Monthly Archives: August 2022

I don't know about you but I'd love to see My Fair Lady in Japanese…especially the song, "Why Can't the English Teach Their Children How to Speak?"

I get an awful lot of requests to plug/advertise/promote products and events here, many of them from strangers asking — or once in a while, ordering me — to write about what they're selling at the moment. I got one a couple weeks ago that did an artful job of phrasing what was basically "Hey, I know you never heard of me and you haven't read my book which isn't out yet but tell all your followers that it's sensational and they should advance-order it."

I also got one once from a fellow who "reminded me" I'd met him at DragonCon and promised him that when his new self-published comic was out, I'd give him a big plug on my blog. And I'd keep that promise if I'd ever been to DragonCon.

Here are three endeavors I am totally unhesitant to endorse and recommend…

My pal Jim Korkis has been working on his book about Disney's Peter Pan since Captain Hook had two good hands. I haven't read this yet but Korkis writing about Disney History is like John Steinbeck writing about migrant agricultural laborers…and yes, I know that's a lousy analogy but it's the best I can do this morning. Sorry. Anyway, Jim is very good and there is much to know about his subject and I'll bet he knows all there is to know and he's put it in this book.

Order a copy of Off to Never Land: 70 Years of Disney's Peter Pan here. If he doesn't send me a free one, I'm going to use that link myself and buy it.

Jim Henson's first TV show was Sam & Friends, which aired twice daily on WRC TV in Washington, D.C. from 1955 to 1961. No one has really done a deep dive into its history until my buddy Craig Shemin decided it had to be done. Craig, who years later worked for Mr. Henson's company, began finding info and interviewing people and unearthing old kinescopes and putting together this much-needed volume. This book, I have read and while I'm always cautious about applying the word "definitive" to anything, I find it hard to believe we'll ever see a more thorough, accurate work on the topic. He even got a foreword out of Frank Oz.

This one will be officially released on September 24th, which happens to be Jim Henson's birthday and there will be an event at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York on that day. If you're in New York, try to get to it. If you're not, here's a link to order your copy of a book which every Henson/Muppets fan must read.

And lastly but certainly not leastly: For years now, my friend Frank Ferrante has been appearing around the globe as Groucho Marx (the show is still playing on PBS stations) but also as Caesar, a flamboyant and self-loving host in various productions of Teatro Zinzanni, which is an immersive dinner/theatrical production that appears in selected cities in the United States. In this case, "immersive" means you dine with the show taking place all around your table, above your table and sometimes — literally — on your table. Some have called it a Cirque du Soleil for folks who want to eat gourmet food while they watch incredible performers.

In a maneuver I don't pretend to understand, Teatro Zinzanni has now split into two separate companies with the classic T.Z. soon to reopen in Seattle and San Francisco. Meanwhile, its performing space in Chicago is soon to be occupied by "Luminaire," the first production of the new company, Cabaret ZaZou. The first show opens September 7 with Frank breaking in a new character, Fortissimo, as its host. I'm not flying anywhere these days but when I do, I'm probably going to start by flying to Chicago to see this thing. Details are here.

Nick Stuart wrote to ask…

Since you know a lot about what artists worked on what specific comics, I'm writing to you to ask a question about the art credits on The Amazing Spider-Man comic in the late 60s and early 70s during a time where it seemed like help was being brought in for John Romita. Artists Romita, John Buscema and Jim Mooney are credited with titles like "innovator" "illustrator" and similar credits that leave it vague as to how the art duties were split up. I was just wondering if you had any knowledge about how the comics were drawn. Did Romita provide layouts for Buscema to finish and Mooney to ink? Did Buscema and Mooney split things up from a layouts/finishes perspective that Romita then made alterations to? Any help at all would be greatly appreciated.

In some ways, Nick, you are trying to know the unknowable. A lot of folks trying to understand how their favorite comics were created try to break it down to something like "Artist A laid out the pages, Artist B finished those layouts in pencil, Artist C inked." Well, maybe. But every possible division of labor could happen on a comic and sometimes, the Who Did What varied from page to page. And when you see credits like "innovator" or "designer," that's probably a matter of whoever wrote the credits being deliberately vague. We do that often on Groo the Wanderer to explain what I do by not explaining.

Credits do not always tell the whole story. For example, before the issues of Spider-Man you mention, there were many which gave sole credit to John Romita for the art and some which listed "Mickey Demeo" (a pseudonym for Mike Esposito) as inker. But almost all of them were inked by both Romita and Esposito. In some cases, John would give certain pages to Mike to ink..and in most cases, the inked pages would go back to John and he'd do retouching or additional inking.

And any issue might have had some background inks by Tony Mortellaro, who worked in the office at a drawing table that was at times, right next to John Romita.

John Romita — and we're talking John Romita Senior here — was unlike many of his contemporaries who drew for Marvel. He worked in the office and was paid a salary to be there. At the time in question, Marie Severin and Herb Trimpe were also on staff but they didn't do as much of what I'm describing as Romita did.

On a given issue of Spider-Man in this period, he could lay it all out, lay out certain pages, tight-pencil certain pages or certain panels, even ink some figures or panels — and then pass it on to someone else like Heck, Mooney, Buscema or Esposito to do more work on those pages. Then they went back to John and he might redraw whatever he thought needed redrawing. Other artists who worked for Marvel at the time like Jack Kirby, Gene Colan, John and Sal Buscema, Don Heck (etc.) did not see the pages at every step of production, nor were they paid to retouch or fix that which they might have felt needed retouching or fixing. Kirby plotted and drew a comic in pencil, turned it in and usually never saw that story until he got a copy of the printed book.

So the correct definition of what Romita did on those issues is "Whatever he felt was needed at whatever stage of production he felt like doing it." And it almost always varied not only from issue to issue but from page to page. There was a very nice period on the book when the credits said Gil Kane was penciling and Romita was inking…but Romita was always involved in the plotting and he almost always erased a lot of what Kane penciled and redrew whole panels.

One other thing I want to mention on this whole matter of art retouching in comics — a practice that was much more common in comics than it is today. A lot of fans when they see evidence of retouch work in a comic assume it means the artist screwed-up and his work had to be fixed. That was not always the case. Redraws might be done because the editor or writer decided to change something about the story. Romita redrew a lot of those Gil Kane panels because though Gil had drawn what he was told to draw, Stan Lee in composing the dialogue for the story, decided he wanted something else in a given panel.

Or something was damaged. Marie Severin used to tell a story about how she had to do major art fixes in a story by another artist because someone in the office spilled a bottle of ink on a job.

And also — and I know this will come as a shock to some of you — editors can be wrong. Everyone I know in comics who ever did art "corrections" at the orders of an editor has told me of times they felt they were "fixing" art which needed no fixing or even that they were making it worse.

At Marvel, Stan Lee was always very nervous about covers and trying to find something — anything! — they could change that might make a cover 1% better. Sol Brodsky, who actually had to execute some of those alterations, called them, "Gratuitous changes." At DC in the sixties and seventies, I thought the Production Department loved tampering with the freelancers' work just because they could. I had the same problem on some TV shows I worked on…someone in power making an unnecessary or even detrimental edit in the show just so they could say, "I saved it!"

Fixes are sometimes necessary but they're sometimes made just because someone wants to be The Boss. Or sometimes, they're just wrong. I've sometimes looked back on a comic book I edited and seen something and thought, "Gee, I should have left that alone."

Here's a little mini-doc on the five most expensive original musicals ever to be presented on Broadway. According to this, they are — going from the fifth most-expensive to the first — Frozen, Shrek, King Kong, The Lion King and Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. Of these, only Lion King (still running with no indications it might close soon) has been deemed a huge hit. Frozen reportedly did well enough to recoup its investment before closing due to The Pandemic. It and Shrek probably were and/or are very successful in national tours.

The Lion King is the only one of these five shows I saw. In fact, I saw it in Manhattan just after it opened and I saw it on tour in Los Angeles and I didn't much like it either time. Obviously, this is a minority viewpoint. Have I ever told the story here of what I went through to see it in New York? If I haven't, maybe I will one of these days.

I'm not entirely clear what the lesson is to be learned from the failures except for the obvious one: It is possible to spend so much on something that it can't possibly be worth it. That pretty much applies to everything in life.

There might be a lesson about trying to replicate movie graphics and special effects on stage being a foolish gamble. I didn't like the Broadway version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (aka Willy Wonka) either. Then again, I loved Beauty and the Beast and I really loved the transfer of Xanadu from flop movie to modest Broadway success.

Draw your own conclusions. In the meantime, I still want to know what's become of that enormous puppet that was built for King Kong…

Ian Millhiser explains the four major ongoing investigations of Donald J. Trump. And this list doesn't even include the civil suits Trump is fighting at the moment. I don't know how any of these are going to come out and you don't know…but I think we can agree Trump's going to have a lot of lawyers in his life for quite a while.

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.

Just got this in my e-mail…

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They don't say what the free gift is I get for my twelve bucks but I'm guessing it's my very own copy of a Top Secret document marked ORCON that lists the names and whereabouts of all U.S. undercover agents overseas.

Jack Kirby was born on this day in 1917. I was trying to think of what I should write this year on this day when I received a message from my friend Kurt Busiek…

I was talking with Paul Levitz about early Marvel and creator influences, and a question came up that I'm not sure I've ever seen you talk about before. Kirby's work schedule sounds grueling — constant, long hours — but he also clearly read books and magazines of interest, since he had inspirations from SF pulps, books on "ancient astronauts," Playboy pictorials, stage shows and more.

How did he fit his reading in around his work and his family life? Did his reading habits change over the years? What got most of his attention?

I'd love to hear about that sometime.

Jack was interested in just about everything. A lot of fans who met him were surprised when he asked them about themselves…about their work and their interests. I did not notice any change in his reading habits over the years though I have the sense that less and less of it was from the boxes of old pulp magazines he had around and that his mind decided it had quite enough science-fiction in it and his reading turned more towards reality.

He read the newspaper and was always up on current events. At a store, he sometimes picked up a book just because it was about something that was totally alien to him.

He had a subscription to Playboy which I believe he got from Harvey Kurtzman back in the late sixties when Harvey was trying to get Jack to work with him, if not on "Little Annie Fanny" (which Jack declined) then on a new feature for Playboy which he also declined. It sounded like an American Barbarella. and Jack, who didn't feel a man with three daughters should be drawing nude women, told Harvey to call Wally Wood….which Harvey would not do.

But I know Jack read Playboy for the articles because he and I sometimes discussed them. I was on a Vonnegut-reading binge back then and we talked about that author and Jack had definitely read at least a few of Kurt Vonnegut's novels.

I'll tell you one thing Kirby rarely read: Comic books by other people. He'd read them if there was a reason…say, when Carmine Infantino asked him to read a certain book because he wanted Jack's opinion of it. Those opinions were rarely favorable but Jack would always ask Carmine not to repeat what he'd said because Jack believed professionals should never criticize one another in any sort of public way. (Obviously, he made an exception for one or two people.)

How did he make time for it? He just did. I think for Jack, reading or watching certain TV shows, was a break from whatever story he presently had on his mind. He also loved looking at magazines with lots of photos in them. I believe a lot of photos in Life or Look inspired Kirby drawings but that if you were to put the photo side-by-side with the drawing it inspired, you'd never see the slightest connection.

I keep coming back to my first answer: He was interested in just about everything. I think he approached a lot of it with the attitude of "Well, let's see what this guy has to say." I have the feeling he was sometimes more interested in the thought processes of the author than he was in the particular subject that author was discussing…but I'm not sure why I feel that way. It was easy to discern that Jack's train of thought was not linear; that it leaped around from place to place, just as many conversations with him did. If you believe that people think the way they read and read the way they think, that might explain a lot.

He really was remarkable and the more he's on my mind — as he is in some way every day — the more I miss those conversations and just being around him.

Legal Eagle Devin Stone weighs in on how much trouble Donald Trump is in at the moment and some of the things that the folks who are willing to be his lawyers this week are doing wrong.

And while I'm thinking about it: Doesn't "Devin Stone" sound like the name of a lawyer in a TV courtroom drama? It might even be better for a private investigator because it's simple and punchy and it sounds like the name of a tough guy.

Back to the case: Like you, I have no idea where this Classified Documents matter is going except that it ain't good for Mr. Trump. It's good to keep in mind that all the folks speculating online probably don't know everything the investigators know…and that the investigators probably don't know everything yet themselves. Here's the Legal Eagle explaining what he knows…

The ongoing Pandemic has solidified my belief that that most people would be better off in this world if they listened less to laypeople who think they know a lot about medicine and instead listened more to people who have graduated medical school and have a whole bunch of framed diplomas and certificates on the walls of their medical office. It's also a good indicator of competence if they have a medical office.

I am not saying doctors are infallible. We all have stories of one being utterly wrong about what was ailing someone and/or about how to make things better. But I think they're right way more often than non-doctors — and I don't think its twice as often or thrice as often. It's way more than that, varying with how serious the ailment is. If you're really sick, you really need a real doctor. In fact, you really need a real Very Good Doctor.

If you don't have one, work towards getting one. There are many opinions out there about what would constitute adequate medical care in this country. I would think the least of it would be that everyone had access to a Very Good Doctor and could afford to see that V.G.D. not just for emergencies but also for check-ups and preventive maintenance.

If you use a little common sense, it is possible to find a Very Good Doctor and even one can lead to a network of them. Very Good Doctors usually recommend other Very Good Doctors when you need a specialist. When I recently had a stomach problem, my very good General Practitioner sent me to a very good Gastroenterologist and the ailment was fixed.

And I should add that my definition of a Very Good Doctor is not limited to that person knowing a lot about medical matters and diseases and spleens and pills. It often has a lot to do with rapport and understanding and not having such a busy schedule that you can never get them on the phone or just sit and talk with them. The Very Good Doctor for me might not be the Very Good Doctor for you.

The other day, I was in for a minor check-up and consultation with a Very Good Doctor for me and we got to talking about The Pandemic. If I understand him correctly, he thinks the medical community has done a pretty good job with the challenge of COVID, given the fact that so little was known about it when it first burst into our lives. Doctors suddenly had to treat people for it while they learned what it was, how it spread, how to prevent it, etc. And while vaccines were being developed and tested and approved.

He said — and I'm paraphrasing mightily here — that much of what was believed about it at first was tentative and clearly identified as subject-to-change. As more was learned, the treatments and recommendations changed…and that caused a lot of confusion and distrust and accusations. Too many people expected doctors to know everything about it and to be able to treat it from Day One. Too often as knowledge of COVID expanded and new treatments were developed, what had been said or done earlier was viewed by some as incompetence…or worse, lying.

I was thinking about that as I read this fact-check on some of the things that have been said about Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical adviser to the President and head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Dr. Fauci is about to step down and unlike some people, I don't think that's a cause for celebration.

It seems to me the man had an impossible job to begin with and it became even more impossible as The Pandemic became politicized and various factions were angry he didn't say what they wanted him to say. The fact-check identifies a number of out-and-out misquotes of the man.

Merely treating the crisis as a crisis infuriated many. I don't know how you can be the Chief Adviser to Donald Trump and then be the Chief Adviser to Joe Biden without making someone consider you The Enemy. We live in a time when if you're not actively on one side, you're presumed to be part of the opposition. Doctors ought to be on the side of medical accuracy and preventing suffering and saving lives. They should not be attacked because what they're saying might be injurious to the chances of the guy you want to see elected getting elected.

Author-historian Eric L. Hoffman died this morning due to injuries sustained in a recent fire at his home. He was 78 years old and a lifelong devotee of science-fiction and horror movies and all things macabre. A frequent presence and lecturer at Comic-Con International since its earliest days and at other local conventions, Eric was the guy you went to if you wanted to know anything in his fields of interest.

I ran into him at conventions and film screenings for over half a century and we occasionally engaged in friendly debates about this or that…and yet I find that I knew very little about him. I'm told he left no family. I know he wrote and/or edited many books and was regarded as an authority in a fandom that was adjacent to the one in which I dwell…but I'm not the one to write a proper obit for the man. If you see one by someone who knew him well enough, please let me know so I can link to it.

I guess I knew him well enough to write this and to be saddened by his passing and shocked at how it occurred…and to know how well he was regarded by the kind of folks who could write that proper obit. I apologize that this isn't it.

I said in the previous item here that the Linus the Lionhearted cartoon show was yanked off the air in the sixties, "never to be seen again." I am informed by several correspondents that a DVD set of that series is in the works. Let me know if you hear of an actual release date and I'll pass it on here.

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A number of folks are sending me links to order their favorite beans and/or recipes to make their favorite beans. I appreciate that you'd like me to have beans but despite obstacles, I can still order my favorite beans and have. It's just more difficult and expensive than it used to be. And what I wanted was not so much any good can of beans but a specific comfort food I've been eating all my life.

And if we're going to be absolutely honest here about beans, my real all-time favorite beans were the ones they served at the Love's Barbecue chain back when there was a Love's Barbecue chain. All that remains of that chain is this website where you can order their barbecue sauce, which is wonderful if you like a real sweet sauce.

Once upon a time, the site said they'd soon be making the beans available and it still says they will be expanding their product line but they've been saying that since the previous century and I've given up hope. We'll see a complete boxed set of the Linus the Lionhearted cartoon show before we ever see a single new Love's bean.

The Linus the Lionhearted Show was on CBS Saturday mornings from September 26, 1964 to December 11, 1965 and then it moved over to ABC for a few years. It took that long for folks to realize that the program, which starred the characters appearing on boxes of Post cereals, was not a cartoon show but a half-hour commercial for its sponsor. That was when it went away, never to be seen again.

This was good in some ways. Sponsors should not have that much control of content, especially content aimed at getting children to eat more sugar. But it was a shame because it was, despite its Raison d'être, a pretty clever, funny program. And it had a really great voice cast…

In this commercial and on the series, Linus was voiced by Sheldon Leonard and Billie Bird was Carl Reiner. Lovable Truly (the mailman), So-Hi and Rory Raccoon were voiced by Bob McFadden, and Sugar Bear was voiced by Gerry Matthews. But the series also employed at times, Ruth Buzzi, Jonathan Winters, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, Jesse White and other actors then appearing on TV sitcoms and variety shows. Here's a little taste…

Fred Kaplan explains the Mar-A-Lago document scandal and concludes Donald Trump is in a heap of legal trouble. Does anyone think that if Barack Obama had done the same things, Trump and his supporters would not be demanding that America skip the trial and proceed directly to a public beheading?

You all with be relieved to know that my TiVo's guide now lists Harry O as airing on MeTV Plus at 4 PM starting Mondays. They're starting with Episode 1 of Season 1. MeTV Plus has also been airing old episodes of Hawaii Five-O (the Jack Lord version) which was another show I often enjoyed.

I want to thank all of you who wrote to tell me of a local market in your area that carries Heinz Vegetarian Beans, especially the guy in Alaska. I'll stop in on my way back from a lunch meeting and grab a couple of cans.

I have no comment on the Student Loan Forgiveness except this: A lot of folks who are fine with your, my and their tax dollars going to very, very rich people sure get upset when that money goes to people who are not very, very rich.

I also have no real comment over the release of the Mar-A-Lago affidavit. It's only been out for an hour or so and journalists are still scrambling to figure out what much of it means. Any minute now though, we should begin getting the articles about why urging this document's release is the latest mistake of Trump and whatever lawyers he can find to represent him this week. Every Trump move lately seems to generate those articles, even from people who are supposedly on his side.

To answer a question I keep getting asked in e-mail: I have absolutely no convention plans or appearances lined up. Barring further plagues, I'll probably be at WonderCon in Anaheim, which is March 24-26 next year. That's all for now.