Monthly Archives: March 2024

To have a career in an entertainment-based industry — and I suppose in many others — they say you have to either be very talented, very reliable or very nice. And some further say you can get by with any two out of three…though I can think of a few folks I've known who've had decent careers with only one. We won't talk about them now because I want to talk about a great friend and a great collaborator who, lucky me, excelled in all three. His name is Will Meugniot and that's pronounced "Mineo." The comics we've done together might not have been the greatest comics ever done but no one else's had a creative team whose names were so often mispronounced.

I started working with Will back in 1976 — on Tarzan and Korak comics I was writing and editing for the Edgar Rice Burroughs Estate. They were for the overseas market and I recall that the foreign publishers were quite delighted with Will's work. I know I always was. We did a lot of different things but the one you're most likely to know of was a comic we created called The DNAgents with also led to a couple of spin-off books. Will was the perfect collaborator, meaning that we agreed on most things but not everything. He had ideas of his own and a lot of them were way better than mine.

We would have done the comic longer but it turned out Will was not only terrific at comics but also at all the creative skills necessary to work in TV animation. It was not long after he got his foot in that door that all the studios were throwing money at him to work on their shows and, eventually, produce them. For a couple of decades, a lot of the best action/adventure cartoon shows on TV were the best because Will made them that way.

This morning on Facebook, he went public with a secret that I've known about for just a little while and it depresses me, as it will depress you if you've ever known the man or even his work. He's battling two forms of cancer — prostate and pancreatic — and is soon to undergo some industrial-strength surgery. I could quote his statement here but instead, I'm giving you this link so you can go read it yourself.

And while you're over there, maybe you can take a moment and post something to Will. If you know him personally, tell him what a great guy he is because I'm sure you feel that way about him. If you never had the pleasure of knowing him but you know his output, write about that. The important thing is to let him know we're wishing him only the best of all possible outcomes and many more years with us and his incredible spouse and partner-in-life, Jo.

I have occasionally been accused of only seeing the good in people and maybe I am sometimes too oblivious or eager to not see the bad. But in this case, I see only the good because there just plain isn't anything else.

I have a ton o' things to do today — appointments, phone conferences, things to write, etc. Don't expect to see much here before nightfall, if then. As always, I will make it up to you, dear websurfers.

Here's something I thought I'd never see. In 1975, KCOP — Channel 13 here in Los Angeles — had a series called Both Sides Now, the premise of which was to have George Putnam and Mort Sahl debate the news each evening. Mr. Putnam was a local newsman who was known for his blustery style and right-wing slant on things. It was said that Ted Knight's character on The Mary Tyler Moore Show was based a bit on Putnam and a bit on another local L.A. newsguy, Jerry Dunphy.

Mort Sahl was, of course, Mort Sahl — very witty at times, very iconoclastic, often quite obsessed about certain issues, especially those involving people named Kennedy. Among the many criticisms of the show were that Sahl was not as far to the left as Putnam was to the right and both men were faulted for presenting "facts" of questionable accuracy. I didn't find anything on the show particularly enlightening and I thought a lot of it was just wrestling. People tuned in to watch the fight, not whatever exchange of ideas may have been presented…and I think some were just waiting for one of the hosts to take a swing at the other host.

Finally one night, they came close. They began insulting each other and six minutes into the taping, taping was halted. That episode never aired but someone kept a copy of the tape and it's our Video Link below. As I recall, Putnam exited the show after this, Sahl did a few episodes solo and then they brought in a series of guests to face off with Sahl starting with, I believe, Hugh Downs. Then a few weeks later, the show simply disappeared. Sahl went back to performing and trying to solve the Kennedy Assassination. Putnam bounced around local TV and radio stations for years after.

Here's the video that never aired in '75. I suspect if you could see the episodes that immediately preceded it, you could see this coming…

Here's a real good one. Since 2008, NPR has hosted these things called Tiny Desk Concerts — performances done in their offices for a small live audience and a much wider one on the radio. This one, done just before Christmas last year, features five performers from the recent Broadway revival of Sweeney Todd performing four numbers from the show…rearranged for a small orchestra.

The performers include Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford, who toplined this revival when it opened. They left that production in mid-January of this year and were replaced by Aaron Tveit and Sutton Foster — two fine performers but it's been announced that the show will close May 5. I'd hoped to get back there to see it but 'twas not to be…so unless the whole thing got recorded on video, I may have to settle for this. So let's enjoy this teeny Sweeney…

A friend of mine who was pro-Trump an election or two ago told me that Donald's popularity came from people admiring him and wishing they could be as successful as he seemed to be. One wonders what any such people think now when Trump is out admitting that he can't pay the almost-$500 million bucks he owes nor can he find anyone to loan it to him in any form. You may have money woes but I doubt you have that problem at the moment. And he sure doesn't look like a man who's happy about…well, anything.

Speaking of Trump, as I will stop doing for today after this paragraph: Some folks wrote to ask me what I thought of his "bloodbath" remarks the other day. I think I'm appalled (yet generally unsurprised) by just about all his remarks but there seems to be a debate about just what he meant. Kevin Drum thinks Trump was talking just about the auto industry. Amanda Marcotte has a different view of it. I think the guy just wants to be inflammatory and it's just a matter of which of his rantings are more inflammatory than others.

My wanderings 'round the Internet keep showing me Wayne Brady talking about being a pansexual. It's all well and good when people are brave enough to "come out" and explain what a lot of folks just plain don't understand but personally, I am long past the point of caring who other consenting adults want to consent with. (When I hear about pansexuals, I always think of a joke that the comedian Ed Bluestone used to do. He'd say, "I'm a quadrasexual. I'll do anything with anyone for a quarter.")

Anyway, good for Wayne Brady…but I think his messaging might be more effective if he delivered it as a hoedown. Or revealed it as being behind Door Number Three.

Lastly for now: The other day, I had a delivery dropped-off of someone else's dinner — all items that I shouldn't even have in my home, given my food allergies, let alone eat. Before I could complain to the company, the delivery gent phoned me and in a panicky tone, said he realized his mistake, would soon be back at my house with the right order and — please, please, please — "Don't report me to the company." Ten minutes later, he was back with the right supper and yet another plea to not tell the company. Okay. I didn't. But now do I tip the guy well for catching and correcting his mistake? Or do I tip him low for making it in the first place?

Marc Ribler wrote and stars in this music video about Dick Cavett which also stars Dick Cavett. I won't pretend I fully understand it but Steve Stoliar sent me the link so…

Fred Kaplan explains how much Donald Trump doesn't know about war.  Fred's probably right but I don't think Trump's even trying to have a coherent plan at this moment, if ever.  I think he's just saying whatever he thinks will excite the people he needs to vote for him and maybe give him money.

Marty Golia has a question about Western Publishing…

I have a question about Western Publishing, but realize it concerns a section of their business that you may not have had much/any contact with.

During the 50s and 60s, Dell and Gold Key put out a lot — a lot — of comics based on TV shows and movies, either as their own title or as part of the "Four-Color" series, and many of these seem short-lived. Some were based on shows that had some "kid-appeal" (The Danny Thomas Show, any number of Westerns), but others were based on more adult fare (Burke's Law, The Gale Storm Show).

So, my question is: To arrange licenses for so many titles at a pretty rapid pace, did Western have contacts at the networks or studios who were able to set up a "standard" deal as shows were announced? And was this part of a strategy to keep the pipeline filled, whether there seemed to be an audience for things or not?

I think I can answer this…and also point out that the Burke's Law comic book was published by Dell after it had severed ties with Western. And to respond to the last question first: They put out what they thought would sell and a lot of that was based on knowing what had sold for them in the past.

When it came to landing licenses for comics based on movies and TV shows, Western had at least three tremendous advantages over companies like DC, Marvel and Archie…four if you count the fact that some companies simply weren't interested in publishing characters and properties they didn't own. But here are the other three that come to mind…

1. Western had an office in Los Angeles. Actually, for most of the fifties and sixties, it was located in Beverly Hills on the same prestigious block as the local branch of the Friar's Club, hangout of a lot of folks in show business. DC and Marvel had no such offices. Representatives of the movie and TV studios could visit those offices and Western staffers could visit the studios. That made for closer relationships.

Before Alex Toth (based in Los Angeles) drew that comic of The Danny Thomas Show, he visited the set of The Danny Thomas Show. Before Dan Spiegle (based in Santa Barbara, an easy drive) drew the Maverick comic book, he visited the set of Maverick. DC was not going to pay to send an artist to Hollywood.

2. Western did more than comic books. Let's say you were working for a TV show or movie and it was your job to arrange for merchandise and promotional marketing for that movie or TV show. If you went to DC or Marvel or any of several other comic book publishers, they might make you an offer to a do a comic book. If you went to Western, they might make you an offer to do a comic book, a coloring book, some activity books, some hard or softcover kids' books, a "color by number" book, a "paint with water" book, a jigsaw puzzle, a paper doll kit, a Big Little Book, etc. Comic book companies that published only comic books didn't make all those deals.

At one point, Western even did "scratch-and-sniff" books.  Winnie the Pooh could sit down to eat some honey on a page of the book and you could scratch a little patch on that page and smell the honey.

3. Western was with Disney. And if you were in that line o' work, you were constantly studying what the Disney organization did because they were the undisputed masters of merchandising a movie or TV show. Nobody did it better and the core of much of that was their close relationship with Western Publishing, aka Western Printing and Lithography. If the guys at Disney trusted 'em, so would you.

And I suppose there were other reasons. If you had a property that appealed to kids, it made sense to deal with the company that handled that kind of thing not only with Disney but with Warner Brothers, Walter Lantz, Jay Ward, Hanna-Barbera and others. Those animation firms were pretty happy with their relationships with Western.

The company had a good rep. In the seventies, though Western was on the downslide, the Edgar Rice Burroughs Estate very much regretted moving their licenses from Western to DC and then to Marvel. The Hanna-Barbera folks very much regretted moving their licenses from Western to Charlton and then to Marvel. (I was involved in recovery efforts from both of those disasters.)

Western was an amazing company. I used to say — and I guess I still say — they did a lot of things right that other comic book companies did wrong but eventually, they were done in by doing a lot of things wrong that other comic book companies did right. I'll probably be elaborating on those right and wrong moves in future posts on this blog.

Did you know that Western, alone among the major comic book publishers, was as far as I know alone in having pension plans for some of their freelance writers and artists as well as incentive plans that paid bonuses to such people…and they did this at a time when DC or Marvel would have laughed in your face if you suggested such a thing?

Okay, we're done with Unsold Pilots for now. The description on this clip says it's from The Danny Thomas Show from 1964 and that it features along with Danny, "Frank Sinatra, Carl Reiner, Jim Nabors, Don Knotts, Andy Griffith, and Morey Amsterdam." Actually, it's from a 1965 special called Danny Thomas' Wonderful World of Burlesque and the guy they apparently think is Morey Amsterdam is actually Sid Melton…

One of those folks who doesn't want his name associated with this blog wrote…

Your mention this morning of the TV show Van Dyke and Company reminded me of something you said years ago on a Kirby panel at a New York Con. You were talking about the DC Comics in the early seventies when Jack did his Fourth World series for them and you mentioned that variety show with Dick Van Dyke. I remember that there was some sort of connection but I don't remember what it was. Can you refresh my weak memory?

I'll try. First off, some TV history: Dick Van Dyke headlined a variety series for NBC that ran from September 20, 1976 to December 30, 1976 — eleven episodes. It was produced by the team of Bob Einstein and Allan Blye and it got generally good reviews but I don't think the network gave it much of a chance, plus it was in a rough time slot. It aired at 8 PM on Thursday evenings opposite The Waltons on CBS and Welcome Back, Kotter on ABC at the peak of those two shows' popularity.

I was working on Kotter at the time and everyone on our show liked Van Dyke and Company. We'd sometimes take a break during Thursday night rewrite meetings — which could last into the wee hours of the morning — to watch not our show but Mr. Van Dyke's. His show won the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy-Variety or Music Series that year…unfortunately, after it was yanked off the air. It's only barely remembered and when it is, that's usually because Andy Kaufman was a semi-regular — his first real presence in prime-time.

A few years later with its ratings at a disastrous low, NBC hired the famed programmer Fred Silverman away from ABC to try and reprogram the network and raise its viewership. A month or three into his command, I was in a meeting with Silverman and he was rattling off some of the reasons why NBC had dug itself into such a deep hole. There were quite a few reasons but a big one was, he felt, that his predecessors had been too quick to cancel certain shows. These were good shows, he said…and if they'd been given more time, he believed they'd have found viewers (or vice-versa). I remember him saying, "They certainly would have done better than whatever the guys before me replaced them with."

He named four shows which, he said, should not have been canceled. I remember the names of three of them: Baa Baa Black Sheep, Sirota's Court…and Van Dyke and Company. His predecessors, he insisted, were too cowardly — the descriptor he used was "chickenshit" — and panicked. And there some talk about shows which networks almost canceled when the early ratings were disappointing — M*A*S*H being the textbook example — but which turned out to be huge hits. And often, Fred said, the show avoided early axing not because anyone had faith in it but because of some contractual factor or because there was nothing else available to put in its place.

I wish I could remember all the examples Silverman cited but in some cases, it was a happy accident that the show stayed on long enough to have a significant ratings uptick. There have been many more since and every time I hear about one of them, it gets me to thinking about the comic book industry and I think it has sometimes applied there. In this case, the parallel to M*A*S*H might be the first Conan the Barbarian comic which Marvel brought out in July of 1970. That was when I was just getting involved in the industry and I vividly recall that it was quickly proclaimed as a flop of immense proportions…especially by the folks at DC.

But it stuck around. I heard various reasons and "It's a good book" was not one of them. That should have been a reason and a lot of people thought that but that didn't seem to be a reason. What I heard was that since Marvel had paid for the rights, it was cheaper to publish it than to not publish it, especially since there were a number of completed issues which couldn't be printed anywhere else. They would lose less on those issues by publishing them by not publishing them. Also, Marvel was then trying to boost the number of comics they sold each month so as to boost their advertising rates. That was why they were then putting out so many new reprint titles.

Whatever the cause, Conan lasted until the book built up a substantial audience. It and several spin-offs became major profit centers for the company…

…and I believe this: That if Conan the Barbarian had been a DC book and had been launched at the same time and gotten the same sales figures, it would have been axed by issue #6. It would have been called a failure of the property and of the folks who produced the comic. People would not have said, "Well, maybe Management made a mistake canceling it when they did."

During this same period, DC launched a number of new comics which I thought were pretty good but which were terminated a.s.a.p. when someone looked at the early sales figures for #2 or #3. Here's a list of someone and in parentheses, I've put the number of issues the comic lasted, not counting any Showcase issues: Bat Lash (7), Secret Six (7), Anthro (6), Angel and the Ape (7), Beware the Creeper (6), The Hawk and the Dove (5), Hot Wheels (6) and Captain Action (5).

There were also a few comics which I believe were harmed by panicked makeovers. Inferior Five and The Spectre underwent such alterations — harmful, not helpful I thought, as of their seventh issues…and then didn't last much longer. To me, these were like if the programmers at CBS looked at the early ratings of M*A*S*H and said, "It's bombing! Quick! Let's fire Alan Alda and bring in Paul Lynde!" Or if the guys at NBC had tried to salvage Van Dyke and Company by replacing Dick with Jerry.

I'm not saying all these comics would have been smash hits if the publisher would have stuck with them longer but if even one had been a success the magnitude of Conan, it might have more than made up for umpteen failures. Also, so many cancellations at the time — and DC was dumping a lot of long-running titles, as well — gave the company the image of "Don't fall in love with anything here, kids! Whatever it is, it might not be around much longer!"

You, Anonymous ASKme Asker, probably heard me at that New York Con talking about this view of mine in conjunction with the books Jack Kirby did for DC in the early seventies. They did not sell badly at all even if you believe the official accountings from the distributor…which some people don't. With all the later reprintings, DC has certainly made a lot more long-term money off those issues than they did from contemporaneous books which were proclaimed as successes back then.

It is a fact of the television industry that just because a show gets quickly canceled, that might not be a failure of the show itself. It could be — and everyone knows this — a failure of the network to put the show in a proper time slot, promote it well and give it time to succeed. Believe me, there are a lot more examples of this than the ones from the seventies I mentioned. I don't see any reason why we should assume that if a new comic book is quickly axed, it couldn't possibly have succeeded.

How did I never hear of Stick Around, a 1977 unsold sitcom pilot that starred Andy Kaufman as a robot? This is not to be confused with Heartbeeps, a 1981 movie which starred Andy Kaufman as a robot. The pilot was written by Fred Freeman and Lawrence J. Cohen, a prolific writing team who were responsible for a very clever movie called The Big Bus. This was two years after Kaufman had first appeared on Saturday Night Live and a year after he'd been a regular on Van Dyke and Company, a variety series that Dick Van Dyke starred in. A few years later, Kaufman would wander onto Taxi…

It's been 55 days since a wrong move on the tile floor of my bathroom busted my left ankle into a jigsaw puzzle and 53 days since a surgeon whose last name I can't pronounce put it back together. It must have been tough because there were no edge pieces to start with.

I'm still hobbling about my home, still not going anywhere except (a) my bedroom, (b) that bathroom, (c) my office and (d) the hallways that connect those rooms. Each day, pain and clumsiness decline ever so slightly. Each day, I manage to feel a little closer to the day when I'll be back to my old mobility.

When might that day be? One thing I've learned these past 55 days is that the absolutely-true answer to that kind of question is "I don't know." But it's out there…somewhere.

Has any good come of it? Some nice visits from friends and I've lost…well, the scale says about eighteen pounds since before the fracture. But it's probably more than that because I don't know the precise weight of all the metal added to my lower left limb. It's a decent weight loss, all the more impressive when you consider how much less active I am than my norm.

I'd like to thank all of you who sent well wishes, especially the 90% of you who heeded my wish to not hear about that time you broke something like an ankle or your utterly non-professional, you-never-went-to-med-school medical advice. I truly believe that not having to wade through all that has contributed to my recovery.

Two You-Tubers from Great Britain pranked Tucker Carlson, convincing him and his staff that one of them was the Photoshop artist who doctored that photo of Kate Middleton and her children that got to much attention in the past week. I'm not a fan of pranks and I think most of them are just a matter of being a dick to someone…but if one points out how hoaxable so many self-proclaimed "journalists" are, it's for a good cause. Mr. Carlson will not be airing the interview which turned out to be about as legit as the one he did with Putin…

In 1966, Desi Arnaz was still trying to reclaim a foothold in the TV sitcom biz, mostly with pilots written by Madelyn Davis and Bob Carroll, Jr., who had served him well on I Love Lucy and The Lucy Show among other programs. This pilot is for The Carol Channing Show, which also starred Richard Deacon (fresh off The Dick Van Dyke Show) and Jane Dulo. Also present in the cast was Jimmy Garrett, who had been on The Lucy Show and there's a moment in there where Richard Deacon impersonates Channing and sounds like he's dubbed by June Foray.

Arnaz produced and directed and one presumes it was Ms. Channing who persuaded Jerry Herman to write the theme song. I have no idea when this pilot was filmed but she left Hello, Dolly! on Broadway in August of 1965. I also have no idea if or when it aired but this film runs 37 minutes without commercials so if it was broadcast, it was probably chopped down a lot. It was not unprecedented for producers to deliver an overlong pilot as a selling tool.

This one didn't go but the next year, Desi, Madelyn and Bob got luckier with The Mothers-In-Law, which ran two seasons, the second of which featured Richard Deacon. Mr. Deacon was not out of work a lot…

Kevin Drum may be the best list-maker on the Internet. He just posted this list of people who worked for Donald Trump in high-capacity jobs — meaning they had a lot of contact with the man — but who now oppose (sometimes vehemently) him getting another four years in the Oval Office.

It includes one Vice-President, two Chiefs of Staff, two Secretaries of State, two Secretaries of Defense, one Attorney General, two National Security Advisers, etc. I guess Mike Pence is no surprise. In a recent interview, he said…

As I have watched his candidacy unfold, I have seen him walking away from our commitment to confront the national debt. I've seen him start to shy away from a commitment to the sanctity of human life. And this last week his reversal on getting tough on China and supporting our administration's effort to force a sale of ByteDance TikTok…Donald Trump is pursuing and articulating an agenda that is at odds with the conservative agenda that we governed on during our four years. That is why I cannot in good conscience endorse Donald Trump in this campaign.

Those are all good reasons from Mr. Pence's viewpoint but I can't help but think there's another good one…something having to do with rope…