I got this a few weeks ago from Barry Wallace who wants to know…
Thank you for the brief visit with Daws Butler and it is wonderful to hear that such a wonderfully talented man was so nice. A recurring topic on your blog is the good fortune you had to meet and even work with performers who you watched as a child and it must have been great to have a friendship with the voice of Yogi Bear. But I have to ask if anyone you ever met in this sense was a disappointment to you. Was everyone as nice as you hoped they'd be?
Pretty much, yes…and that goes for comic book creators as well as folks I knew of from television. I have mostly good memories of the ones I first knew from television and then later in real life. There were a few who in comics who were exceptions (to me) and maybe a half-dozen in the comic book industry. Each of those fields had about a 2% Asshole Factor and I'd rather not name names here. And that word you used — disappointment — that's exactly what it was. Not anger, not contempt…just a sense of "Gee, I wish I'd had a better experience with that person."
One of the things that happen when you meet the person is that you're meeting a real person. You may have loved their work but they may have bad memories of what happened on that project…what they were paid…what it did or did not lead to. They may not be working much these days and might have anger or deep worry about that. (Some people can be very touchy when complimented about long-ago work because they think you're suggesting they haven't done anything good or successful lately.) Some of them may have family or relationship problems.
Getting to know them better might mean getting to see the aspects of their life that you might have preferred not to see. Those, I'm pleased to report are rare but sometimes not rare enough. So I guess the answer to your question, Barry, as to whether everyone was nice as I hoped they'd be is "Not everyone but most."
