify accurate reporting about those failures. He cannot help but mismanage the government response because he cannot put the national interest ahead of his own selfishness. An untold number of Americans will be paying a steep price for the president's unfitness for office in the weeks and months to come.

Perry Bacon Jr. discusses why Elizabeth Warren didn't make it. Seems to me that it came down to one of those self-fulfilling circular prophecy things. The polls suggested she was not the best candidate to beat Trump and they said that because so many voters opted for Joe and Bernie over her and they felt that way because the polls suggested she was not the best candidate to beat Trump and they said that because so many voters opted for Joe and Bernie over her and they felt that way because the polls suggested…

A buddy of mine, Bill Kirchenbauer, now has his own podcast. I've known Bill since before he set foot on the Tonight Show stage, did his act and had Johnny Carson say of him something like, "That's one of the funniest new comedians we've had on here." I don't remember the precise words but I remember how Bill's career skyrocketed the next day. He appeared everywhere and had his own sitcom for a while and he's a funny guy with much to say.

As I write this, the first three shows of the Kirchenbauer Haffenhauer (to the Second Power) are online on this page and elsewhere. Go hear Bill and his sidekick Jason Ouellette talk about stuff.

• I lost an hour of sleep last night. It wasn't because of Daylight Saving Time. It always happens when I realize Donald Trump is still in office.

I haven't done one of these in a while because the last few times I've been to Costco, nothing interesting happened. Yesterday afternoon though, it was kind of interesting to be there with the Coronavirus Scare on. On my way in, the lady at the door who checks to make sure you're a member was announcing over and over, a list of items which the store was out of (like hand sanitizer) or rationing (like water and toilet paper).

There was a long line in the back of the store to get the rationed items. It apparently moved slowly because a number of folks didn't just want to put the one package of bottled water in their carts and move on. They wanted to argue they should be allowed to buy as many as they wanted. One woman began yelling because she saw a couple get two so she demanded that she could buy two even after it was explained to her that the couple had two Costco accounts.

I didn't get too near this because, maintaining a well-stocked home, I wasn't seeking anything that was sold out or in limited supply. They had plenty of rotisserie chickens, cases of cat food and other necessities of life. I did though have to fight for that case of cat food.

I picked it up in one corner of the store and placed it in my cart. Ten minutes later, I was over in the opposite corner of the store — about as far from the pet supplies aisle as one could be — and I left my cart for about thirty seconds to grab a few nearby items. When I returned to my cart, a man close to my age was taking the cat food out of it and putting the case into his. I said, "Excuse me. I think that's my cat food."

The guy said very firmly, "It's not yours. You haven't paid for it yet."

I said, "But it's got my name on it."

He looked quizzically at the case and asked, "What's your name?"

I said, "Friskies Paté. But my friends all call me 'Frisk.'" He laughed, put the case back into my cart and said, "I'm sorry." Then he reached out to shake hands and I extended my fist so we bumped knuckles. Until this scare is over, I'm not shaking hands with anyone except people who have been tested and Howie Mandel. The Friskies Thief said, "I just didn't want to walk all the way over to the other side of the store."

I said, "Get in the baby seat and I'll push you over there." He laughed again and that was the end of that.

I was expecting to see people shopping with masks on but I didn't. The most noticeable sign of virus concern at Costco apart from the line for certain supplies was that they've eliminated the free samples. Folks seemed disappointed but they understood. I heard a woman in a Bernie Sanders t-shirt say, "They could at least give out free samples of hand sanitizer" and I told her, "…a product that is in no need of special promotion these days."

On the way home, I stopped at a Von's Market for a few things they either don't stock at Costco or they stock them in bundles too large for me to deal with. Again, items were being rationed. Here's a photo that I took of a sign that was at all the checkout counters…

I read the rationed items out loud: "Liquid anti-bacterial soap…liquid hand sanitizer…gloves…face masks."  The cashier said, "I don't know why we need that sign up.  We've been smack out of all those things since the middle of last week."

The woman behind me in line said, "We just ordered hand sanitizer online.  They wanted $20 for a container that's usually three dollars."

The cashier said, "Honey, you don't need that.  We've still got bar soap on the shelves.  Hot water…soap…that'll get the job done."

Just to be silly, I said, "I see you're limiting each customer to five gloves.  Shouldn't that be an even number?"  Nobody laughed.  They all gave me one of those "Can he possibly be that stupid?" looks so I grabbed up my groceries and headed for the car.  On the way out, I saw they had a little stand with a Purell® dispenser next to where you select your shopping cart. I briefly considered stealing it but decided not to. Someone else will…probably that lady in the Bernie Sanders t-shirt.

As I've said here, I like some of what Bill Maher says on his show…some not all. One thing I liked this week was his latest "New Rules" segment about the money that candidates accept or don't accept from donors. Just in case you didn't catch it, take a look…

I feel like I've read comic books for all 68 years and five days of my life but I probably started around age six, commencing with Disney-type and segueing into super-heroes and other adventure books. By the time of my segue, a few of the DC comics I read were featuring letter columns and before long, most of them did. I began writing in to them and one day when I purchased an issue of Aquaman, I discovered a letter of mine had been selected for publication.

I told that story here but I didn't tell you when it happened. The comic was Aquaman #28 and records show that it went on sale on Tuesday, May 3 of 1966. That was a life-changing day for me. The letter was stupid and of course, I didn't get paid for it…didn't even get a free copy of the comic book…but that wasn't the point. Something I had created on my little manual typewriter had been published.

Three years and two months later, I made my first real sale as a professional writer and I can trace, though possibly not explain, a mental connection from one event to the other. And in some ways, what I do now is the same thing as what I did with my letter-writing then. The output now is longer and, I fervently pray, better…and I usually get paid. But it's still just me sitting at a more expensive keyboard writing something that I hope someone will want to publish or produce.

A lot of folks who began writing comic books in the late sixties and seventies wrote to comic book letter pages before that…which makes it odd that if you read comics these days, you may never see a letter column in any of them. And the few that are there seem to be written by some intern who had about as much to do with the creation of that issue as you did.

The exceptions are few and I'm not sure how many comics ever have them at all but there aren't many. One main reason they had them in the first place is that comics which sold any of their copies via subscription had to contain a page of text to get a good postage rate from the post office. Before letter pages, they wrote text stories that almost no one read.

Letter pages were more popular with the readers and those creating those comics liked the (mostly) praise they got and some of the suggestions therein. Also, you could pay someone next-to-nothing — or in the cases of some I've assembled, nothing — to assemble one. Those arcane postal regulations went away and so did most subscriptions…and eventually, so did letter columns. But I still kinda like them, especially when you're writing to, as I often could in the sixties, the editor or someone actually involved in the making of that comic book. Call it loyalty to something that once served me well.

We had them for a long time in the various Groo comic books and a lot of people clearly liked them. They liked writing the letters, they liked seeing if theirs got published, they liked seeing them in print…they even liked how I sometimes insulted them in my responses. We didn't have them in the last few Groo projects and I've decided it's time to change that.

This summer, the long-awaited Groo Meets Tarzan mini-series is coming out from Dark Horse, followed closely by another four-issue Groo mini-series which is already well into production. I expect there will be a lot more of this stuff coming out next year and I want to have letter columns in every issue. That means I need letters. That means you need to write them.

Want to see your letter published in a Groo letter page? Then you'll need the address: letters@groothewanderer.com. Once again, that's letters@groothewanderer.com. No physical mail because that would mean either my assistant or I would have to retype it. If you can read this, you can send e-mail and I can cut 'n' paste.

Tell us any silly thing that relates, however remotely, to Groo the Wanderer or his dog or Sergio or anything dumb…but stay away from current events. When these books go to press, they don't come out for a few months after and the way current events are going these days, what's funny in April may be tragedy by July.

There's no pay but you get to see your words in print and I'll probably write something rude in reply…and then there's this: Each issue, I'll pick the cleverest letter and the person who sent it in will receive a tiny original sketch of Groo by Sergio Aragonés, signed by Sergio and me.

It's the least we can do…and I'm not being gracious when I say that. I mean it really is the least we can do except to send you absolutely nothing, which is what we've done in the past. So write. Tell us how Groo comic books have changed your life…or that they haven't, in which case you should be sending us something minimally thoughtful instead of the other way around.