Monthly Archives: August 2018

Randy Rainbow does just what you'd expect with this song from Wicked…

Too many obits lately. The New York Times has published one about Russ Heath.

About a half-dozen folks have written to me to ask some version of this question: With the passing of Russ and of Marie Severin, is there anyone left who worked on the classic EC comics? The only one I know of is Angelo Torres, who collaborated with Al Williamson on a few of the stories Al drew. Angelo also drew one story solo for EC but it was nixed by the Comics Code and not published until many years later. Angelo is 86 and more or less retired in 2010 after a 41-year stint drawing for MAD.

I have not yet finished the long piece I said I was going to post about Steve Ditko. I will.

Turning to News of the Living: I have a flurry (i.e., two) e-mails asking to know about conventions where I might be showing my face. At the moment, the next ones are not until March of 2019. March 7 through 10, I'll be at the San Diego Comic Fest and then WonderCon in Anaheim, which runs March 29 to March 31.

I don't do a lot of conventions because most of those that ask just want me to sit behind a table and sign and sell stuff and (a) I don't like to sell stuff, including my signature, and (b) to me, there is nothing more boring than writing your name all day…or waiting for someone to come by and ask you to write your name. Maybe if you had a dish of tapioca pudding and you sat there for a few days, watching it and never turning away so you could see the pudding age and slowly pull away from the sides of the dish, that might be more boring than signing your name over and over. But I haven't tried that yet so I'm not certain.

Lastly: As you might imagine, I get a lot of e-mail and I don't get around to answering all of it. I try to answer the ones that most seem to need it — and that would include those that ask questions that can't be answered with two minutes of Googling. I also try to answer questions I can answer briefly. "Can you tell me all about the relationship between Stan Lee and Jack Kirby?" is not a question I can answer when I have a free moment. It's about a 100,000 word reply which you'll get when I finish the book I'm writing now which I won't finish if I reply to questions like that. (We're hoping for Christmas of next year.)

Generally speaking, I don't answer — or move to the bottom of the pile — the ones that aren't signed with anything that resembles a real name. You know who I am and I think it's a common courtesy, if you write to someone and expect them to read your message and perhaps reply, to tell them who you are. I keep getting questions from "Socrates" and I finally wrote to the guy and just told him, "I don't answer questions from people who hide behind handles."

His reply was "Everyone on the internet knows who Socrates is." Well, I don't unless it's that philosopher who died in 399 B.C. from eating cole slaw. (Don't believe that crap about him drinking hemlock. Why would he drink hemlock when cole slaw would do the job far quicker, plus you can get a delicious corned beef sandwich to go with it?)

Last night, I took Amber to see Ain't Too Proud, a new musical that's playing downtown at the Ahmanson. It's here through the end of September then it goes to Toronto for a while. I don't know where it goes from there except that it's supposed to open at the Imperial Theatre, which is a Broadway house, some time next Spring. It will probably run there for quite some time.

It's the story of The Temptations, arguably the best group ever to perform the kind of music they performed. Frankly, the story of their rise to fame and the conflicts that came with it is probably unremarkable among musical groups. Was there ever an act that lasted for some time that didn't have problems with drinking and drugs? Where someone didn't accidentally get someone pregnant? Where egos didn't clash because somebody thought they were a bigger star than someone else? Maybe Tony Orlando and Dawn managed to avoid most of that but not a lot of other groups.

You also may know the story from a TV mini-series some years back but so what? You don't go to shows like this for the story so much as to see it told well, integrated with songs you know and love. Ain't Too Proud is full of classic fave tunes and judging from the reviews I've read (and some conversations I overheard last night), the big complaint is that most of them are frustratingly truncated. Personally, I would have traded a scene of Otis (the group's organizer) arguing with his wife about being away so much for the rest of "Get Ready."

The cast members do a generally good job of replicating the sounds we know from the records. In the lobby, I heard snatches of a debate that roughly went "The guy who sang lead on this song wasn't as good as the guy on the record," "Yeah, but the guy who sang this other song was better than the guy on the record." Special attention must be paid to an actor named Derrick Baskin. He plays Otis and he deserves some sort of Tony Award not just for doing it well but for sheer manpower. He's on stage almost the entire show, leaping from narration to playing scenes to singing and dancing. Some of that Temptations choreography looks pretty damned exhausting.

Oh, and by the way: The show also features reasonable facsimiles of Diana Ross and the Supremes, Tammi Terrell, Smokey Robinson and other Motown names. Another of course is Berry Gordy, who doesn't come off in this show nearly as well as he did in Motown, which he wrote himself.

Obviously, this is the kind of show where someone worked backwards from the premise. They decided that a musical of songs that The Temptations sang would resonate with the demographic that goes to shows like this (Jersey Boys, Motown, Smokey Joe's Cafe, etc.) and they're right. Amber and I liked it a lot and if we did, the odds are good that you will, too.

The Rolling Stone Interview of Stephen Colbert.

• Donald Trump is now claiming that he didn't say things that he said on tape. By next week, he'll be claiming that he didn't say that he didn't say things he said on tape. The week after, he'll be claiming he didn't say that he didn't say that he didn't say…

Gary Friedrich, best known as the co-creator of the motorcycle-riding Ghost Rider character for Marvel, has died at the age of 75. He had been suffering from Parkinson's Disease and that presumably was the cause of death. In 2010, we honored Gary with the Will Eisner Comic Industry Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Writing.

Gary was born in Jackson, Missouri in 1943 where as a teenager, he became a friend of Roy Thomas. The two of them met while working at the Palace Theatre in Jackson and bonded over their mutual love of comics. After Roy moved to New York and became an assistant editor for Marvel, he helped his friend follow much the same career path. Gary got into writing romance comic books for Charlton and then Roy brought him over to Marvel. Basically, as Roy kept getting moved up to more important jobs, Gary inherited the ones Roy had previously done or would have done. He was the longtime writer of Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos and did shorter runs on dozens of other comics including Hulk, X-Men, Not Brand Echh, Captain Marvel, Daredevil, Captain America…and the list goes on and on. He also launched their comic, Son of Satan.

Self-admitted problems with drinking ended his work for Marvel and while he did freelance for Skywald and for Martin Goodman's short-lived Atlas line of the seventies and the short-lived Topps line in the eighties, he never found anything stable. A growing deafness in both ears (and the onslaught of the Parkinson's) further limited his employment prospects. He got involved in some messy legal battles with Marvel over the Ghost Rider character and while matters were eventually settled, they were not settled to Gary's complete satisfaction.

He was a writer of considerable talent and he deserved a better career than he had. So sorry to hear of his passing.

It's one of those sad double-obit days at newsfromme.com — and they were both mainstays of Marvel Comics from the sixties onward.

One of the world's great cartoonists, Marie Severin, has died at the age of 89. She had been in poor health for some time and only days ago, suffered a stroke which put her in hospice care. So this was not surprising but it's still a bit of a shocker. Let me say this clearly up top: This lady was one of the most delightful, funny and talented people who ever worked in comics. You will find no one who ever knew her who will disagree with that statement.

Marie was born in Rockaway, New York on August 21, 1929, the younger sister of John Severin…so, two great comic book artists in one family. Their father was an artist, working mostly in fashion design but Marie, at first, did not pursue a career as an artist. She had talent but, she thought, not enough. She was working for a bank in 1949 when John tagged her to do some coloring on work he was doing for the E.C. company. The folks at E.C. liked what she did and liked the idea of having an in-house colorist, as opposed to jobbing the work out to strangers. So she joined the E.C. crew and also did production art and other tasks.

She was also at times, an in-house censor. The E.C. books sometimes featured gore and a wee bit of sex and when Marie was called upon to color such scenes, she made her disapproval felt by coloring those panels dark blue or dark red, minimizing what was seen. Some called her "The Conscience of E.C."

When E.C. folded its comic line and concentrated on the (then) black-and-white MAD magazine, John helped her get a job at the company we now know as Marvel. But then they had major cutbacks and she went back into the banking industry for a time. As Marvel rebuilt, there was eventually a time when her services were needed again. Some sources say this happened in 1959 but I believe it was closer to 1964. In any case, she rejoined the firm, working there until another cutback around 1998. After that, she freelanced all across the business until her health failed.

While at Marvel, she headed up their coloring division and colored hundreds of comics and covers herself. She did production art and corrections, and you can often spot her popping up for a few panels or faces in comics drawn by almost anyone else. She did cover designs and drew many comics including notable runs rendering Dr. Strange, The Hulk, King Kull, Sub-Mariner and so many others. On a few joyous stories, her pencil art was inked by her brother John — and she also secretly assisted him on some of his non-Marvel jobs, such as his work for Cracked magazine. She also did a lot of work on merchandise art for Marvel.

As good as her super-hero work was, I'll betcha a lot of her fans prefer her "funny" work for comics like Not Brand Echh and Crazy. Even better, though it did not reach a wide audience, was her skill at drawing hilarious (and insulting) cartoons that were posted on walls around the Marvel offices. She had a wonderful, scathing sense of humor and a terrific eye for caricature. Among the many cosmic injustices of the comic book industry is that while the E.C. staff occasionally called on her coloring skills for some MAD project, they never hired her to do the kind of actual drawing jobs that went to guys like Mort Drucker and Jack Davis. This may just be my opinion but I thought she had the necessary talent; just not the right gender for that company back then.

There's a photo that I took at a New York Comic Con in either '75 or '76. The gent with Marie is my great friend Tony Isabella.  We had a wonderful time at that convention.  At one point, an extremely rude (and unshowered) fan shambled up to Marie and demanded (not "asked" — demanded)  a free sketch.  Marie told him to get lost.  Five minutes later, a polite fan asked in a charming way if Marie could draw a little something in an autograph book he was carrying around.  Marie asked, "What would you like me to draw?" and the kid replied, "Anything you like.  Maybe a silly monster?"  Marie, in about eight seconds, drew a great likeness of the rude, unshowered comic fan.

Everyone loved this woman and those who never got to know her loved her work.  Never mind that she was one of the first great female comic artists.  She was one of the great comic artists, period.

• I think there should be a 24-hour news channel that just runs video of the Trump Administration while the theme from The Benny Hill Show endlessly repeats.

Fred Kaplan explains why Donald Trump's current efforts at the disarmament of North Korea cannot collapse. It's because they only exist in the mind of Donald Trump and, I suppose, the minds of those who believe that everything he does is as much a success as he claims.

Here's a flashback to earlier this year and the song stylings of Mr. Randy Rainbow…

I was born in 1952. That makes me 66 but I don't feel 66. Matter of fact, I don't even know what 66 feels like. I only know I haven't experienced it yet…except maybe first thing in the morning when I've been up half the night working. Then I sometimes feel 166 until I wake all the way up, down my morning protein drink and — most importantly — write something. When I'm writing and it's going reasonably well, it feels exactly like it did when I was 18 except I'm not working on a typewriter these days.

66 seems to be when all your friends of roughly the same age (+/-5 years either way) get to talking way too much about age — yours, theirs and the ages of everyone around them. And by "too much," I mean in some cases all the friggin' time. You ask them if they'd like a sandwich and you get "Oh, I remember how good sandwiches were when I was younger." Everything has to be about age and how many of their friends have died and how someone else is really looking their age and, of course, you get unceasing complaints about "These Kids Today" and how the world has changed.

Breaking News: The world changes. Always has, always will. Complaining has yet to stop it.

Now, please understand that I am not saying anyone should hide their age or, worse, lie about their age. Accepting reality is healthy. I'm saying don't obsess about it and surrender to it prematurely. There isn't much you can do to stop the aging process but it seems to me that thinking about it 24/7 is a dandy way to speed it up.

Within the last few years, an obit appeared on this site for a friend of mine whose passing did not come as a shock to me or anyone who knew him. Why? Because he'd been talking about it almost non-stop for the last decade or two. Once he entered what statistics would suggest was roughly the last third of his life, every other sentence he uttered contained some yardage marker like "Well, speaking as an old fart…" or "I probably won't be around to see this but…"

If I mentioned to him I'd just run into a mutual friend, he'd immediately ask, "Oh, how's he looking these days?" Not even "How's he feeling?" but "How's he looking?" In other words, "Does he look his age? Does he look older than I do?" Must we track every wrinkle, every liver spot, every sign of aging on our friends' bodies? This guy did. It got so I couldn't talk to him about almost anything else.

Stop it. Just stop it. Yes, we're all going to die one of these days. Let's not bury each other and ourselves before we have to.

At Comic-Con this past year, I found myself walking down a corridor with an acquaintance who's probably not far from my age. I'm not sure how far. I'm very bad at guesstimating ages of others because I don't obsess on that kind of thing and sometimes clean forget how old I am. Anyway, he started talking to me about how rough it is getting around the con at "our age" and how we were both limping a little.

I know why I was limping a little. I got a new right knee a few years ago and if I don't keep flexing it, it sometimes gets a bit creaky on me. The left knee is also showing signs of soon needing the same upgrade. So yeah, the knees are bad but that doesn't mean I have to feel like all of me is in need of replacement parts.

I don't know for sure why he was limping but I have a hunch. This is another fellow who can connect any subject or any topic to How Old We're All Getting and he just goes on and on about it. And my hunch is that he was limping because he thinks that's how you're supposed to walk when you hit 65.

Jack Kirby was very important to my life and my career but so was a man named Chase Craig, who was also born on August 28. Chase was the senior editor for many, many years at Western Publishing, which was the firm which prepared the contents of Dell Comics for many, many years and also prepared the contents of and published Gold Key Comics. The odd relationship between Dell and Western is explained here.

What you mainly need to know is that Chase edited a lot of Disney comic books and a lot of comics with the Warner Brothers characters and he edited Tarzan and Magnus, Robot Fighter and countless others. He probably supervised as many issues of as many comic books as any man who ever lived. A lot of them were quite wonderful. He also for a brief time ran a comic book division for the Hanna-Barbera Studio.

Chase taught me an awful lot about writing and also about being an editor. When he turned some of his editing duties over to me, one of the things he told me went like this…

The hardest part of this job is prying the work out of the artists' hands. Some of them like to hold onto it and fuss with it and tweak little things here and there. You'll find yourself pleading, "Please, we have deadlines here. I need it now." And they'll say, "Oh, please! Can't I have a few more days on it?" If they're lying about having it done and they're still working on it, you're stuck. But sometimes, they really do stall handing it in, even though it means they'll be paid later. As soon as they hand it in, it's not theirs anymore and they know it's going to get judged, which scares them, even guys who've been doing it forever. So they'll stall and fuss with it and what you need to do is get it away from them because nine times out of ten, they'll ruin it.

That didn't prove to be true with everyone I hired but it was true of enough of them that I'm glad Chase warned me. Just in case you ever edit a comic book, I thought I'd pass it on to you…and tell you about this other man born on 8/28 that I'm glad I got to know and work with.

And we're talking pizza here, folks. As you may know, I'm a fan of Dave Portnoy, the head honcho of Barstool Sports and a man on a mission. That mission is to review every pizzeria in New York…and when he travels outta town, he reviews the pizza there too. For what it's worth, he's reviewed about eight places where I've had the pizza and those reviews are not far off from what I would have said. I might have been nicer to a few passers-by but my pizza ratings would be about the same.

I call your attention to his reviews, which are posted to YouTube almost daily. I also call your attention to a new free app his company has put out. It's called One Bite and the first official release of it is now available for the iPhone. (An Android version is in Beta at the moment.) It's a "must get" for fans of pizza. Basically, it will show you darn near every single place to get a slice of pizza near where you are and if Dave's reviewed it, it'll show you his review. It may also show you the opinion of some fellow user of the app who, a la Yelp, has posted their own review…and you can add your own. It's free but with advertising.

Here's a review Dave did a few months ago with a stellar list of guest stars — Jon Hamm, Jeremy Renner, Ed Helms, Hannibal Buress and Jake Johnson, all promoting a new movie of theirs which I think disappeared in about the time it takes to eat a slice of pizza. Check out Dave's other reviews and note that even though he's about as New York as they come and has eaten more New York Pizza than you have, he sometimes finds great merit in pizza in other states…

Donald Trump reportedly expressed an upset that the country was mourning John McCain too much. I might agree with that, though not for the same reasons. Unlike Trump, I am not bothered that all that love and respect is not going to me and is instead directed to a guy, albeit a dead one, who I didn't like because he wouldn't kiss my ass. I get the feeling some people are over-saluting McCain because it's yet another way to show one's contempt for Trump…and if you're a Democrat, you can even look fair-minded and non-partisan in the process.

As I already wrote here, I think Senator McCain did some good things. Did I also mention that it's hard to dislike a guy who could go on a talk show and be so funny and self-effacing and even at times, a little self-deprecating? McCain was that way at times and it was a skill that more politicians should have but which less seem to want. These days, especially if you're a Republican, "tough" is what it's all about…and tough guys never laugh at themselves. They're too insecure to do that.

But there were plenty of times when his votes in the Senate were the same as those of his right-wing colleagues…and the thing that really made it impossible for me to be more positive about him was his undying support for The War.

Which war? Just about any war — any time, any place, any reason. As Matt Taibbi notes: "Wherever America had a foreign policy problem, [his] solution was always to bomb the fuck out of someone."

Read this piece by Taibbi. That kind of thing cancels out for me a lot of charming, friendly spots with Letterman or Stewart.