Monthly Archives: November 2024

Bill Lentz has two questions for me. Let's see if I can come up with two answers…

I subscribe to both of the (mainstream?) comics pages and enjoy daily doses of some classic comic strips, in addition to current strips, as part of my morning coffee routine. Feels like when I used to read the paper over breakfast. Dawned on me the other day that Pogo is not an option and figured you might be the guy to ask why.

No one has asked. It may have something to do with the fact that Pogo is not affiliated with any current syndicate, whereas a lot of old strips are still offered about by King Features or one of the others. It also might have something to do with the fact that Pogo was sometimes very much of its time period. But the simple answer is that no one has asked.

I don't think this is a "political" question, but ignore it if you do. Your opinions on societal matters generally mirror mine, but you're much better at providing a reasoned basis for your opinion than I am. How do you deal with the issue of "love the art, hate the artist" and the related issue of racist or non-PC tropes in entertainment? Cosby immediately comes to mind, but as an amateur musician, there are plenty that I run into — Richard Wagner, Frank Rosolino, Phil Spector, just to name a few.

Well, to begin with, it's different when the artist is alive and maybe, like Cosby, still trying to rehabilitate his image. Wagner is not going to profit if I buy a CD of his work. There was much to admire about Bill Cosby as a performer but it's not so much that I have tried to cancel out his career as that his actions have canceled out any chance of my enjoying it. But I was never such a huge fan of his that it's a struggle for me to not buy any work he may ever put out or attend any appearances he may ever make. And it's even easier since it seems unlikely he's ever going to try to do those things again.

You kind of have to deal with these issues on a case-by-case basis. If I believed the accusation (there's only really one) against Woody Allen, I might not feel like watching any of his movies. Since I don't believe the accusation, I don't have a problem here and don't know how I'd feel if there was convincing proof out there. Some things you can overlook and some things you can't.

I know some unflattering things about some folks in the comic book and entertainment industries. Once in a while, the negative things I know interfere with my ability to enjoy their work. Sometimes, they don't. But often we walk a fine line — I do, anyway — between thinking someone is the Antichrist and feeling sorry for them. And sometimes, I see some contrition and sometimes, that affects how I feel about the person.

If they're deceased or alive and no longer in any position to do the bad things they did, I'm more open to viewing their good work as good work. But like I said, it works on a case-by-case basis. I don't have any blanket policy and sometimes, I'm surprised at what still bothers me and what doesn't. I guess I'm not of much help on this matter.

Lately, I've been embedding links to a lot of good movies (and some not-good ones) that YouTube was hosting for free viewing. Today or thereabouts, most of 'em changed from "Free" to "Free with ads" so I took down those links. You can probably understand why.

For a change, this is a YouTube video that I posted. The description of it reads: "This was a spontaneous (that is to say, unplanned) moment from the Sunday Cartoon Voices Panel at the 2023 Comic-Con International in San Diego. The panel consisted of five top voice actors — Anna Brisbin, Maurice LaMarche, Courtney Lin, Fred Tatasciore and Frank Todaro, with your host, Mark Evanier. It occurred when Mark realized that Maurice and Fred were both among the actors who have succeeded the great Mel Blanc in speaking for the character of Yosemite Sam."

The musical Pippin opened on Broadway on October 18, 1972 and lasted for close to two thousand performances. It got generally good reviews and a couple of Tony Awards but some attributed its longevity to its extensive use of television advertising showing moments from the show…one of the first times that had ever been done. The book was written by Roger O. Hirson and Bob Fosse, and Fosse also directed. The songs were by Stephen Schwartz. It was revived on Broadway in 2013 and ran for an additional 709 performances.

It's also been one of the most-produced musicals of its time. Somewhere, someone always seems to be staging it. I think I've seen it three times, none of them on Broadway, and I always thought the performers (and everything else that Stephen Schwartz worked on) were better than the book and tunes for Pippin. I saw it the first time just to see it and the other two times because I had good friends in those casts. It's just not a musical I care for a lot. No matter how good my seats were, I always felt the people on stage were too distant for me to care about them.

In 1981, there was a production in Canada starring Ben Vereen in the role he'd originated (and won a Tony for) on Broadway. David Sheehan, who some of you may have known as an entertainment reporter, produced and directed a video production than ran incessantly on cable channels in the early days of that new marketplace. It was advertised as the first time a Broadway musical had ever been filmed for television but I can think of lotsa antecedents including Peter Pan with Mary Martin.

The video was faulted for looking a bit cheap and for omitting some songs and other chunks of the show but it did capture Vereen's performance and there were some other good people in it including William Katt (in the title role), Martha Raye and Chita Rivera. Here's that video for your possible viewing pleasure…

Afraid we have another one of these days. I need to get my mind off the election and onto a manuscript that's due so I'll post some video links but that'll be about it for this Sunday. Unless you're spending today actively working for your candidate(s) or proposition(s) of choice, I suggest you get your mind off the election. In the undying words of Doris Day, "Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)."

In March of 1994, I was in Las Vegas with a lady friend who'd previously said she would go anywhere with me. It turned out she had her limits. She wouldn't go with me to the Sahara Hotel to see — and this was the actual title of the show there — "Milton Berle's Comedy Roast of Sid Caesar." It consisted of Mr. Berle and four other comedians — Jackie Gayle, Slappy White, Foster Brooks and Henny Youngman — doing their stand-up acts and inserting occasional gratuitous mentions of Mr. Caesar to make it a "roast" about him.

One of those four, by the way, had taken over for Norm Crosby who was in the show for part of the week or two it played the Congo Room at the Sahara. I wrote about going to that show in this article that was mainly about Henny Youngman.

As I said there, Berle opened the show with a stand-up routine that actually pleased the audience a lot. Berle doesn't have the greatest reputation these days, in part because of stories about his behavior the one-and-only time he hosted Saturday Night Live. His wide separation from the kind of comedy that show did is reportedly depicted in the new movie all about the debut night of SNL. Whatever the sequence is (I haven't seen it), it's largely fiction as the man they called Uncle Miltie was nowhere near Rockefeller Center that night.

Apart from mentions like that and stories of him exhibiting his legendary phallus, Berle is largely forgotten these days…a pity since he could be so wonderful at times. It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is, for me, one such time. Recently though, I came across this video of a stand-up comedy performance he did in 1991 and I believe this is pretty much what he did that night I saw him and his friends at the Sahara.

Take a look and judge for yourself. No, it's not fresh, hip comedy but I wouldn't expect that from a guy who was 83 years old at the time. The audience seemed to love him and it starts with him being presented with an award by Mary Tyler Moore…

Bret Bernal did the seeming-impossible. He wrote to ask me a question about Jack Kirby that I don't think anyone else has ever asked me. And then he asked me another one which others have and I'll get to it. But first, here's the one no one has ever asked me before…

When you worked in Jack Kirby's studio, do you recall him ever disliking a batch of the 2-ply bristol board publishers sent him? Obviously, the King could draw on a paper bag and it would look astounding, but I'm curious if mediocre paper would slow him down or distract him in any way?

When Jack went to work for DC Comics in 1970, they shipped him a ream of their drawing paper — all cut to the proper size — and he hated it. Absolutely hated it. And it slowed him down because as he applied his favorite pencils to it, it kept smudging and he had to draw more carefully and occasionally erase and redraw something he'd smudged, plus he had to get up and wash his hands more often than he liked. He wound up drawing some of his work during this period on leftover Marvel paper but he had only a limited supply of it.

So he asked if Steve Sherman and I could find him better paper. He gave us one of the last remaining sheets of the Marvel paper — which he thought was great — and we went down to a hallowed art supply store in downtown Los Angeles called McManus & Morgan. It was opened in 1923 and it's still in business.

There, we were waited on by a gentleman who treated the selection of drawing paper like the Royal Sommelier choosing a fine wine to serve to His Majesty. He rubbed his fingers expertly over the Marvel paper and pronounced it "mediocre, at best," then brought out samples of three different styles of two-ply drawing paper. We took them back to Jack who did a little drawing on each one then selected his favorite. We then went back to McManus & Morgan and bought a lot of it for Jack. They cut larger sheets of it into the size Jack needed and then Steve and I each took half the stack and ruled margins in pencil on each page for Jack.

For a while after, our duties for Jack included trips down to McManus & Morgan when he was low on paper. Actually, Steve — since he had a car and I didn't then — did the later paper runs and he ruled the margins off until one day, Jack said, "You don't have to do that for me. For some reason, I enjoy it."

One Saturday, Joe Kubert was in town with his family and they dropped by the Kirby home. Joe, in addition to being a writer, artist and editor for DC had been one of the people who'd chosen the paper stock DC supplied to its artists and he and Jack got into a friendly argument over it. Joe loved it but Joe worked in a different manner than Jack. Joe would do his initial penciling with light blue pencil and he suggested Jack try doing that. Jack was a little peeved (just a little) at the suggestion and he said something like, "I've been doing it the way I do it for over thirty years and I'm not going to change now."

So this might be the answer to Bret's other question which was as follows…

And if he were alive today, do you think he’d ever tinker with digital drawing?

I don't think so. Jack was working, as he did for the rest of his life, on a very old, worn drawing table with a pretty ratty taboret next to it. People kept suggesting he get something newer or offered to get him something newer — and he said, "Thanks but I like what I have." He had many, many visions of the future, some of them amazingly accurate. But I think he always thought of that as the future of generations later than his. I have trouble even imagining Jack with a GMail account.

Getting back to the paper: At some point, DC had some printed on a different stock and Kubert urged Jack to give it a try. He did and he was happier with it so we no longer had to go buy him drawing paper. After he stopped working regularly for DC or Marvel, he drew a lot of the things he drew on whatever kind of paper he could find and it wasn't always great paper — for him or for the inkers. Occasionally, some of his later work was on one-ply drawing paper which wasn't bad for inkers who worked mainly with a brush but it caused problems for inkers and letterers who worked with pens.

Thanks, Bret. Always nice to have a new question to answer.

I don't watch (or like) a lot of Bill Maher these days but every so often, I see something from him that I think is mostly on-target. This from last night's show, for instance…

My pal Gary Sassaman used to be the guy in charge of Programming at Comic-Con International and he also was the guy in charge of Publications there. He did a fine job in both departments. He has a deep and longtime love for many comic books of his youth and I happen to have the same thing for the same comics. So I enjoy the YouTube videos he's been making since he retired from the convention. He calls them "Tales From My Spinner Rack" and I recommend 'em all. You can find them at this link and you might as well start with his newest one which takes a deep dive into Marvel's Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos…

I embed a lot of video links on this blog. If at any point, some video seems to be in the wrong window, that almost certainly is a problem on your end, not mine. It means the cache on your web browser has too much stuff in it and it's getting confused. What you need to do is to flush (i.e., clean out) your browser cache. If you don't know how to do this, this page should tell you.

Today is going to be a busy day of deadlines and Zoom conferences and other things that may keep me from blogging at my usual pace. I am also way behind in answering e-mails so please forgive me for all of this.

In the meantime, I'm awaiting a delivery from Costco of many items, two of which are these…

…so we now, at long last, may find out the answer to the age-old riddle: Which will come first? The chicken or the eggs?