Category Archives: Obituaries

Jerry Juhl, who was one of the main creative forces behind The Muppets died Monday from complications relating to cancer. Jerry and his wife Susan worked for years for the Jim Henson Organization — 37 years in Jerry's case. He wrote for Sesame Street, served as head writer for The Muppet Show, and was a writer and/or producer on most of Henson's TV projects and films, including The Muppet Movie.

His association with Henson began in 1961 when Jim was doing a low-budget show in Washington, D.C. entitled Sam and Friends. A childhood friend of Frank Oz, Juhl originally began working with Henson as a puppeteer but eventually gravitated more into writing. He had a hand in shaping most of the major Muppet characters but especially The Great Gonzo, which he sometimes described as his personal favorite.

My pal Ken Plume is preparing a lengthy bio and obit which will appear soon on IGN FilmForce. I'll post a link when it's up. This is a sad day for those of us who love the wit and glory of The Muppets because an awful lot of that came from Jerry Juhl.

There are two great stories about Danny Simon, the veteran comedy writer who just passed away. Well, actually, there are probably a lot more than two. Danny was a major force on TV variety shows of the fifties and sixties, and I even worked on one with him in the late seventies. He was also a director and a teacher of comedy writing, and the inspiration for the Felix Unger character in The Odd Couple, and a frantic, little man who was always hustling and selling. So there are probably a lot more than two, but I always loved these…

Danny Simon Story #1: Danny is going to visit his mother. This is some time in the sixties after another of the Simon kids has made a pretty big name for himself on Broadway. Danny walks in and finds his mother entertaining some of her friends. His mother says, "Girls…I want you to meet Neil's brother."

Danny Simon Story #2: Danny is working on some TV show. This is also some time in the sixties, long after he and Neil are no longer working as a team. The producer of the show decides to fire Danny, telling him his work is no good. Danny protests the decision, arguing that his work is very good. He says, "I'm the funniest writer in the business." The producer looks at him and says, "You aren't even the funniest writer in your family."

You might be interested to know where I heard those stories. I heard them from Danny. I'm sure he didn't like being the butt of a joke but he had a great appreciation for a funny story. Early in my career, I worked for him for a few days before he got fired as Head Writer and his replacement made a clean sweep of the staff, ousting me. I found him intractable, dominating and intent on lecturing everyone about the way to do things, which in his case meant only the way they'd done things in the fifties. Still, I liked him very much. He liked the fact that I'd seen and loved a then-recent production he'd directed of Plaza Suite starring Carol Burnett and George Kennedy, and that I'd noted how many gags he'd added with his staging. He also liked that I'd read and enjoyed a little-known play of his called The Convertible Girl, and he gave me a Xerox copy of an early draft so I could see how diligently he had tweaked and refined every line in it over the course of several "tryout" productions.

Danny was said to be the master of the evolving pitch. That's when you try to sell someone on a storyline or idea and, based on a lack of approving recognition, you start modifying the idea on-the-fly. It goes something like this: "So this is a western…well, it's not really a western. It's set on the west coast…or I guess it could be set on the east coast if you prefer. Anyway, the hero is six feet tall…but of course, he could be five feet tall…he could even be a woman…" The idea is that you keep changing until the buyer smiles at something. I even saw Danny do this once at lunch, trying to come up with an order that the waitress would think was a good choice. He went from a corned beef sandwich to a Chinese chicken salad in about 80 seconds.

He knew comedy. He taught comedy. For years, all the local trade journals carried ads for his workshops, with quotes from Woody Allen and brother Neil attesting to Danny's ability to instill great comedy writing talent in anyone. I never took his classes but I knew people who did and they found them valuable, if only for the anecdotes. Danny had worked with everyone. I think the main reason he got fired off that show we worked on was that some of us were too appreciative an audience for his stories so he entertained us instead of putting that energy into the script.

I suspect that, now that he doesn't have to worry about upsetting Danny, Neil is going to pull some half-finished play out of a drawer and finish it. Danny turns up in many of Neil's plays, not just as Felix but as every older brother, starting with Come Blow Your Horn, which was Neil's first. But I'm sure there were aspects of Danny that were too sensitive and perhaps too painful to address. It can't be easy to mentor your little brother and watch him pass you to become the most successful playwright of the century. No one ever lost a bout of sibling rivalry so decisively but with such good humor.

Comic book artist Jim Aparo has died at the age of 72 following a recent illness. Despite a bit of training at the Hartford Art School, Aparo considered himself a self-taught illustrator. A lifelong fan of comics, he always wanted to work in the business but his samples did not arouse any interest until around 1966 when Dick Giordano, who was then an editor at Charlton, decided to give him a try…on a teen strip called "Miss Bikini Luv." That, and subsequent assignments for Charlton's war, western and ghost comics worked out so well that, despite Charlton's niggardly pay rates, Aparo was able to quit his day job at a Hartford advertising agency and realize his dream as a full-time comic book artist.

Jim continued to work for Charlton and in 1968, when Giordano became an editor at DC Comics, Jim began drawing for that firm, as well. For a time, he labored for both, and his run on Charlton's version of The Phantom (1969-1970) was especially outstanding. But once his contract with Charlton was up, DC grabbed him full-time and he never stopped working for them until the early nineties when health problems cropped up.

Aparo drew Aquaman, The Phantom Stranger and The Spectre for DC, but the vast majority of his work was with Batman, including a long run drawing the Batman team-ups that appeared in The Brave and the Bold. The strip allowed Aparo to draw just about every character in the DC Universe but especially to display a memorable, exciting interpretation of The Caped Crusader that built on the Neal Adams revamp (circa 1969) and took it off in a unique and powerful direction. Many fans will tell you that Aparo was their all-time favorite Batman artist.

Also notable about Aparo were his meticulous work habits. Except for a few brief exceptions, he always pencilled, lettered and inked his own work at the rate of one page per day — no more, no less. He'd pencil that page in the morning, break for lunch, letter it and then almost always have it finished by bedtime. This was possible because editors found him so trustworthy that there was no need to have him show the work in the pencil stage. They could just send him a complete 22 page script and then, 22 workdays later (plus travel time), they had the finished art. In the DC offices, there would sometimes be panic — "We need to have a script ready for Aparo by Tuesday" — because he delivered like clockwork.

Aparo worked with a wide array of writers…though not everyone. Some writers, who prefer to work "Marvel method," were frustrated that Jim could not or would not work from a plot synopsis with the dialogue to be written later. Those who did craft full scripts for him, however, appear to have been unanimous in their happiness with the finished product. He was a diligent, talented craftsman and going by the few times I met him, a very nice and dedicated gentleman.

Above, we see Will Eisner in his natural habitat: At the drawing board, and probably producing one of the most innovative pieces of comic art of its day, whatever day it was. Eisner, who died Monday evening due to complications following his recent heart surgery, was one of the most important architects of the American comic book…a medium that took life and form about the time he got into it. He was 87 years old but boy, seeing and talking with him at conventions, he sure didn't look it. Didn't draw his age, either. I recall Frank Miller paging through one of Will's recent graphic novels, looking up and saying, "Isn't it embarrassing that a man in his eighties is kicking all our asses?"

I can't improve on the biography of Will posted here so I'll just add a couple of thoughts. Will was among the most envied craftsman in his field…admired for both his skill as a writer and artist but also for having a certain business acumen. The latter skill escaped most of comics' great creators but Eisner had enough to retain ownership and control of most of his creations. He also (and this may not be completely unrelated) never stopped drawing, never stopped pioneering in a field that could and did easily burn out its top talents. We can look at his work from the late thirties and see that it is wonderful and ground-breaking. Then we can look at what he's done the last decade or so, blazing the trail with graphic novels, often on very personal, low-concept subjects…and see that those are wonderful and ground-breaking, as well. Only when you stop and consider that those two bodies of work came from the same guy, and were part of a 60+ year pattern, does his full impact begin to dawn on you.

Like many of my generation, I first heard of Will Eisner in the mid-sixties, when he was away from mainstream comics, producing comic-type material for other venues, most notably the Army. Then his friend and former employee, Jules Feiffer, wrote glowingly of him in The Great Comic Book Heroes, and even included a Spirit reprint to prove Eisner worthy of such praise. Soon after, the Harvey comic book company launched a brief, unsuccessful Spirit reprint book which the guys in my old comic book club all devoured. It was like, Gee, comics can also be this! In 1968, we voted him or that comic some kind of award, and since I was the club's president and had his address, I wrote him a clumsy letter telling him this. Mr. Eisner quickly sent back a polite thanks and at the bottom of his note, he took the time to draw a little sketch, which I just ran through my scanner. It looked like this…

Needless to say, we were all thrilled and when I showed the letter at the next club meeting, a near-riot broke out on the question of whether the physical letter belonged to me or to the club. Somehow — don't ask me how — I managed to get out of that meeting alive and with that piece of paper.

Thereafter, it was a joy to become better acquainted with the man's work and, somewhat later on, the man who'd done it. He was always gracious, always glad to talk about any aspect or era of comics. He favored the future but his memory was razor-sharp about the past, and a lot of us historian-geeks gladly exploited that fact. You could not learn more about comics' past than by talking with Will Eisner, just as you could not learn more about their future than by reading his work.

It is not just a hollow honorific that the major awards in the comic book field are called The Will Eisner Awards. And I'll bet I speak for most/all of those who've won a couple when I say that the best part of receiving one is that when you go up to the stage to get it, Will Eisner hands it to you. Or did. He would always be there to hand you the plaque…always standing. Everyone used to joke that he shouldn't be on his feet for the marathon, drags-on-for-days ceremony; that he should be seated in a throne. One year, Kurt Busiek and Frank Miller (I think) arranged to rent one from a local prop house and early in the festivities, they happily carried it onto the platform.

Will was gracious enough to sit in it and complete the joke…but only for a minute or so. When the next award was announced, he was back in a vertical position to congratulate the recipient, not as royalty but as a peer. You never saw so much perfect symbolism at a convention: A newer generation trying to tell Will Eisner he could rest on his laurels…and Will happily declining. That's how you get to be that age and still produce vital, significant work.

A year or two after that, a Will Eisner award went to…Will Eisner. He won for one of his recent works and the next day, we were joking about how finally, at long last, he had done work that lived up to the standard of Will Eisner. He was genuinely proud to have his name in two places on the award, but I told him he'd missed out on the best part. He didn't get to have Will Eisner hand it to him. Sadly, from this day forward, everyone else who wins one will have to do without.

Frank Kelly Freas, the acclaimed science-fiction illustrator (and delineator of Alfred E. Neuman) passed away quietly this morning at approximately 4 AM. He was nominated twenty times (a record) for the Hugo Award for his artwork and won ten times (another record) as Best Professional Artist. His artwork graced the covers and/or insides of books by virtually every major science-fiction author, including Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, A.E. Van Vogt, Poul Anderson and Frederik Pohl. Still, many knew him best for the seven years he spent as the main cover artist of MAD Magazine.

Freas was born in New York in 1922 and raised in Canada. In college and in the Army, he started out to explore both Medicine and Engineering as possible vocations but kept getting lured towards artwork. After the service, he got a job drawing for an advertising agency in Pittsburgh and began taking night courses at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. In 1950, he produced a fantasy painting for one of his art classes and at the urging of his friends, submitted it to Weird Tales, the prestigious pulp magazine. When it sold, he was on his way…and there were few honors or important assignments in the field that never went his way. You can view some samples of his work at his website or browse his MAD paintings over at Doug Gilford's MAD Cover Site. (The Kelly Freas covers start with #40 and continue, with occasional interruption, until #74. #70 was actually the last one he painted but they didn't publish them in the order done.)

A frequent, friendly presence at both comic and s-f conventions, Freas (pronounced "freeze") was a charming gent, always available to talk to his many fans on any subject. I recall he once interrupted a conversation we were having when a young, aspiring painter came over to show him a sample of his work. Freas caught a glimpse of it out of the corner of his eye and his immediate reaction was akin to, "Sorry, Mark…but this is an emergency." The kid had great talent, Kelly thought, but was in dire need to being set straight on some of the basics. I eavesdropped for about five minutes as the aspiring painter received solid, no-nonsense advice about all that he was doing wrong. You could almost see the kid becoming a better artist, right before your eyes…and he hadn't even painted anything new yet. Later, Kelly made an unnecessary point of seeking me out to apologize and finish our discussion. As I said, a charming gentleman.

A memorial service is planned. I'll let you know if I hear anything…or you let me know.

Pete Morisi, known to fans of Charlton comics as "P.A.M.," died yesterday at Staten Island University Hospital. So far, we've heard nothing about a cause of death but I'll tell you what I can about his life and times. Peter A. Morisi was born in the Park Slope area of Brooklyn in 1928 and grew up there, dreaming of being either a policeman or a comic book artist. He opted for the latter and wound up studying, like about half the comic artists of his generation, at the School of Industrial Arts in New York. He occasionally assisted on newspaper strips (Dickie Dare, The Saint and the Dan Barry Flash Gordon) but devoted most of his career to comic books and another, unrelated occupation, which we'll get to. His first comic book work appears to have been for Fox Comics in 1948, where he sold a few stories before being drafted into the Army.

While stationed in Colorado, he wrote a number of scripts for that company's romance and crime comics, and even managed to draw a few stories, including a short-lived strip called "Lionus the Cruel." Upon his return to New York in 1950, he worked for Quality Comics, Timely (now Marvel), Harvey, Lev Gleason, Fiction House and several other companies. In 1953, he wrote and drew a detective strip called "Johnny Dynamite" for Comic Media. It failed to click with readers but attracted a strong following among professionals and the admiration of his fellow artists.

Morisi's early work in comics showed a lot of Alex Raymond influence but one day, he made a sharp turn. Reportedly, an editor told him to try and draw more like George Tuska, who was then the "star" artist in the field of crime comics. Morisi liked Tuska's work and saw that others were emulating the man, but felt it was wrong to simply appropriate someone else's style. So, the story goes, he phoned up Tuska, asked if he could imitate his approach and offered to pay a small royalty for the privilege. Tuska was so amazed that anyone had asked that he gave Morisi permission to draw like him and waived the fee. Thereafter, some of Morisi's work was so close to Tuska's in style that when they worked for the same firm, the editor got them confused.

In the mid-fifties, there was a recession in the comic book field and publishers began closing. Morisi saw where it was all headed and decided he needed another line of work. Fulfilling his other childhood dream, he studied for and joined the New York Police Department in 1956. He put in twenty years on the force, most of it spent working in Brooklyn and lower Manhattan. But he didn't stop working for comics. He just stopped signing his work…or he'd sign it "P.A.M.," so that the N.Y.P.D. wouldn't know of his moonlighting. Except for one brief job for Classics Illustrated and a few jobs for DC in the early seventies, all of his comic book work was done for Charlton, primarily on westerns. These included Billy the Kid, Gunmaster, Wyatt Earp and Kid Montana. Though Charlton paid rock-bottom wages, the company was willing to allow him to work without deadlines. He'd write and draw his own stories (or accept a script which he would only draw) at his own pace in whatever time he had away from the police beat. Whenever he got one done, they'd accept it and pay him. It worked out well for both sides and Morisi was one of their more talented contributors.

His most memorable work, however, came during a brief period in the sixties when editor Dick Giordano attempted to launch an "action hero" line and asked Morisi to come up with one. Morisi created Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt — an uncommonly thoughtful super-hero comic which delved into Eastern philosophies and martial arts at a time when such areas were relatively new to American media. The first issue appeared in January of 1966 and made a huge hit with fans. Unfortunately, Morisi was unable to produce material on the kind of deadline necessary for a recurring feature. Others had to fill-in for him and after only eight issues, he had to abandon his creation and return to non-series stories, mostly for westerns or ghost comics such as The Many Ghosts of Dr. Graves. He did not attempt another regular strip until 1975 as he neared retirement from the N.Y.P.D. Then, he created, wrote and drew Vengeance Squad, which dealt with a crew of private detectives who used fisticuffs and high-tech means (though rarely firearms) to solve crimes and catch criminals that stymied the police. The book only lasted six issues — and Charlton didn't last much longer. Had readers known the comic was the work of a cop with twenty years on the force, it might have meant more.

Morisi retired from police work in 1976 but did very little in comics after that. His wife of 53 years passed away last May so he is survived by three sons (Steven, Russ and Val), a brother, a sister and five grandchildren. Services are Thursday at the Richmond Funeral Home in Grant City.

I never had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Morisi in person but we spoke several times on the phone. He was a modest man who cared deeply about a select group of artist friends. He was always calling to check on them and see if he could assist with advice or work referrals, or even to loan them money. One time we spoke, I asked him if during all his years as a cop, he ever had to arrest anyone he knew from the comic book business. He chuckled and replied, "No…but I can think of a few guys who should have been doing hard time."