The Los Angeles Comic Con, which was to have been an in-person event held December 11-13 has announced it will postpone until September of 2021. Of course.
Monthly Archives: October 2020
Today's Video Link
78 minutes of Audra McDonald. What more do you need to know?
The Man Won't Leave Me Alone!
He just won't…
Mark,
CONGRATULATIONS! You've won the Weekly Trump Patriot 700%-MATCH!
Every week President Trump selects a TOP supporter to receive an exclusive 700%-MATCH, and this week, it's YOU.
This offer is only available to you for the NEXT 2 HOURS, Mark. After that, your matching offer will be invalid.
Please contribute ANY AMOUNT in the NEXT 2 HOURS and your gift will automatically be 700%-MATCHED. >>
President Trump knows that you've been a dedicated supporter, which is why he selected YOU for this opportunity.
He wants to know the moment you make your contribution, so don't wait.
Just contribute ANY AMOUNT IMMEDIATELY for a 700%-MATCH.
Thank you,
Team Trump 2020
I don't know if he's a super-spreader at his rallies but he sure is in my e-mailbox. I've received fifteen of these messages in the last twenty-four hours, including two from Mike Pence telling me I was letting President Trump down. Imagine! With all the Trump supporters in this world, the one he selected for this honor this week was little ol' me!
Dispatches From the Fortress – Day 215
Hey, I made it through the weekend without mentioning you-know-who on this blog. That ain't easy when he keeps popping up in your mind, on your computer screen and in phone calls from friends. A quick look at the polls this morning suggests Biden's farther ahead than ever. I can't figure out how Trump could possibly get to 270 electoral votes without winning a couple of states where all the polls say Biden is presently over eight points ahead.
This morning, the guy tweeted…
We will have Healthcare which is FAR BETTER than ObamaCare, at a FAR LOWER COST – BIG PREMIUM REDUCTION. PEOPLE WITH PRE EXISTING CONDITIONS WILL BE PROTECTED AT AN EVEN HIGHER LEVEL THAN NOW. HIGHLY UNPOPULAR AND UNFAIR INDIVIDUAL MANDATE ALREADY TERMINATED. YOU'RE WELCOME!
Heathcare that is far better than Obamacare at a far lower cost was something he promised four years ago on the campaign trail and he said it was easy to do and would happen almost immediately but he hasn't done a single…
Oh, why am I doing this? You already know how you're voting. You may have already voted. Never mind. Let's move on to more important topics…
A couple of folks wrote about this post saying they didn't understand what I was saying about the Comics Code symbol cutting off part of the Fantastic Four logo. Okay, I'll try to explain it with the help of this visual aid…
The first image shows how part of the F.F. logo looked when it was on many covers with the Code symbol overlapping the "C." If you copied the logo off a cover to use elsewhere (as was done with the poster I was talking about) and you surgically removed the Code symbol, you could be left with a "C" that was not complete. The second image shows this. If you then retouched to finish off the logo, it would look like the third image. Got it now?
Cuter Than You #67
A sheep on a trampoline. That's right. I said "A sheep on a trampoline." Wanna make something of it?
Libraries
The phone has been ringing here all day so you get a rerun instead of a new post. This first ran here on 11/22/10…
Not long ago, I spoke at an event about comic books that was held in a public library. Upon entering the building, two thoughts collided in my brain at the same moment.
One was one of those "look how far we've come" observations. Comic books being heralded in a public library? When I was a kid, a library was where parents sent their children because they didn't want them reading comic books. Or at least, didn't want them reading only comic books.
The second observation was along the lines of, "Hey, I'm walking into a public library. How long has it been since I did that?" It had been quite a while…and the last two times were also to appear at events connected with comic books.
There was a day when public libraries were my home away from home…when I'd be in one at least twice a week to take something out or bring something back. My parents were big on the library and I almost always accompanied them. Then when I was old enough to go on my own, I went on my own. I was in one so often that if I overheard someone ask a librarian for the Dewey Decimal code for biographies, I'd call out "920" before the staffer could get the nine out. Naturally in high school, I worked in the school library…and I could have done that for a living if I'd wanted a real boring, thankless occupation that didn't pay and which would soon be obsolete. (I am not knocking librarians one bit. I admire them greatly, especially those who champion Free Press and public access to information. I'm just lamenting what has befallen the profession.)
Over in West L.A. on Santa Monica Boulevard, there was and I think still is a library I frequented. That I'm not certain it's still there should give you some idea of how long it's been. It was divided into two sections. When you walked in, the Childrens section was to your left and the Adult books were to the right. In theory, you weren't supposed to be looking in, let alone checking books out from the Adult section if you were under thirteen years of age. This is not because there was any pornography or filth on that side. They were just afraid kids might encounter a book that had the words "hell" and/or "damn" in it. I think I was around eleven (maybe ten) when I outgrew the Childrens section. I'd literally read everything in it that wasn't of the "See Spot run" variety. I'd even read all the Freddy the Pig books by Walter R. Brooks, and I didn't even like Freddy the Pig. It's just that I'd run out of books there I hadn't read and perhaps memorized.
My parents sometimes checked out books they thought I'd like from the adult section but what was obviously needed was for me to have the ability to browse it myself. That's when my mother called Mrs. Kermoyan. You may remember Mrs. Kermoyan from this anecdote. She was my elementary school principal and a big supporter of my writing and reading endeavors. I have one other story about Mrs. Kermoyan I'll tell here one of these days but this one is about how she somehow arranged for me to get an adult library card. The next time my parents took me to that library, I was handed a special, magic card that allowed me to read or borrow any book in the place. A moment of great pride.
Card in hand, I marched over to the Drawing/Cartoons shelf (Dewey Decimal 740, I knew) to see what they had for me there. I picked out a book at random, opened to a random page and found myself looking at a photo of a nude woman. What, I ask you, are the odds?
I immediately slammed the book shut — not because I didn't want to see the nude woman. I did, very much. In fact, I later checked her out in a couple of senses of that term. But right at that moment, I didn't want anyone to see me looking at the nude woman. I was afraid they'd think that was the only reason I wanted the magic card and so they'd take it away from me. One of my two great disappointments came when I realized that almost none of the books in the Adult section contained photos of nude women. I'd just gotten lucky my first time out.
That day, I checked out several books on comics and cartoons…and I later worked my way through many shelves of many aisles. Every so often, a library worker who didn't know of me would say, "Hey, you shouldn't be in this section" and I'd proudly haul out my card and show him or her, which made me feel pretty darn special. My second great disappointment would come when I learned that I wasn't the only kid my age to have such a card.
I liked taking books out of the library. What I didn't like doing was taking them back, though I always did. (One near exception came when I finally got hold of a copy of Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy by John McCabe — at the time, the only book in print on my two favorite performers. The L.A. library system didn't have a copy. The nearby Beverly Hills Public Library did. Using my aunt's address, I got a Beverly Hills library card just so I could check that one book out…and I kept it out for months. I'd renew it whenever I could renew it and when I couldn't renew it, I'd take it back, wait around until they returned it to the shelves and then check it out again. I only briefly considered claiming it was lost and paying the fine, which would have been a lot less trouble for me and for the library.)
Anyway, as I began to make a little money, I began to buy books as opposed to borrowing them…and that's about when I stopped going to libraries. A library was no longer my home away from home. My home became a library away from libraries. In some ways, that's not as good because you don't have as many delightful surprises. Then again, I rarely have to pay myself an overdue fine.
Today's Video Link
Cookie Monster goes to the library…
My Latest Tweet
- I just called my wireless phone provider to complain that their spam filter is not filtering out spam calls from them trying to get me to switch to the service I already have from them.
Jack's F.F. Poster
In 1969, a Los Angeles-based mail order firm called Marvelmania International issued a line of merchandise based on Marvel Comics properties. Marvelmania was not a division of Marvel. It was an outside company that had acquired the rights to do what they did and they did not do it well or honestly. The gent who owned it had a tendency to not send customers the items they ordered, not send Marvel the royalty payments they owed and not pay the folks who worked for them for the work they did for them. I was briefly one of those people and so was Jack Kirby.
They hired Jack to draw all sorts of material for them and he was paid…well, I would guess about 5% of the money they owed him. And if that estimate is wrong, it's because it's too high. I fared a little better because I worked in the office and it was a little harder to not pay me — though God knows, they found ways. I quit a few months before the whole operation collapsed in a flurry of legal actions but while I was there, some interesting items were produced.
One was a line of posters, four of which were drawn by Jack. He actually drew eight for the line but they only printed four of them and one was a great image of the Fantastic Four. You can see it if you click here.
I get a lot of questions about these posters so here are some of the answers. The poster was designed, penciled and inked by Jack. The poster line was colored by Marvel colorists in New York and we were told that Marie Severin had worked on them. It's probable but not definite that she colored this one. The guy I replaced at Marvelmania did the paste-up, placing the Fantastic Four logo on the drawing and also affixing a little photostat of Jack's signature which went on all the posters he drew for them. I was assigned to get the piece ready for the printer.
At the time, I was seventeen years old and still learning about production and printing. It was because of this poster that I learned a valuable lesson — one I'm not sure is still true in the age of computers but it was sure true in the seventies. It was that no matter how you notated changes or wrote out detailed instructions or told the printer in clearly-enunciated language of his native tongue what to do, there was only about a 50% chance they would actually be done. (That estimate also may be high.)
The fellow who had pasted the Fantastic Four logo onto Jack's artwork had taken a stat of that logo as it appeared on a cover, had it photostatted to the proper dimensions and had carefully cut out each letter individually so he could overlap them on the art. But he made a mistake and pasted the "S" in "Fantastic" upside-down. Also, the logo he used was from a cover so it had the Comics Code symbol overlapping the top of the final "C" in that word. If you look, you can see the the perforation pattern of the Comics Code "stamp" as part of the "C."
I painstakingly retouched another stat of the "C" to fix it and told the engraver to (a) strip it in so the "C" would be complete, (b) invert the inverted "S" and (c) reverse the black line on Jack's signature to white lettering so it would be more legible against the dark green background the colorist had selected. That colorist — who was probably but not definitely Marie — had affixed a note to ask for that. I made that note larger and pasted notes on all the changes into the margins of the art and I verbally told the engraver to make those changes before printing and he swore he would and, of course, didn't.
Being new to this kind of thing, I was surprised. After a few years of dealing with printers and engravers of all kinds, I came to almost expect it. I hope it's not as common now.
When the printer proofs arrived at Marvelmania, I was annoyed and there was brief talk of demanding the plates be remade at the engraver's expense and corrected. Since however the owner of Marvelmania was way behind paying the engraver for work done, that didn't happen and the errors remained. Later on, that engraver was one of the main creditors whose lawyers closed down Marvelmania…which was probably a case of throwing good money after bad since those creditors never collected a dime of either kind of money.
So that's that story. I'm working this weekend on my big, huge, long-awaited biography of Jack Kirby and I have loads of Marvelmania stories in there, many of which you won't believe. No, I can't tell you when this book will be out but I've been working a lot on it whenever I can get my mind off that person we're not mentioning on this blog this weekend.
The Art of Love
I watched The Art of Love on my newly-repaired DVD player last night. I liked it but nowhere near as much as I did when I saw it in a theater in 1965. The story is a little too contrived and the romantic twists of which characters fall in love with each other felt very "written" to me and unnatural. Dick Van Dyke and James Garner play two "friends" and I put that word in quotes because they don't treat each other very well in this film.
Also, it was a bit of stretch to cast Elke Sommer — who in '65 was 25 years old and one of the most beautiful women on the screen — as a young lady who was despondent because she couldn't find a man to love her. If I was a young woman back then watching this, I would have said to myself, "Wow! If no man wants her, what hope is there for the rest of us?"
But there are some very funny scenes and it's always a joy to watch Mr. Van Dyke move and stumble and trip and just act with his whole rubbery body. So I really can't dislike it but 68-year-old me didn't enjoy it as much as 13-year-old me did.
A few weeks ago, I re-watched The Thrill of it All, which was made two years earlier at the same studio (Universal) with the same director (Norman Jewison) and another script by Carl Reiner, and again with James Garner, in this case with Doris Day. It was a better entry in the lightweight screwball comedy category, meaning that the story was totally illogical and silly but it somehow didn't matter. You can order The Art of Love if you like but if you're in the mood for James Garner in that kind of thing, buy The Thrill of it All.
The odd thing is that while they're both written by Carl Reiner and he's in them both, The Thrill of it All feels more like an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show than The Art of Love even though The Art of Love actually has Dick Van Dyke in it. Go figure.
Dispatches From the Fortress – Day 212
Old Business: Yes, my Amazon order arrived today at the proper address. I know you were all so concerned.
And back in this message, I asked for help with my Sony DVP-CX995V DVD Carousel Player — an antique model that holds and plays 400 DVDs. Mine had stopped working and they don't make them or anything like them these days. Many of you sent in suggestions for which I thank you…and I especially thank Mike Frank, who referred me to a local video repair company — George Meyer AV — who got it up and running perfectly again.
Over the weekend, I intend to use it to watch The Art of Love, a just-released DVD that I mentioned in this 2014 post and in this one from earlier this year. It's a 1965 comedy starring Dick Van Dyke and James Garner that I recall enjoying a lot in 1965 and I haven't seen it since.
Let's see if I like it in 2020. If you want to take the gamble that you will, it's now out on DVD (order here) or you can wait 'til I review it here in the next few days.
Okay…before I move on, is there any more Old Business? No? Well, then let's turn to…
New Business: So there are a lot of questions buzzing around. The Trump folks are refusing to be specific about how often he was tested, when his last negative test was and exactly when he first tested positive for that disease he said affects almost no one. Is there any other explanation for that secrecy other than that it would make him look terrible if we saw how many people — including maybe Joe Biden — he risked infecting after he knew?
And is there any other explanation for Lindsey Graham refusing to be tested other than the fact that if he was known to have tested positive, it might screw up the Supreme Court nomination?
I continue to track the polls by consulting The Economist, where they just downgraded Trump from having a 9% chance of winning the electoral college to 8% and his chance of winning the popular vote from 2% to 1%. If the polling has even a 1% margin of error, that means all of us are more or less tied with him on the popular vote thing. If you want to read how bad things have been lately for Trump polling-wise, read Charlie Cook.
I'm going to try for one of those Trump-free weekends I used to do here. I know I won't succeed but I'm curious as to what will force him back into the active portion of my consciousness. Let's see how long I can hold out.
Today's Bonus Video Link
This is for the 3,208 of us on this planet who have never seen the musical of The Phantom of the Opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber and friends. We probably should. It has already achieved the mantle of Longest-Running Musical Ever on Broadway and shows no signs of closing. At the time all shows in Manhattan shut down in March, it had logged 13,370 performances. When Broadway reopens — which now will not be before May 30 of next year — it will reopen and this show may run another 13,370 performances.
The current runner-up is the revival of Chicago, which ran 9,692 performances before the lockdown. Here's a stunning thought: If Phantom did not reopen and Chicago did — which is extremely unlikely — Chicago would have to run for around another nine years just to get the tying run on base. The Lion King is not far behind…and has about the same chance of besting Phantom.
So there aren't many of us around the world who haven't seen this show somewhere. This weekend, you have a chance to see it for free in your own private Fortress of Solitude. Sir Andrew and his company have put a fine (I'm told) video of the show online for 48 hours, three of which are already up as I post this.
This is a British staging from 2011 at the Royal Albert Hall to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the show and it features Ramin Karimloo, Sierra Boggess and Hadley Fraser. At the end, there's a curtain speech by Mr. Webber and some additional performances by folks who were in earlier productions, including the first. If you're never going to see the show in a theater, this might be the best you'll ever do — but hurry because it goes away soon…
Highly-Recommended Reading
The Mother Jones site has compiled this timeline of the spread of COVID-19. It's long but it's worth going through, day by day, watching an amazing array of statements by our leaders which with the little bit of hindsight we now have, look irredeemably wrong.
One might forgive a lot of the mistakes of a scientific nature. The virus was new and it was not possible to know for sure everything people demanded to know about it when they demanded to know about it. The cautious statements — the ones qualified with the caveat that more research was needed and that some counsel was tentative — look very wise now. So many which were presented with absolute certainty — apart from "wear a mask," "wash your hands" and "socially-distance" — were absolutely wrong.
This is not the time to get angry at or to try and shame the folks who thought the whole thing was a hoax and they certainly didn't need to wear one of those stupid masks. We need those people to back down from those positions and do what real experts have said since about the second week of this catastrophe. If they stubbornly insist to gather in unmasked groups and to scream at Costco greeters who won't let them in with nude faces, they could keep this thing going for a long time.
Today's Video Link
Jordan Klepper at a Trump rally. You can't write this stuff. Well, you could but nobody would believe there are people like this…
Today's Video Link
The return of Newman…