Monthly Archives: August 2016

This is a whole lot of gay men performing "Up the Ladder to the Roof"…

Well, I don't get to send anyone to the slammer or the electric chair. Around 11:45, they were looking for jurors to serve on a case that could run 3-5 weeks. Most of those in the jury room declined but some said they do it — a bit of volunteerism that elicited applause from those of us who'd declined. (Actually, I didn't have to decline though I would have. They didn't even ask me, possibly because I put down on my form that I was self-employed.) Then they told everyone else that instead of going to lunch, we could go to our homes. No more juries would be needed today.

At no point did they ever call me for anything, which is the same thing that happened the last time I had jury duty and the time before. The time before, I also sat in the jury room all day but since one of my best friends, Scott Shaw!, was also there, we spent the time talking about comics 'n' such.

So I walked in scorching heat from the courthouse over to Philippe, where one can get the best French Dip sandwich in town, had the best French Dip sandwich in town and then took a Lyft car home from there. Justice has once more prevailed.

The court I'm serving in only hears civil cases — one party suing another. I told the people here I"m quite willing to sentence someone to hard time or even Death Row but they say that will probably not be necessary. I may do it anyway.

Gert Frobe got excused and left before I could approach him. But I heard his reason and it was something about an appointment this afternoon to set off a nuclear device in Fort Knox. So I'm reasonably sure it was him.

One of the other jurors here is Gert Frobe, the actor who played Goldfinger. And yes, I know Gert Frobe died years ago. I don't care. That man sitting across from me is Gert "Goldfinger" Frobe. When we have a break, I'm going to go up to him and ask him if he expects me to talk. Twenty bucks says he replies, "No, I expect you to die!"

Just went through security. I consented to a full strip-search, then found out the guy didn't even work here.  I fall for that every time I go to the airport and I think it's usually the same guy.

Standing in line with a lot of people who look like Trump voters.  If I were a defendant today, I'd start plea-bargaining right now.

Off to do jury duty today. You may or may not hear from me during it depending on the wi-fi in the jury room and whether I have someone life's in my hands.

Here's a roomful of college students performing "Up the Ladder to the Roof"…

• Donald Trump's visiting Mexico tomorrow. Is there any way to have that wall to keep undesirables out of the U.S. built overnight?

Jamelle Bouie on why Donald Trump — or anyone likely to be the nominee of the current Republican party — can't possibly connect with black voters. It has something to do with what Trump is accusing Hillary of: Treating them just like useful votes, not like real human beings who deserve their seats at the table.

Ed Kilgore says that some Republicans are already prepping the post-election spin if/when Trump loses: "We're really the majority party…as would have been obvious if we'd nominated a real candidate." Or something like that.

And you know who's helping Hillary prep for the debates? The guy who ghost-wrote Trump's The Art of the Deal, AKA the best book ever written other than The Bible.

Douglas McEwan, who I quoted here recently, posted this to Facebook and I'm sure he won't mind if I stick it up here, too…

We all love Gene Wilder, and we all loved Gilda Radner, but can we dial back the on "Gene and Gilda are reunited in Heaven" stuff please? First off, no, they're not. They're dead. Secondly, it's an awfully queasy cliché.

And thirdly and most-importantly, it's disrespectful to his widow Karen, who nursed him through his final illness, and to whom he was married far longer than he was to Gilda. She's alive and grieving, and should be shown respect, not shunted aside because we all want to feel that Gilda was the Love of His Life.

This is another whole bunch of people performing "Up the Ladder to the Roof"…

Yesterday was the birthday of Jack Kirby but it was also the birthday of Chase Craig, who was my editor when I wrote comic books for Western Publishing's Gold Key line in the early seventies. Jack was very important to my life and career but so was Chase. Jack hired me as kind of a trainee-assistant. Chase hired me as a professional and treated me no different from guys who'd been writing comics for him for 15 years. Any writer who has ever been in both roles will tell you there's a big, important difference there.

Any professional writer will also tell you about an important moment in his or her life. It was the moment that he or she said to themselves, "Hey…I just might be able to make a good, steady living doing this." I told the story in this post of how I got to that moment…thanks to Chase.

He edited most of the comics for Western that featured the Warner Brothers characters — Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, etc. He edited all the comics with Disney properties except for the movie adaptations, and he edited the Walter Lantz comics (Woody Woodpecker, mainly) and the DePatie-Freleng titles (Pink Panther and The Inspector) and the Hanna-Barbera books.

As I soon learned, an important thing he brought to that job, along with wisdom and experience, was that the various licensors trusted him and largely left him alone. The one time I met Walter Lantz, I mentioned I'd written Woody Woodpecker comics for Chase Craig and Mr. Lantz went on-and-on about how wonderful Chase was and how he didn't even have to look at the books Chase edited. Not before publication, at least. He like the others knew his valuable property was in good hands.

Chase was also, as you may know, the main editor for Carl Barks when Carl was doing his legendary Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge comics for Western. First time I met Carl, he told me at some length about how lucky I was to be working with Chase.

I don't want this to be all about how great Chase was so I'll tell a story that I don't think has ever been in print anywhere.

Chase edited a few adventure-type comics — Tarzan and Korak, Son of Tarzan and Magnus, Robot Fighter. The other editor in the office, Del Connell, edited a few others. Both worked out of the Los Angeles office of Western which, when I worked for them, was located in the office building on Hollywood Boulevard directly across from the Chinese Theater.

Most of the artists who drew for them were guys moonlighting from (or retired from) working for the animation studios in town — Disney, Hanna-Barbera, etc. As a result, Chase and Del had access to a lot of guys who could draw funny animal and cartoony comics but not a lot who could do adventure stuff. For internal company reasons, they were asked to come up with a few new books in the veins of adventure and/or mystery.

Finding a writer was no problem. A local writer named Don Glut had some ideas that Del and Chase both liked. But the few adventure artists they had — like Dan Spiegle and Paul Norris — were already booked to capacity. They had to find someone new…and it would help if the guy could not only draw the interiors of the comics but also do paintings for the covers. Western liked to have painted covers on its adventure titles and the guy who was doing most of them, George Wilson, was also pretty busy.

One day when all this was an issue, Chase and Del went to Farmers Market here in Los Angeles — then as now, a great, historic place to eat and/or shop. They dropped in for lunch and as they were walking in, they saw a gentleman sitting at a little easel, doing caricatures for cash. You've seen such folks in venues that attract a lot of tourists. This gent was Filipino and though his work was good, no one was lining up to pay him money to draw them.

He had samples of his other artwork on display and one of the pieces was a painting with a science-fiction theme. Chase noticed it and wondered if this could be their guy. Conversation was difficult because the artist did not speak English well but Del and Chase managed to find out that he had been a comic book artist in his native Philippines. He had recently come to Los Angeles and had no idea where to get the kind of work he did back home…so he'd answered an ad in the newspaper and hooked up with a promoter who placed caricaturists in promising locations. It wasn't working out. The artist's income hinged on people buying caricatures and they weren't…so he was in some serious financial distress.

Chase and Del asked him to bring samples of his comic book work up to their office. The man came in the next day, they liked what they saw and they put him to work. His name was Jesse Santos and among the comics he drew for Western were Don Glut's Dagar the Invincible and Doctor Spektor. Jesse also painted the covers for the books and readers were very happy, as was Jesse to be back doing the kind of work he loved and earning enough money to bring his family over from the Philippines to join him.

I didn't hear that story first from Chase. Jesse told it to me — sort of — but since his English hadn't gotten much better, I wasn't sure I understood it properly. So the next time I saw Chase, I asked him about it. He told me the tale but shrugged off any suggestion that he and Del had done something nice by rescuing a fine artist from menial, poorly-paying employment. He said, "We needed an artist. He was a good artist. We weren't doing him a favor. It was good for us."

Then he added — and I've never forgotten this — "My job is to hire the best people I can find. You don't deserve any special credit for just doing your job."

Maybe so. But Chase did so much good for my career, I have a hard time not thinking of him as having done me a favor. A big one.