You may have wondered how they make Hostess Cupcakes. Well, amazingly they're all baked one-at-a-time by an elderly woman in Greenwich, Connecticut who carefully mixes the batter, pours it into a cupcake tin, bakes it, lets it cool, then frosts the top and hand-draws the squiggle and…
No, I'm lying. It actually works more like this…
My best friend (not counting those who lack facial hair) Sergio Aragonés has been drawing his silly cartoons for MAD ever since the January 1963 issue and the next issue — which should be in comic book shops on or about December 8 — is devoted to him. So are a lot of us.
That's the cover above and you can see it larger on your screen by clicking on it. Much of this issue is reprinted Sergio, recycling some of his best work from past issues but there are some new pages he did for it, and that cover is new. Some of you may be wondering what's up with MAD…
Will it be all reprint from now on? How long will "from now on" be? Will they ever try to re-establish it as a magazine and brand-name that satirizes the world today? It is not impossible that there does not exist a man, woman or child today who can answer those questions. I hope somebody sees its value, or at least its potential value. But in the meantime, you can enjoy a lot of Sergio in this issue. Watch for it.
Lots of interesting tweets today…
Daniel Larison
"Look at all the morons I hired" is not the clever defense that Trump seems to think it is.Robert Reich
We have become so inured to Trump's dereliction of duty that we hardly bat an eye when he's golfing while America has surpassed 240,000 deaths from coronavirus.Eric Boehlert
media 2016: omg we missed the Trump wins story so we need to interview Trump supporters! media 2020: we knew Trump would lose so we need to interview Trump supporters!NBC News
@chucktodd: "We invited every single Republican senator to appear here on @MeetThePress this morning. They all declined."Bernard Silverman
Instead of mindlessly chasing people to get comments on Trump's concession, spend the time interviewing very sick people who thought the virus was bogus and went maskless. Frankly, much more important than Trump.Bernie Sanders
No figure in history has done more to undermine American democracy than Donald Trump. His "birther" movement tried to delegitimize the Obama presidency. His refusal to accept defeat now is trying to undermine the Biden presidency. Goodbye, Trump.The Hill
Poll: 38 percent of Americans plan to have Thanksgiving dinner with 10 or more people.Keith Olbermann
And thus, 38 percent of Americans don't realize they also plan to have Christmas funerals for some of their Thanksgiving guests.Alex Baze
Bringing a deadly disease to people with little to no immunity is a very authentic Thanksgiving reenactment.Kelly O'Donnell
And the president has just arrived at his Virginia self branded golf property for a second straight day and his fourth golf outing since the election.Matt McDermott
Joe Biden made history by flipping the historically Republican states of Arizona and Georgia from red to blue. Not a single Sunday show held a panel with voters in these states to understand why they voted out the incumbent President.ABC News
Former National Security Adviser John Bolton urges GOP leadership to "explain to our voters… that in fact Trump has lost the election and that these claims of election fraud are baseless."John Fugelsang
And after that, it would be swell if someone could explain to John Bolton that those claims of Iraq WMDs were baseless.Maggie Haberman
"We're enduring censorship," Giuliani says to Bartiromo on a heavily-watched television show about the president's statements about the election.Nate Silver
Even accounting for the fact that there was considerably more underdetection in the spring when urban, coastal states were being hit harder, the pandemic really has turned out to be quite a bit worse in rural, conservative states.Ivanka Trump
The media's near total silence about the physical violence being perpetrated against conservatives is shameful & dangerous. Just image the outrage and indignation if this went the other way. Violence is never the answer and instigators must be condemned and prosecuted.Amee Vanderpool
I don't seem to remember you speaking out in this manner when Heather Heyer was killed in Charlottesville.
Yeah, I know I'm not doing a good job of not talking about Trump. No one is.
This is the trailer for Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles, a long-overdue documentary on the making of the 1964 Broadway smash, Fiddler on the Roof. The documentary played in theaters last August and it's been on pay stations ever since…but you can see it for free on PBS this week. Consult, as they say, your local listings. Wish they'd made it when Zero was still around to be interviewed…
I'm not going to write much about the post-election squabbles except to say this: It seems to me that the cases that the Trump lawyers are putting before judges are feeble, easily-dismissed cases which even if they stood up would not change the fact that Joe Biden will be the next president. By contrast, what Trump team members are claiming in the media as evidence that he won are very different cases that will never be ruled on in any court because they'll never be presented in one.
And notice I said "next president." Those who keep saying Biden will be the 46th President of the United States are forgetting that it's possible that Mike Pence might have that honor for a week or two. During Watergate, Nixon was getting various legal experts to advise him on whether a president could legally pardon himself. Since the question had never been tested, no one would say for sure that such a pardon would stand up to later legal challenges, whereas a pardon from Gerald Ford certainly would.
Then again, who knows what 45 might do? He certainly doesn't.
People keep asking me what I think are the chances of WonderCon and Comic-Con International happening next year. I keep deferring to my belief that we need to view The Pandemic as one of those things that defies that kind of prediction. So far, everyone who's said "It'll be gone by Spring" or "It'll be gone by the end of Summer" have been not only wrong but so far wrong that you realize they had absolutely nothing on which to base those predictions besides wishful thinking.
I have talked about this to absolutely no one in the organization that runs those two wonderful conventions…and even if I did, I doubt they have an answer now that's worth anything unless it was that they'd already decided WonderCon will not happen March 26-28 as is presently scheduled. As far as I know, they haven't made that decision yet and may not have seriously discussed it…yet.
But Dr. Anthony Fauci — who's the closest thing we have in the public arena to someone who knows what he's doing — says that "a coronavirus vaccine could be available to all Americans by April, 2021." Taking note of the words "could be" in that statement — and knowing that scientific things always take longer than you expect — and knowing that the roll-out of the vaccine will take time once it's available…
…I will be very surprised if WonderCon takes place in March or even April, May or June. I will be a bit less surprised if Comic-Con takes place as scheduled July 22–25, 2021 but I think there's plenty of time to dial up or down the level of that surprise. I will not be surprised one bit if at whichever of those cons occurs next, you'll need to show a negative COVID test and/or Proof of Vaccination to be admitted…and it won't just be cosplayers in that hall wearing masks.
Lastly: If you long for the touch of Comic-Con in your life, a new line of Comic-Con merchandise is now available. Enjoy it in your own home. It may be as close as we all get for a while.
I always love old TV theme songs. Here from the 2008 Emmy Awards ceremony, we have Josh Groban performing a medley of some of the best ones…
For the rest of the weekend, I want to get some stuff on this blog that isn't about You-Know-Who so I thought I'd answer this question from Michael McKeever…
I have been noticing on Facebook and elsewhere, a lot of fans pointing out that on a certain cover by Neal Adams, a figure was redrawn by John Romita or in a certain story by someone else, a panel was drawn by Murphy Anderson. On your list of A List of Things I've Learned About the Comic Book Industry Since I Got Into It In 1970, Many But Not All of Which Still Apply [link], I notice you wrote that "Approximately 50% of editorial alterations made on the work of the writers and artists were made mainly because someone in the office wanted to look like they were making a vital contribution." Could you write something more about this and also about the other 50% of reasons?
Sure. But first of all, let's note that it is completely within the rights and power of an editor (usually) to dictate corrections on a comic that he or she is in charge of. Occasionally, the talent has a contractual guarantee — we had one on Groo when it was published by Marvel — that nothing can be changed without the talent's permission. But those arrangements are rare exceptions and they usually are negotiated in cases where the talent is delivering a finished, ready-to-go-off-to-the-printer book.
Secondly, let's note that just because they ask for a change, that doesn't mean they're right. I see folks on discussion forums notice one of those Romita figures on a Gene Colan cover who assume "Gene must have screwed-up there." Well, maybe and maybe not. The editor thought the drawing needed fixing but maybe it didn't. I've seen editorial decisions I thought were ridiculous…and as I noted, sometimes the only reason for them is that someone wants to change something to assert their standing as The Boss.
Or there's one other reason I'll discuss in a follow-up post to this one.
Also, let's remember that it's easy for some of us to spot a retouch done by John Romita on a Neal Adams page. There were also surely retouches made by John Romita on John Romita pages and retouches by Neal Adams on Neal Adams pages and we can't spot them. If the editor can have the retouch done by the original artist, he or she usually does. Sometimes though, the original artist isn't around, whereas John Romita and a few other guys worked full-time in the Marvel offices. There was a period when Murphy Anderson worked in the DC offices and was called on to do redraws.
Romita went on staff at Marvel around November of 1965 and he became the main guy Stan called on to do retouches when they had to be done quickly. Before that, Sol Brodsky or Carl Hubbell did most of them on staff but Stan also lassoed various freelancers to do such work — for which they were not paid — when they were dropping off pages at the office. Jack Kirby redrew the Spider-Man figure that Steve Ditko drew on the cover of Amazing Spider-Man #10 and Steve Ditko redrew the Spider-Man figure that Jack Kirby drew on the cover of Avengers #11.
Also, let's note that when Romita redrew something on an Adams page, it probably did not mean John said, "Oh, I can draw that so much better than Neal! I'll improve it!" It probably means that John was directed by the editor to "fix" something the editor thought needed "fixing." I have seen artists, including Mr. Romita, making changes with which they did not themselves agree.
And I guess I should mention that one time when I was loitering in the Marvel Bullpen, I saw Marie Severin redrawing a panel in a page by someone else not because anyone thought the artist did a poor or wrong drawing but because someone had spilled ink on the page. That kind of thing happens too.
Now then. Were these changes necessary? Sometimes. The original artist may have drawn something not up to standard — everyone does at times — but more often, it was a matter of the drawing being wrong. Someone drew the wrong character or the wrong action. Or some editor had gotten ultra-fussy about a certain character being drawn a certain way.
When Stan Lee was writing dialogue for a story that was already drawn, he would sometimes think, "Gee, I wish the artist had drawn something else happening in that panel." If he did, he might hand it to Romita and tell him what should be there in its stead. It did not always mean the original artist had erred.
When I work with Sergio Aragonés on Groo, I sometimes ask him to change what's happening in a certain panel and since he makes the change himself, there's no way you can look at the published comic and know. (We also both sometimes have done corrections to the lettering, not because letterer Stan Sakai made a mistake — though in a very rare while, he does — but because we changed our mind about what a character should be saying.)
Lastly for now, there's a special kind of correction/change that is often made on comic book covers. They're changes made because someone in power is nervous. I have an e-mail from someone else asking about this kind of thing so I think I'll end this discussion here and pick up on it in a few days to talk about that kind of correction. Thanks, Michael.
This is long and it may be exactly what you aren't in the mood for today. If you aren't, just skip it. But the folks at The Daily Show have compiled a 25-minute video of "The FULL List of Trump's Most Tremendous Scandals," though they limit it to 100.
Maybe 25% of them are trivial and another 25% are probably dandy reasons to support the guy if you believe that America should be run by and for wealthy white men. But the rest? I'm thinking that if a Democratic president had been responsible for even one of the remaining 50%, everyone who just voted for Trump would call that one an iron-clad reason for impeachment, removal from office, criminal prosecution and in some cases, commitment to a psychiatric ward.
And this list stops way before anything he's doing now…
Back in the mid-seventies, I took a course in Criminology. It was taught by a former F.B.I. agent who also had a police background and it was one of the few times I really looked forward to sitting in a classroom and listening to someone. I learned many things that later came in handy writing stories but I think I learned a lot more about making deductions and assumptions about things that happen in real life. I'll just mention two…
The instructor was often talking about how things worked in an actual criminal investigation and contrasting them to what you see in mystery novels, TV shows and movies. One difference he noted several times was that in fiction, there comes a point where the reader or viewer is more or less challenged to solve the crime before the person in the detective role does in the story. He said, approximately…
When you're at that stage when you need to figure out the puzzle, you know that you have all the clues. The writer made sure you have them so maybe you can figure out whodunnit before the hero of the story does. Or if you can't, at least when he or she reveals it, you can say, "Of course! I should have noticed that…" In real life if you're investigating a crime, you never know if you have all the clues. They don't all magically appear for you. There might not even be enough to solve the crime. As a reader, you know they're all there…somewhere.
Absolutely true. It's something to keep in mind when you have to solve some mystery — not necessarily involving a crime — in your life. You might not have enough information to solve it. And the other lesson I wanted to mention here is when he said, again approximately…
You've all seen movies or TV shows where the detective has to try and think like the killer. He puts himself in the killer's place and thinks things like, "Okay, the easiest point of access was the dining room window…then he would have walked through the kitchen…then he would have known what time the victim always got home from work because he would have cased the house…then he would have approached his victim from the right side as they walked down this hall…"
…and that kind of thinking is almost always wrong because the criminal was not logical. He didn't think like you. He might not have even been thinking the way he did on other occasions. He might have been acting with no coherent thought process guiding his actions…of it may have been one so bizarre that there's no friggin' way you could meld your mind with his and deduce it. In reading about serial killers or even in my way-more mundane existence, I have learned this to be true. Often, you just can't know…
Good thing to keep in mind if and when you try to figure out what Donald Trump is up to.
The Alvin Show — starring "David Seville" (Ross Bagdasarian) and his three chipmunk children — was a prime-time animated series that ran a year on CBS (1961-1962) then ran a while on Saturday morning and in syndication. It doesn't get a whole lotta love these days but I thought it was pretty good then and a lot of the episodes stand up well.
General Foods sponsored the show so it was full of commercials for Jell-O and Post cereals. Here are several of them…
I'm watching the Trump "I won" campaign with about a fourth of my brain…which is a very small portion of brain indeed. I can't see him remaining in office but I'm curious as to what's going on here. Does the guy really believe there's a way to prove the votes were miscounted and he truly got more?
Or is he just positioning himself to get donations from his supporters and to position himself as not a loser but a winner who was cheated out of his win and therefore deserves to be a powerful political force out of office? (And then, when he gets indicted, it's all a hoax to bring him down, fabricated by those who know he's still the most powerful man in the world.)
Or maybe he's just out of his mind and is barking orders without a real plan. I've seen people in power do that.
I think I'll try to pay very little attention to this over the next few days. Better to do that and then mentally check in later to see how it all played out.
Dr. Fauci is optimistic we'll all be getting vaccinated around next April. Well, we won't all be getting vaccinated. We don't all get vaccinated for anything these days and there will doubtlessly be many who'll resist, claiming all sorts of reasons including the safety of that particular vaccine and, of course, the fact that there was never any such thing as COVID-19 so why do they need a vaccination?
So what happens then when some of us have had the shot and some of us haven't? Will stores and events say that no one is admitted without proof of vaccination? Will there be a little card to prove it and you'll have to show it to get into Costco or go to a show?
There are people now who are furious that they can't go into some stores or get on an airplane without a piece of cloth on their faces. How will they feel if they can't do what they want to do without getting an injection of something they've decided is a poison or a cure for which there is no known disease? I'm not looking forward to this.
I love that musical comedies can travel all around the world. Here's the opening number of a production of Fiddler on the Roof as performed in Panama…
Quiet day here. No one who doesn't seem like a Trump toady seems to think he has any chance of remaining in the Oval Office and some of the toadies aren't too convincing in pretending they believe he does. But I guess they figure it can't hurt to collect someone donations to fight the unstolen stolen election and put that money to use elsewhere. It's a lot like Max Bialystock convincing little old ladies to invest in that surefire Broadway smash, Springtime for Hitler. Come to think of it, it's the exact same thing.
Also, I assume they figure that it can't hurt to keep Trump's base — which is increasingly becoming the base of the Republican Party — angry and convinced they're in the majority and will always win unless Democrats cheat. I seem to recall Trump on with Letterman or some talk host once explaining that, yes, his business did have its bankruptcies but they were all other folks' screw-ups and failures, never his…and he personally always profited off those business ventures even if everyone else involved lost their skivvies.
I have written before on this blog about people who think never admitting you're wrong is the same thing as always being right. A closely-allied species is the person who thinks never admitting you lost is the same thing as always winning.
For the benefit of those of you who keep asking me when there will be more issues of Groo: Whatever I do on that comic, I'm doing at the moment. You can expect an announcement soon.
Also, people who pre-ordered their copies of the new Pogo book are telling me they're receiving them. If you were waiting until it's actually out to order it, wait no longer. That's all for now.
I linked to this video eleven years ago here but the link has been dead for a long time and now I can make it live again. It's the first episode of The Prisoner, the historic 1967 TV series by Patrick McGoohan. Here's the text I posted then. If it gives you the urge to see the whole series, it's on Amazon Prime and maybe other places…
I was not as big a fan of this show as some of my friends when it first aired. It would have required too much effort to be as big a fan of this show as some of my friends when it first aired. You'd have had to talk about it every waking moment and find double, triple and quadruple meanings in every line of dialogue and every prop or piece of scenery. What I guess intrigued me the most was that every time a new episode aired, I'd hear the discussion and analysis all over the schoolyard. No two people agreed. No two people seemed to be remotely on the same page as to what had happened, let alone what any of it meant.
And of course, everyone was blood certain that they and only they understood the show. I used to occasionally wade into these conversations, not because I had any better grasp but because it was fun to lob in a grenade or two. I'd stroll up to the mob and having no idea what I was talking about — but unlike the rest of them, knowing that — I'd ask, "And did everyone notice the scene that represented the Cuban Missile Crisis? And the sign in the background of the last shot that said, 'Number Six is Number Nine?'" This was back before we had VCRs, so no one could race home and replay the show and freeze-frame it to see that I'd made that up. It made the discussions somehow livelier.
The only other thing I can think of to mention about the show is to tell the following story. One evening about 1973, I was on a date with a young lady whose all-time favorite TV show was The Prisoner. I learned this when we were walking in Westwood and she suddenly noticed someone about thirty yards down the sidewalk and shrieked. "Omigod," she gasped, pronouncing it that way (as one word). "There's the star of my favorite TV show." I couldn't see who she'd spotted but I ran after her as she sprinted up to the gentleman. Before I could stop her, she accosted him and blurted out, "Mr. McGoohan, I have to tell you that I think The Prisoner was the greatest TV show ever made and I think you are a genius."
The man thanked her, very so politely, but said, "I'm sure Patrick McGoohan will be pleased to hear that but my name is Patrick Macnee and I was on a TV show called The Avengers." Then he looked at me and said with a smile, "Don't worry…this happens all the time." Here's the other Patrick in her favorite show…