Monthly Archives: March 2021

Veteran comic book/strip artist Frank Thorne has died at the age of 90 and change. Thorne, who claimed he wanted to be an illustrator "as far back as I can remember" became one while still in his teen years. His earliest known work in comics was for the company Standard Comics in 1948 but he had been selling occasional drawings to pulp magazines before that.

His heroes were Alex Raymond (who drew Flash Gordon, among other strips) and Hal Foster (who drew Prince Valiant) and he described his own art at the time as in their tradition, only nowhere near as good. But it was good enough that in 1951, King Features Syndicate — which handled Raymond and Foster — hired Frank to draw the Perry Mason newspaper strip. When that ended, he had no trouble securing work in comic books, mainly for Western Publishing's Dell and Gold Key titles. Among the comics that featured his work were Mighty Samson, The Twilight Zone, Boris Karloff's Tales of Mystery, Jungle Jim and many, many TV and movie adaptations.

In 1968, he began working for DC Comics with work in Son of Tomahawk, Our Fighting Forces (and all their war comics), The Spectre and Korak, Son of Tarzan among others. His work was professional and popular but he didn't become a fan-favorite until 1975 when Marvel connected him with the character Red Sonja, a spin-off from the popular Conan the Barbarian series.

At age 45, Frank Thorne blossomed into a whole new artist — bold, experimental and brilliantly-imaginative. He became known for his drawings not only of her but of many warrior women, and he also appeared often at comic conventions in the guise of "The Wizard," a companion to Red Sonja, appearing in live shows with women costumed as her and judging Red Sonja look-alike contests. His flair for drawing outrageous and sexy female characters led to work for Playboy and more adult publications and graphic novels like his own Ghita of Alizarr.

This is the spot in an obit where I would ordinarily tell you that it was a pleasure to meet and know the man but the truth is that I never met him. I was around him a lot but he was always mobbed by fans (and cosplaying ladies) seeking autographs and commissions. It was a joy though to see this man segue from realistic, somewhat staid illustration work to a style and vision all his own. I'm sure his work will be reprinted and devoured for a long time.

When I was ordering my McDonald's Crispy Chicken Sandwich yesterday on my iPhone, I noticed this odd bit of pricing. I believe this is kind of how Bitcoin works.

The audio book autobiography of our friend Laraine Newman is being released this coming Thursday — all nine hours of it — and I'm sure eager to experience it. If you are too, this might hold you over 'til then. It's the latest outing of Phil & Ted's Sexy Boomer Show, an audio podcast hosted by Phil Proctor and Ted Bonnitt. Laraine is a fascinating, talented lady who has lived a fascinating life among other talented people and I wanna hear all about it.

You can hear the podcast at this link and you can order her book at this link. Do both.

I know, I know: You've been checking in here every day, wondering when Mark is going to review McDonald's new Crispy Chicken Sandwich. Your wait is over, my friends.

I had one yesterday. I had them leave the pickles off and it wasn't quite as fluffy and large as the one in the photo above but it was close. It wasn't particularly crunchy and I didn't do weights and measures but the filet seemed a bit larger than what one gets in the corresponding sandwich at Chick-Fil-A.

And that's really the question here: How does it stack up against the Chick-Fil-A sandwich that it was designed to replicate?  McDonald's — the firm everyone in the Fast Food Biz used to emulate — has been reduced to playing catch-up because them Golden Arches haven't been very golden lately.

Mickey D's has its advantages. The fries are better, it's open on Sundays and you can get their knock-off without any moral reservations that come with patronizing a company that has Chick-Fil-A's history of supporting anti-gay charities. Then again, it's a little hard to say how much of that, if any, Chick-Fil-A is still doing.

And I'm very much aware that almost any company that gets my money is going to have given something to some cause or politician I oppose. McDonald's has announced it's pausing its political donations to reassess…but during the 2020 election cycle, the company reportedly donated half a million bucks to federal candidates, 63% of which went to Republicans including Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

So to me, in the chicken sandwich consideration, that's a wash. I've decided not to let it stop me if I'm driving past a Chick-Fil-A and I feel like downing one of their sandwiches.

But then the Chick-Fil-A I'd most often patronize is only a few blocks north and across the street from a McDonald's where the new sandwich is okay — not quite as good as Chick-Fil-A's but not a bad alternative. And they do have better fries and I can also get a burger while I'm there…

…and I think my decision will probably come down to which side of the street I'm on. And whether it's a Sunday.

My longtime pal Marc Wielage has much to tell us about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons…

What happened was the group kind of split up in the 1970s and wanted to perform different kinds of music. (Valli did the theme for Grease and other songs and had a decent solo career.)

Eventually, by the mid-1980s Valli and business partner Bob Gaudio controlled "The Four Seasons Partnership" and they bought out the old members. They hired new, younger singers to perform with Valli and did oldies shows for the next few decades. I saw Valli perform at a benefit for the Hurricane Katrina victims in late 2005 at the Greek Theater, and it was just Valli (71 at that time) and 3 new guys about 30 or 40. They had a backup singer/keyboard player way off to the side that hit all the falsetto notes that were a bit out of Mr. Valli's range — but it was still a great performance and the highlight of the show. He had genuine charisma and clearly enjoyed the crowd.

Valli and Gaudio own all the rights to the group's name and most of the master tapes and publishing for their hits, so they've profited handsomely from sales, radio broadcasts, and of course the Jersey Boys Broadway show and film. A guy I know who knew Valli while at KRTH-FM says that Valli made more money from that show than he did in his entire performing career.

That sure wouldn't surprise me. A lot of folks in the entertainment field manage to hang around long enough to wide a wave — and it's sometimes a huge, gnarly one — of nostalgia. There was something about Frankie Valli and his repertoire that set him and the Four Seasons apart from eighty-seven thousand groups like that you haven't much about since Lyndon Johnson stepped down.

And I doubt anyone who goes to see him perform in the last few decades cares a lot about which three or four other guys are on the stage with him as long as they sound more or less like the records.

Here's Valli in God-knows-what-year singing what I think was his best song…

• Some people don't seem to understand the difference between a private company deciding to take some of its products off the market, and the government or society banning those products.

Speaking of conventions, as I seem to be lately: WonderCon@Home will commence three weeks from yesterday. March 25 and 26, there will be many glorious online events to make up a little bit for the fact that we cannot all congregate in person in Anaheim this year either.

I have recorded three panels that will go online during those two days…

• The Annual Jack Kirby Tribute Panel — in which I talk about Jack for an hour with famed fantasy author Neil Gaiman and popular TV presenter Jonathan Ross…
• The Groo Crew — in which I appear with the other folks who deserve the credit/blame (pick one) for the comic book Groo the Wanderer…Sergio Aragonés, Stan Sakai and Tom Luth, talking about upcoming Groo releases and about Stan's comic, Usagi Yojimbo and…
• The Cartoon Voices Panel — in which I spend an hour talking with four top voice artists (Maurice LaMarche, Mara Junot, Brock Powell and Anna Brisbin) and get them to demonstrate their skills.

Announcements are forthcoming about the dates and times these will be available for your viewing pleasure, and there will be many more panels and presentations by other folks.  I assume there will be panels in July for Comic-Con@Home but we'll get to them.

Rich Firestone writes…

You know, "The Four Seasons" still confuses me, because as I recall, when those guys started, there were four guys onstage, including Frankie. There's even an album cover showing the band lifting Frankie up on a silver platter, and one of the four guys lifting Frankie…is Frankie! I assume Frankie got a promotion, or the others got demoted at some point, but it still seems weird to see five guys on stage at a Four Seasons show!

I'm no expert on this — and it's been a while since I saw Jersey Boys — but my understanding is that at some point, Mr. Valli went solo and was replaced in The Four Seasons…and then there were bookings where it was advantageous to have him perform with that group. So it was like a former member of The Four Seasons performing with the current roster of The Four Seasons.

Certainly if I am wrong about this, I will have eighty e-mails by Noon telling me so.

Hey, how about another number from Frankie Valli and the current Four Seasons?

And here's an update on our post from this morning. San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria announced in a press conference today that the homeless folks who've been sheltering in the city's Convention Center are being relocated. More details here.

In the press release announcing there'll be no in-person Comic-Con International this July in San Diego, the folks who run the con told us they were happy to announce — well, here, I'll quote what they were so happy to announce…

…we are happy to announce that San Diego Comic Convention is planning to present a three-day in-person convention in San Diego in November. At this time, we are still working on specific details as to attendance capacity, badge cost, and related information, and those details will be forthcoming.

This has led to many of you writing me to ask what I can divulge about this November event. I probably shouldn't reveal this but the folks behind the con are still working on specific details as to attendance capacity, badge cost, and related information, and those details will be forthcoming.

That's all I know. Honest. And this doesn't bother me because one of the ways I've kept whatever sanity and balance I've somehow managed to retain during The Pandemic has been by discounting all predictions beyond about the week after next. I recognize that all of them are guesses — occasionally semi-educated ones but guesses, nonetheless. They might turn out to be true but so might my hunches as to next week's winning lottery numbers. You can drive yourself banana-wackie by trying to plan for specific dates right now.

I'm getting e-mails and questions from folks who are asking, "Hey, if Texas and Mississippi can open up fully, why can't Comic-Con?" Well, first of all, it remains to be seen how wise Texas and Mississippi are being. But secondly, it ain't that easy.

One fellow who apparently is desperate to attend a comic convention a.s.a.p. wrote me that he went to the website for the San Diego Convention Center and looked at the calendar they have posted there of upcoming events. There, he saw several listings for conventions that are clearly not Comic-Con events but he found this: A "Private Event: Convention with Trade Show" for the weekend of 11/19 thru 11/21. It estimates a turnout of 7000 and says it's "Not Open to Public."

That doesn't sound like Comic-Con to me. Comic-Con is open to the public and I find it hard to believe they're talking about something that small. But based on his deduction, this fellow tells me he's booked a non-refundable AirBnB room in San Diego for that weekend. Even if he's right about the dates, he's gambling a lot to assume he'll be able to score a badge if only 7000 are available.

More interesting to me is that the calendar there shows real, non-mystery conventions booked there beginning June 9…quite a few of them, all with capacities below 12,000 until the end of August. After that, they don't go much higher except one for 33,000 at the beginning of September. We also see on the Cancellations page, everything before June 9 listed as canceled, postponed or virtual.

If you're going to try to figure this out — and I doubt you have enough info to do so or that any of it is that firm — keep this in mind: Like most convention centers, the one in San Diego was built to house many simultaneously. They can section off portions of it and move walls around to create the proper-sized spaces for up to seven (7) separate gatherings at the same time. Comic-Con with its 135,000 attendance is one of the few that ever uses the whole facility.

What's happening with most convention centers around the nation is that they're looking at opening cautiously and incrementally with small gatherings being scheduled, in some cases on a highly-tentative basis. Las Vegas, which depends on convention trade more than any other city, just announced they'll start allowing some (not all) conventions with a 1,000 attendee maximum this month. Before that announcement, no conventions were scheduled in the town before May 1. The Las Vegas Advisor says…

…the Tobacco Plus Expo is scheduled for May 12-14, but can't get approval from Clark County until May 1, which puts the organizers in a whale of a bind. The big World of Concrete show is scheduled for June 8-10. Normally, it attracts upwards of 60,000 conventioneers, but we'll see how many are allowed in the next couple of months.

What I'm trying to point out here is that having Comic-Con in any size is not just a matter of the convention organizers looking at the latest COVID numbers and saying, "Hey, let's take a gamble and do it!" They need a place to hold the thing. They also need a good selection of hotels and restaurants that are functioning at full capacity and there are probably a hundred other necessities including security and insurance.

But first and foremost, they need the venue and they need it to be legal to hold an event of some size. As we know, the San Diego Convention Center has been used as a homeless shelter for close to a year now. It is slowly turning back into a convention center. Back on February 11 when we last checked, there were 856 people living there. Today, the number is 735.

Reopening that huge facility will take time and it will not happen all at once. The announcement by Comic-Con that they won't be holding a full-sized event there this July is simple recognition that the building won't be fully available by then. There also seem to be some financial problems and, as I say, you also need the surrounding community to be ready to receive us.

Me, I'm taking the view that I don't know when the hell anything will be open the way we'd like it to be. There may be Comic-Con in some form or size this November but I ain't clearing my calendar or booking my room for it until they say it's on…and even then, I'll assume it's probable, not definite.

Don't drive yourself too crazy. Wait and see. Wait and see.

It's a "virtual" performance by Frankie Valli and (I guess) the four guys who now comprise The Four Seasons. I love seeing a guy from another era — Mr. Valli is 86 — adapting to the world today…

So today is the day when, according to QAnon supporters, Donald Trump will be re-inaugurated as President because the U.S. government has been illegitimate since 1871 and he will today seize control of it and make things legit again. I look forward to this not happening and to all the QAnon folks wondering if maybe — just maybe — they've based some of their expectations on false premises.

Scanning the web this morning, I see messages from people in Texas and Mississippi celebrating the "freedom" they now have to stop wearing masks and to congregate in large groups. I wonder if any folks in those states feel less free to go into a supermarket now. On Twitter, I saw one of my favorite political writers, Will Saletan, say that in Texas, the main argument against masks is like, "Look, libtard: If you think brakes work, put them on your car."

I also see a lot of messages from people who think the government or The Biden Administration banned those Dr. Seuss books or forced Mr. Potatohead to go unisex. One guy was even ranting about how they'd banned Kermit the Frog who I don't think has been banned by anyone. I thought a core tenet of Conservative thinking was that private industries should be free to do whatever they think will maximize profits.

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My TiVo, in recording John Oliver last Sunday, also nagged a hunk of the Woody Allen/Mia Farrow documentary. I will not judge it based on the few minutes I saw but what I saw seemed pretty loaded with music and camerawork designed to provoke emotional, as opposed to logical judgements.

Reviews like this one that list all the aspects of this case that went unmentioned have me sticking to my position: No one is honestly investigating this matter. I'm not sure if there's any reason to investigate this matter, given how few minds seem open to being changed.

If there is another documentary on the subject — and I'm not suggesting that there should be — I would pay attention if it followed this rule: That if the documentarians take the position that the painful memories and accusations of one allegedly-abused child must be heard and taken seriously, they extend that to all allegedly-abused children reared in the same house. (And yes, I know: These filmmakers asked for such interviews but reportedly at the last minute and not in a way that made those asked feel they'd be treated the same way.)

A problem I have with "Cancel Culture" is that the people who object to "Cancel Culture" — the loudest ones at least — all seem to have plenty of people and things they want to cancel, including but not limited to "Cancel Culture" and its enablers. They may not use the "C" word but they all have people they think should be shunned, ignored, censured…or whatever "canceling" them is supposed to accomplish. Every Republican has Democratic people and programs they want to see extinguished and vice-versa.

A Presidential election is, in a way, a massive vote over which of two candidates should be canceled. A vote for one is a vote to cancel the other. I have never heard anyone say, "Vote for my guy but I sure hope the other one sticks around and is influential." They all want the "other guy" to disappear with the totality and humiliation of Harvey Weinstein.

A lot of folks are outraged at the moment over this…

Six Dr. Seuss books — including And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street and If I Ran the Zoo — will stop being published because of racist and insensitive imagery, the business that preserves and protects the author's legacy said Tuesday.

"These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong," Dr. Seuss Enterprises told The Associated Press in a statement that coincided with the late author and illustrator's birthday. "Ceasing sales of these books is only part of our commitment and our broader plan to ensure Dr. Seuss Enterprises' catalog represents and supports all communities and families," it said. The other books affected are McElligot's Pool, On Beyond Zebra!, Scrambled Eggs Super!, and The Cat's Quizzer.

I love Dr. Seuss and I grew up on some of those books, especially On Beyond Zebra! But I can't get too irate over this decision because, perhaps cynically, I think of a decision of this kind as going something like this…

"You know, we don't stand to sell very many copies of those six books these days but they could sure bring us a lot of grief from protests and maybe taint the whole body of Dr. Seuss work. Let's just exclude these for a while to protect his reputation and his better works and we'll wait a few years and take another look at the situation."

I believe some of those books actually have been outta-print at times without anyone feeling deprived or that they could never be read again. I don't think it's an ideal situation but I also don't think it's like Nazi Book-Burning, as some are suggesting. I think it's more of a marketing decision…and maybe someone at Dr. Seuss Enterprises has a legitimate concern about it affecting their brand.

And I want to amend something I said above. I said a lot of folks are outraged at the moment over this and that's true. But a lot of them strike me as outraged just because they thought it would be politically useful to act outraged about this. It's just a convenient way to complain about people who you think are engaging in "Cancel Culture" and you want to use it to maybe cancel them a little.

This is the 28,628th post on this blog. I know it seems like more but less than half of them have been about my buddy Frank Ferrante and his extraordinary one-man-and-a-pianist show…the one in which you see this Italian guy miraculously transform himself into Mr. Julius "Groucho" Marx. It's just like if Groucho was still alive and still performing except that Frank is not 131 years old.

In non-Pandemic times, much of Frank's career is "Have Mustache, Will Travel" and he tours the U.S. doing what he does so well. Many of you have gone to see him because of this blog's excessive plugging and many of you have written to me to say, basically, "You were right." Some of you have however written to express a frustration that Frank didn't come to a theater near you.

Well, you'll be able to see his show now, not in person (which is better) but on video (which is still damned entertaining). A video directed by the wonderful Dreya Weber has been made of Frank's show. I have seen it and it's delightful. Frank Ferrante's GROUCHO will have its world premiere on March 10 at the Blue Starlite Drive-Ins in Austin, Texas and it will continue to play there through April 7 on a double bill with Monkey Business starring the real guy and those brothers of his.

Frank will be there the first week for post-screening talkbacks and such. You can get tickets at this link and you can see a preview of it below. I will post info soon about other places you can see it if you're not up for the drive to Austin…